“From Ellis Island to JFK” Chapter 5: The Sting of Prejudice
In this chapter, Foner begins to delve deeply into the concept of race, particularly racial prejudice, and its effects on New York. After reading this chapter, it became evident just how different racial prejudice is when comparing the first wave of immigration to the second. For one thing, the immigrants themselves are indeed different. When referencing the first wave, Foner talks of the struggles faced by Jewish and Italian immigrants. When referencing the more modern wave, she talks more of the white/black divide that exists.
In the first wave, Jewish and Italian immigrants had many features associated with their respective heritages. Certain physical and personality characteristics were just know as identifiably “Jewish” or “Italian”, such as skin color, moral standards, religion, etc. Some people in New York had issues with these races for fear of ruining the purity of the city. For instance, NYU was mentioned as having a sign encouraging Jewish students to drop out in the 1920s in order to establish a “white man’s college”. Derogatory terms such as “guinea” for Italians were also frequent.
In the second wave, a major issue that New York faced was the black/white divide. Of course, this is seen throughout history as well, but New Yorkers witnessed a strong wave of this in the more modern years. Races such as Italian and Jewish were now melded together to just be commonly known as “white”, and all colored people were just considered “black” regardless of actual origin. Regardless of the time period, Foner makes it clear that racial prejudice and stereotyping has always been a prevalent and inescapable thing.
I felt as though this chapter featured many things that we have already read about, especially regarding the Jewish and Italian populations. The one thing I took away from this chapter that I had never really considered before is what really defines a race. In order to truly understand the racial prejudices and stereotypes that are so heavily embedded in American society, it is important to first understand the concept of race itself, and I feel like Foner begins to scratch at this complex topic. It was mentioned that there is indeed no such thing as race, and in fact race is only real because we define it as real. It is a “social and cultural construction” only in existence to define what is superior and what is inferior. When looking at race in this way, the concept of a power struggle emerges, and thus it provides more of a justification as to why racial prejudice might exist in the first place.
