Ricourt and Dante’s Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity talked about the population of latinos in Corona, as well as the change in population of other parts of the borough of Queens.  They started off by discussing the sense of unity Latinos of Corona found in their common language.  This was the first thing that stood out to me about this passage.  I found it interesting language was the most unifying factor of the Hispanic population.  It did make the most sense to me, though, because as different as various Hispanic cultures are, the language is the one thing that they have in common.  That is the one thing that they can depend on to communicate and connect with each other.  Since Spanish is what attracts Latinos to Corona, it makes it easier for more and more Hispanics to feel comfortable living in the area, interacting, and creating a community of their own.

As a child, I spent a lot of time in Corona and I remember looking around and thinking that my family was “the outsider” in this area.  Reading this passage made it seem like it was in fact the other way around, at least at one point.  Ricourt and Dante explain the growth of Latinos in Corona and how it was a result of “new immigration.”  However, before this Corona’s population was predominantly white and black.  Soon, more blacks would move into the area and whites would move out.  By the 1990’s, the area became multi-Latino.  Although the area became predominantly Hispanic, there were people moving in from various spanish countries, from Puerto Rico to Panama.  All of these cultures mixed into one area can be hard to believe.  There are bound to be separations and divisions, but as a whole, Latinos have made Corona their home.

Reading the essay about the development of Jackson Heights, Queens, I realized that no matter how hard one tries, one cannot always control the outcome of a neighborhood. There are too many outside factors that make this control difficult. MacDougall lost in his fight to create an upper middle class to upper class exclusive neighborhood, Jackson Heights. Building the neighborhood in a great economy, he banned certain groups of people, such as Jews and Blacks, from moving to Jackson Heights, but when the Great Depression hit, this all changed. People could no longer afford these homes, so some people moved out, and prices of all the homes dropped. The Great Depression did set up Jackson Heights for its new dynamic of being a diverse neighborhood, but it was not until decades after the Great Depression that immigrants, other than Jews or Catholics, moved to Jackson Heights. The outside factors were the introducing of two new acts that made opened the door for immigrants to come to the United States. Since Jackson Heights’ real estate market was still bad when these acts were put in place, Jackson Heights was the perfect place for immigrants to settle.

The essay describes Jackson Heights, specifically Roosevelt Avenue, as a place full of life. Every block has stores representing a different nationality. What became of Jackson Heights seems better than MacDougall’s original dream of creating a citadel-like neighborhood composed of only wealthy whites. The Jackson Heights that was created seems much more interesting and attractive. It is so attractive that people come from other states to shop in the area, similar to how people go to Flushing to do their shopping.

The topic of controlling who inhabits an area is intriguing to me because in my town that issue has recently been coming up. A developer wants to build new apartments in my town, but people are afraid that kids are going to settle there, and the schools are already crowded. The developer can try to make the apartments as unattractive to families with kids as it wants, but as we saw with MacDougall’s efforts to control, outside factors can change everything.

“From Exclusionary Covenant to Ethnic Hyperdiversity in Jackson Heights, Queens” by Ines M. Miyares mainly focused on Jackson Heights to demonstrate the dramatic change in its ethnic population from the past few decades. Jackson Heights was not meant to be diverse. It was supposed to be the getaway for high earning working people from the New York City. The houses were grand and the neighborhood was clean.

However, the stock market crash in 1929 and the stagnation of real estate 1930s became the spark to the change of Jackson Heights from a rich white town into a town of hyperdiversity. Because of these economical problems, apartments were very hard to sell. In 1950s, finally a new group of people started moving into Jackson heights. These groups of people were Latin Americans who had entrepreneurial experience and were in need to establish a stable business. Because these Latinos were experienced and educated, it was common for them to settle down in Jackson Heights’ “discounted” apartments (thanks to stock market crash).

However, even as late as 1970s, Jackson heights was called “a largely white, middle-class neighborhood”. So what factor impacted the diversity of Jackson Heights the most? The Immigration Reform Act of 1965 removed the quotas on immigrants and made immigration more advantageous. This new wave of immigrants was highly educated and they settled in neighborhoods with large and affordable housings, easily accessible public transportation, and available storefronts for new businesses (and Jackson Heights was a perfect match for Hispanic/Latino and Asian population). As shown in the article’s chart, in 2000, 63% of Jackson Heights’ residents were foreigners. It really is ironic to actually think that Jackson Heights was supposed to be for white rich Europeans. Coincidently, the conditions in Jackson Heights were perfect for the immigrants and this coincidence made Jackson Heights one of the most diverse city in the world.

Milagros Ricourt and Ruby Dante heavily focused on Corona in Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity. The authors discussed that while Corona is now predominately filled with Latin American immigrants, it wasn’t always that way. Dating back to the 1950s, Corona was made up of almost 43,000 whites and 5,000 blacks. Each year, the number of whites drastically decreased while blacks increased (up until Latin Americans began to migrate to Corona, which at that time the number of blacks then decreased.) White flight clearly impacted the Corona neighborhood and molded it into the predominately Latino neighborhood it is today. But while Corona is majority Latino, there is no specific group of Latinos that dominate the area. Between Dominicans, Columbians, Puerto Ricans, Ecuadorians, Cubans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Salvadorians, Hondurans and Panamanians, not any of these ethnicities have an absolute majority. While there isn’t a perfect divide between the groups, each group has their own nook in the community.

While I was reading Introducing Corona, I was very intrigued reading the schedule that was laid out. There was a strong image of people from all different countries of the world standing on the same platform, waiting for the same 7 train. All of these people had their own stories, backgrounds and beliefs but in that moment, all of them had the same goal: to get to on the train and head into Manhattan for work. Reading this passage gave me an almost empty feeling because thinking that there are people who take the same trains for years, that will never actually interact. While they may see and recognize one another, they see that they are not the same ethnicity and therefore do not engage with each other. It is the same as the mothers who go and pick up their kids from school. While they wait with the same individuals everyday, the Latin Americans, Indians and Chinese women all stand separately. The divide between races go beyond the mother countries and translates even in Queens, New York.

Michael Jones-Correa opens his book, Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City, with a chapter entitled, “Intimate Strangers: Immigration to Queens.” Right off the bat, the title introduces an interesting idea that Jones-Correa further develops. This notion of an “intimate stranger,” a paradoxical sentiment, lends itself to what Jones-Correa coins as “communities overlapping but not touching.” However, before he addresses that, he gives the historical and sociological context of this community shift.

According to his premise, the idea of a community being bound by arbitrarily drawn lines is one that can be debated, particularly with regards to Latino immigrants. Queens, having originally been farmland, is a relatively new place to live, in the grand scheme on New York City. Emphasis on the word live, because that is exactly what people in Queens do. This is not an area for tourists or people to simply pass through, but rather a place for people to carry out their daily lives. Therefore, much more emphasis is placed on this idea of a community.

Jones-Correa refers to the white population of these Queens neighborhoods as “white ethnic residents,” accrediting the fact that they were once too immigrants. However, they do not identify with recent immigrants. Jones-Correa introduces the concept of assimilation, without actually saying the word. He quotes a person saying he never spoke Italian to his friends, despite living in an Italian neighborhood as a child. This contrasts the American-born Latinos who still converse in Spanish with their peers. This thereby lends itself to the idea that perhaps, if Latino immigrants more consciously tried to “blend in” and abide by the social rules put in place by the community’s original residents, there would be no problems.

However, this often isn’t the case, bringing back the idea of an “intimate stranger.” The idea of “communities overlapping but not touching” refers to the reality of an “overlap,” in the sharing of a space, without “touching,” the interaction of the inhabitants. Jones-Correa addresses this in his opening, painting a picture of the 7 train as full of people, but still being a solitary endeavor. Therefore, the question is raised of 1) whether or not asking these people to assimilate is ethnocentric, and 2) how can we integrate these various enclaves, so to speak, into a single thriving community?

Coming to America, immigrants are immigrants, new to the land and to the American culture. However, when they settle in, they settle mostly in a community that consists more of them and more of their religion and their identity. Therefore, their “immigrant” label diminishes due to the fact that they basically integrate with the people around them. However, the continued interaction among each other as well as social events, they create their own identity. Throughout Dante’s piece, we see the factors that play a role in leaning immigrants to join with their “own” and become their own identity with them. Initially, there weren’t as many Latinos in the Corona but those factors and time greatly influenced the transformation of the background of the community. One factor was White flight that was effective in the transformation in which the number of blacks decreased.

As a son of Indian immigrants, I can compare what Dante says to my own parents. The initial action to reside is somewhere comfortable where you know the people and the culture so they don’t feel the “social force” acting upon them. Not only, but the nature of the growth of population also impacts the emergence of the Latino community. From two states to all 50 states, the population of Latino communities have increased, and within each city they gradually get higher.This article explains much of the demographics of the emergence of Latino Communities as well as that of Corona. With 44% being Latinos, it has been divided into three subareas, North Corona, Corona Plaza, and Corona Heights. Much of the emergence of Lationos has come about from social issues and the interaction with people surrounding them. That is what creates unity as well as a form of identity for themselves. Even though they all come from different nations and parts of the world, they become a group when they surround themselves with their own.

If you told Edward Archibald MacDougall that one day the neighborhood he founded and created, Jackson Heights, would someday be one of the most diverse places in the United States, he wouldn’t believe you. The intention of MacDougall was to create a neighborhood meant for rich white Protestants, one that would primarily exclude blacks, Jews, and Irish Catholics. It’s position offered middle to upper class Protestant whites to easily commute to Midtown Manhattan without having to live in the crowded confides of Manhattan. However, by the year 2000, the number of Hispanics residents outnumbered the number of white residents while the Asian population also began to quickly rise. What is the reason for this sudden change in the demographics in Jackson Heights? Ines Miyares outlines the main reasons for these changes as follows: the 1929 stock market crash, the subsequent real estate market collapse, or the change in immigration policies and patterns after the 1950s.

From its creation, Jackson Heights was a neighborhood filled with large apartments, in the forms of the Greystones, the Chateau apartments, and the Towers. When the Upper-Middle Class white Protestants began moving out of Jackson Heights due to the reasons listed above, the most logical group to move in were those of Hispanic origin. The large apartments were the perfect size to accommodate the large families of Hispanic groups including the Colombians and Cubans, two groups who have brought entrepreneurial experience and the capital needed to establish businesses. This was an unexpected turn of events given the way Jackson Heights was formed in the first place. Interestingly enough, in the year 2000 the number of foreign-born residents accounted for nearly 63 percent of it’s residents, compared to the 32 percent for the other four boroughs of New York City. Jackson Heights has an interesting history in regards to the fact that it started as mostly white Protestant Citadel and has transformed into a highly diverse area for New York City immigrants.