The homogeneity of heterogeneity in NY

As I was reading the “Introduction” to Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan’s Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, I was particularly drawn to a passage that questioned “is New York different… from London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo? Do we not, in every great city, meet people from all over the world? We do; but we should not confuse the heterogeneity of most of the great cities of the world with that of New York” (Glazer & Moynihan 10).

While Glazer and Moynihan touch on the massive scale of heterogeneity of ethnicities in New York City, I think there is something to be said of the homogeneity of the heterogeneity. What I mean by this is that various ethnic groups, particularly in New York, create communities within the city that are so homogenous that they’re practically unrecognizable from each other. In my traveling experiences, having been to 3 of the cities compared to New York by Glazer and Moynihan, I’ve found that while various ethnic groups have their respective neighborhoods, they are never as tight-knit nor as homogenous as their New York counterparts.

Excluding the fake ethnic areas like the ever-popular Chinatowns or Little Italys, you’re hard pressed to find, in cities other than New York, areas that are clearly distinct to one ethnicity. In such authentic ethnic neighborhoods, storefronts and street signs are almost always written in their native language, and English is usually the secondary, or even tertiary language. The homogeneity of the heterogeneity of New York is exemplified by Flushing, Queens. It is the most linguistically diverse area in the world[1], yet it is also an area with seemingly rigid lines determining which neighborhoods belong to which ethnicities.

[1] Solnit, Rebecca, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. Oakland, CA: U of California, 2016. Print.