Nancy Foner’s Introduction to From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration (2000) provides a lead in to our discussion of the profound changes in the composition of the city that began in the 1960s due to the changes in American immigration laws. We will discuss how it affected the city in many expected, and even more unexpected, ways (such as the visual impact on vernacular landscapes) we will also consider the visual impact of gentrification that, in fits and starts, began in the late 1960s. I thought the review of Kim Phillips-Fein’s FEAR CITY : New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Jonathan Mahler entitled “How the Fiscal Crisis of the ’70s Shaped Today’s New York” from the New York Times might also be reflected upon since we already touched upon the contribution of the turbulent 1960s’ to the fiscal crisis which came to a head in the 1970s. In his book, Phillip-Fein argues, and Mahler elaborates upon, the solution for the crisis was a “political ” one that radically changed the (left-leanimg?) city and led to the creation of what New York City Mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio had called “two cities: one rich and the other poor.” Did the new im/migrant mix also play a role in these changes? Also, remember that next Monday is the day for what I am sure will be your stimulating biographically presentations of 1960s New Yorkers.
UNITED STATES - JUNE 26: Spectators at the Puerto Rican Day Parade at Fifth Ave. and 66th St. (Photo by Ed Clarity/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
May 7, 2017
Week Twelve: The New Immigrants in the New City
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Jerome Krase
May 15, 2017 — 12:37 pm
A recent article in The New York Times “The Culprits Behind White Flight
by Leah Boustanmay (MAY 15, 2017) supports some of our discussion in class about the causes and effects of the demographic transition in the 1960s:
“I compared the patterns of black migration into cities and white departures for the suburbs in 70 Northern and Western metropolitan areas from 1940 to 1970. I found that for every black arrival, two whites left the central city. This figure puts a precise value on what contemporaries already suspected: When black people moved in, white people moved out.
Yet only a portion of white flight can be traced back to the now-classic dynamic of racial turnover. Cities were simply too segregated by race for many urban whites to encounter black neighbors. Newly available Census Bureau maps show that in 1940, the average white urban household lived three miles away from a black enclave. By 1970, urban areas adjacent to historical black enclaves became majority black, but distant city neighborhoods remained predominantly white — no different in racial composition from the surrounding suburbs.”