At the turn of the 21st century, New York City experienced a plethora of major overhauls in all aspects of its existence, ranging from immigration, economy, politics, and terrorism. These spheres of urban life determined how the city would rebound from crisis, face an ever-changing demographic of inhabitants, and retain its reputation as the “city on a hill.”
With the massive influx of immigrants from all across the globe, New York became a mecca of wide-eyed foreigners desperate to make a better life for themselves and their families. For second-generation immigrants being raised in this new metropolis, the diversity of ethnicities enabled a sense of multiculturalism never before seen in immigrant populations. Due to the wide variety of countries and peoples represented in New York City, ethnic boundaries were replaced instead with cross-cultural relationships that resulted in countless fusions of different cultures, such as Indo-Caribbean music (207).
Each cultural group had their own unique experience with assimilating into so-called “American” culture. Russian immigrants flocked to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 (207). In order to survive in their new environment, Russian immigrants had to adapt quickly to American ways of life, such as speaking English and entering into entrepreneurial ventures. As a result, Russian identities with Judaism became strained over whether or not they wanted to retain their religious values or shift into a more American lifestyle.
For the Chinese, the road to success in America was on the other side of the spectrum. Spurring from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, discrimination against Chinese immigrants remained a key roadblock in Chinese success in New York City as immigration quotas remained intact until 1965 (208). Even then, Chinese immigrants were herded into downtown Manhattan (known as “Chinatown”) and give jobs only as sweatshop workers. Furthermore, the stratification between Chinese immigrants grew as the division between Mandarin (“uptown Chinese”) and Cantonese (“downtown Chinese”) solidified socio-economic status within the group. Additionally, the appearance of the “model minority” myth worked to both promote Asian success through its notion of Asian immigrants as hard-working and diligent and increase pressure on latter generations of immigrants who felt inadequate to meet up to those standards.
Latinos, on the other hand, faced the issue of cultural identity in that their assimilation to American culture was muddied by their ethnic allegiance to their home countries. In particular for Puerto Ricans, the notion of the “in-between” meant that they could not fit neatly into a category of “being American” or “being Puerto-Rican” (210). Latinos also faced tensions within different nationalities as exemplified by the clash between Puerto-Ricans and Dominicans in domain over the Inwood-Washington Heights area and who laid claim over the area. Moreover, there was a gap in assimilation between Dominican men and women as more women favored American life over their life back in the Dominican Republic because of the social networks they established with each other in their work.
Lastly, for West Indian immigrants, assimilation in New York was focused more on cross-cultural relationships than any other ethnic group. This diversity is due to their “struggle to negotiate both race and ethnicity in New York” (212). The fact that American culture had classified all West Indians as “black” meant that West Indians had to learn what the idea of “race” meant in a Western context. This became most apparent during the Harlem Renaissance where the British-influenced culture of West Indian immigrants clashed with the identity of African Americans. The relationship between the two groups is complex, sometimes clashing with each other because of both parties desire to distinguish themselves from the other while at the same time agreeing on terms of racial injustice faced at the hands of police brutality.
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Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s primary goal in serving the city was to focus on elevating the middle class (221). Inspired by his conservative background, he emphasized an individual’s responsibility of being successful and promoted the notion of “private enterprise.” He vehemently opposed New York’s welfare and Medicaid plans because he believed they only enabled the idleness of the unemployed rather than forcing them to work for their survival. His action of reducing welfare funds and cutting back on welfare recipients received mixed reviews, with some people praising Giuliani for doing what his predecessors couldn’t while others condemned him for only worsening the poverty problem.
Giuliani’s policies favored private corporations by allowing them large tax breaks while simultaneously negatively impacting predominantly minority-populated organizations, such as the Human Resources Administration (222). He also focused on reforming the city’s education system, by leaving school security to the police department and privatizing school officials such as superintendents and principals. By doing so, Giuliani hoped to achieved a uniform and standardized education system, but instead received backlash from teachers’ unions over unfair policies. Furthermore, Giuliani also hired City College alum Herman Badillo to change the CUNY system by dismantling its open-admission policy, something that was criticized for being discriminatory towards low-income minorities (223). Additionally, Giuliani also attempted to increase censorship on art by removing and even proposing to shut downs museums that exhibited “offensive art,” something many citizens retaliated successfully against (224).
In short, Giuliani was driven to change the social contract of New York City and implement his conservative ideologies on the city in ways that many found restrictive and even abusive. However, his reputation and legacy were propelled by the tragic events of 9/11 and his sympathetic response to rebuilding the city its rock bottom maintained him a spot as one of the most successful mayors in New York City’s history.
