Spring 2018: The People of New York City
a macaulay honors seminar taught by tamar rabinowitz, ph.d
Museum of the City of New York
During our trip to the City Museum of New York, we took a tour and traveled through time to get to know New York through every decade since it was once called New Amsterdam. The tour was very engaging, with lots of cool artifacts that were saved since the 1600s.
Rachel Swed
Reflection 4 of 5
Inequality and New York’s Subway
A huge problem in New York is inequality and huge income gaps between citizens. In the article, Inequality and New York’s Subway, Larry Buchanan brings up very valid points about the injustice in New York by simply looking at the subway system. He provides an interactive infographic that shifts for different subway lines. The infographic shows the income of people who live around those stops. Through this interactive, you can see that there is a great inequality between these boroughs. Majority of this information shows that Manhattan has the highest median income out of the five boroughs in New York. There are huge gaps in income between not only boroughs but also between stops on the subway lines! Continue reading “Inequality in New York”
(Reflection 4 of 5)
by Anna Tsomo
Sunny Stalter-Pace’s Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway is an apt representation of the subject on which it is written. Meandering, multifaceted yet somehow cohesive, the book is much like the New York City subway system. Through its well-developed perspectives, it allows readers to understand how fully the subway has influenced modern culture—not only literature, but the wider meaning of subway stories, and how they become truths. While that is the focus of the text, it also sheds light on how the subway divides and connects people.
Rebecca Kreiser
Reflection 3 of 5
Inequality and New York’s Subways. New
Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/business/subway.html
“Take the A train to Little Guyana: Immigrant Enclaves in NYC” – Kirk Semple
Graphing the relationship between income brackets and subway stops is an interesting idea that demonstrates how people with great income disparities interact on a daily basis. This phenomenon shapes our city because it means that unlike in other places, the rich and poor of NYC interact with each other all the time. And exposure to people from various backgrounds and tax brackets can broaden an individual’s world view.
Response 3 of 5
“Take the A train to Little Guyana: Immigrant Enclaves in NYC” – Kirk Semple
The article discusses the diversity and large presence of different cultures that are now present in New York City. It examines how certain areas of the city have a popular ethnic group. The presence of these ethnic micro neighborhoods is good in the sense that immigrants are able to come to America and fit in. They don’t need to face as much discrimination or as much of the struggle that immigrants have experienced in the prior years. By living in neighborhoods populated by your own people, you can come to America and live with some sort of comfort. This is beneficial because immigrants from all over the world, and not just Europe, are more eager to settle somewhere in New York City. But it also makes me question if these ethnic neighborhoods are adding to or taking away from the diversity of the city. Yes, more immigrant populations will come to the city. But are these people interacting with people from countries outside of their own. Mr. Lovlu from Kensington, Brooklyn said, “You don’t have to learn English to live here. That’s a great thing!” In his Bengali neighborhood, he doesn’t need to learn the language of the country to make a living. However, if Mr. Lovlu only speaks in his native tongue how many interactions does he have with non- Bengali people in a day? The definition of diversity is a blending of different cultures. How can we diversify if the populations don’t even interact with each other? By strengthening the wall of separation between each neighborhood we only add to the xenophobia and racist thoughts.
Questions:
Abhayvir Singh
Reflection 3 of 5
“’Lost’ In The City, Spaces and Stories of South Asian New York, 1917-1965”
By Vivek Bald
Vivek Bald presents a unique narrative of the South Asian immigrant. In order to do this, he chooses an era, 1917-1965, that is not acknowledged in the larger picture of the South Asian immigrant experience. He starts with 1917 because that’s the earliest he discovered any legal, written record in regards to South Asians. This is the year of the Supreme court case the United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind, which denied Bhagat Singh Thind citizenship because, although he classified as of Indo-Aryan origin, he was not white enough for US citizenship. Continue reading “Narratives Unnoticed”
Absara Hassan
Response 3: Kirk Semple, New York Times, “Take the A Train to Little Guyana” and Vivek Bald, “’Lost’ in the City, Spaces and stories of South Asian New York, 1917-1965”
The waves of immigration that have passed over the decades have led to the formation of immigrant enclaves across all five boroughs of New York City. In the article, “Take the A Train to Little Guyana”, Kirk Semple organizes the formation of enclaves into different sections, giving details of anecdotes, historical facts, specific locations, and the changes that these locations have undergone with respect to population for each immigrant group. Initially starting out as Kleindeutschland, also known as Little Germany, the area of lower Manhattan has been transformed throughout the years, drastically changing in ethnic composition with the addition of several immigrant populations such as those from Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa after 1965’s immigration reform legislation. The New York Times article expands on this change in ethnic composition by giving examples of ten relatively new immigrant enclaves that have settled throughout New York City.
Allison Wu
Response 3 of 5
Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented up Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum by Tyler Anbinder
In Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented up Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum by Tyler Anbinder, Anbinder introduces the area of Five Points in the Lower East Side of New York City. Although Five Points no longer exists, it is a five-point intersection of Orange Street (now Baxter St), Cross St, Anthony St (now Worth St), Mulberry St and Little Water Street. Originally, this land was a nice lake full of greenery, called The Collect, but it transformed into a slum over time. Many immigrants, prostitutes and brothels lived at Five Points. Because of the increased population, tenements, where multiple families lived in small apartments, all in one large building, were built to accommodate. However, it was extremely crowded. There was drinking, fighting and sex both in the homes and on the streets from both genders and from both blacks and whites. This area declined so much that many people petitioned for the Common Council to tear the area down due to how dangerous it was. Anbinder writes, “Citizens who might venture from the easy side to shop on Broadway were disinclined to do so because they feared having to pass through five points, while businesses on pearl street to the south and east of five points suffered similarly” (22). Many people made the effort to avoid Five Points to avoid the vice that constantly goes on there.
City Museum of New York
Post 2 of 5
REWRITE
The tour portrayed New York’s timeline, as well as a focus on four integral parts of New York. The journey began with an analysis of Diversity, Money, Creativity, and Density. Diversity and density, in particular, are very applicable to the theme of our class as a whole. The timeline consisted of descriptions along with visuals portrayed each significant decade/period in New York’s history. Overall, a lot of the information we received could have been easily expressed in class; so the question must be asked: what is the point of going to a museum anyway?
Museums offer visual and physical aids to go along with information studied. The basic idea of a museum reminds me of a famous philosophical issue known as Mary’s room. Mary is a brilliant neuroscientist and knows everything there is to know about color vision. However, she spent her entire life living in a black and white world. One day, Mary escapes her monochrome room and sees color for the first time. Does she learn anything new? The point I am trying to make is that no matter the vastness of our conceptual knowledge of a topic or ability to formulate thought experiments, the real-world physical observation is critical to gain a better understanding. A museum is our gateway from the conception to reality.
The physical reality can then be connected to gain a further understanding of theory. While viewing the items on display, I could easily understand diversity just by the variety of the objects presented. From the Jewish readings, Asian art, European trinkets, and many more, all symbolize the range of cultures since the beginning of New York. Another example would be a model of the Empire State Building, which served as an excellent depiction of density. Once area became an issue, it became clear how expanding to another dimension could maximize the number of people in a given area.
All-in-all Museums connect theory to experiment. Sure, we could’ve directly read the information from a textbook, or watched a video clip about the topics, but nothing beats experiencing the real thing; just like the moment, Mary must have seen color for the first time.
Questions:
Why is creativity so synonymous with city life?
How does money and business relate to density?
Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence, Intro
Ramiro Martinez, Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed.
(Response 3 of 5) by Anna
New York, a city of constant flux, is known to be a hub of immigration. It is home to Queens, the urban place with the global record of ethnic diversity. (Wikipedia) But just because so many people exist in the same place, they don’t always coexist peacefully. Popular sentiment is that an increase of immigration equals an increase in crime. However, according to Ramiro Martinez and Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed, the data points to the contrary. If the numbers suggest one thing, why is public opinion the opposite?
Continue reading “Immigration and Crime: the Importance of Accurate Analysis”
