Category: Student Posts

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The Museum of the City of New York

The City Museum of New York

Joseph Dwan

Reflection 2 of 5

 

The City Museum was one that I had not heard of nor went to before the Class trip. However upon hearing about it, my interest was immediately piqued as I knew a bit about the city, but there was so much more history to explore. Upon arrival, I was struck by how pretty the exterior looked and upon entering, I couldn’t help but notice the opposites the inside and outside of the museum looked. It seemed old school and classical on the outside but modern and “hip” as the kids say on the inside. The exhibits were very well put together and broke everything down to the basics into easy to understand panel boards to read.

 

The parts of the museum that particularly connects with the class was the diversity and density parts of the exhibits. I really liked the maps that showed how the city’s specific sectors were continuously changing in their ethnic makeups. I know it seemed silly, but as a kid I had always thought that each ethnic group claimed their little piece and stuck with it, I had no idea that they moved around this much. I also liked how much emphasis was placed on the money part. It shows the wealth disparity and how it was distributed around one of the most prosperous cities in America. The museum is something every New Yorker should see and I would recommend any tourists to drop by to see that New York is so much more than an apple and Fuggedaboutit.

 

Questions

Do you have any suggestions to make to the museum to better represent the time periods?

 

Has New York City been accurately represented in the Museum, did it go in depth enough?

 

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Nativist Impact on Immigrant Communities

Rebecca Kreiser

Reflection 2 of 5

Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community by: Jenna Weissman Joselit

Ramiro Martinez, Aabel Valenzuela, Jr ed., Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence

After reading the beginning of Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community and the first chapter of Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence, I realized that the anti-immigration rhetoric that we hear today is essentially recycled material. Additionally, I realized that throughout history, anti-immigrant sentiments have almost always been irrational. With this understanding, I posit that many of NYC’s ethnic enclaves strengthened, instead of shrinking, as a natural response to illogical nativist attitudes and treatment.

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Disassociation between Immigration and Crime

Absara Hassan

Response 2: Ramiro Martinez, Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed., Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence

As America increasingly experiences flow of people from other nations, debates arise concerning the relationship between immigration and crime. According to Ramiro Martinez, these debates are futile, as there really is no substantial evidence to prove the detrimental effects of immigration on crime rates. In his book, Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence, Martinez highlights criminal immigrant stereotypes by providing examples from social scientists and intellectuals, and then refuting their statements with his own argument supported by statistical facts, before introducing “the reality of immigrant crime”.

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Jewish Immigration

Rachel Swed

Reflection 3 of 5

Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community by: Jenna Weissman Joselit

(written in winter 1983)

In her book Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, Jenna Weissman Joselit thoroughly discusses Jewish immigration. Throughout history, Jews were known for being law-abiding citizens. They were the most peaceful, and there was only a record of two murders that were committed by those who identified with the notoriously untroubling group in the past 250 years (1). However, as the number of immigrants kept increasing, Americans grew highly fearful that their country would soon be corrupted by criminals, pickpockets, and thieves. Nativist believed that the government was too lenient with their immigration policies, claiming there were more immigrants than Americans. In addition, there were a lot of disorders such as, an increase in crime, and the economy’s plummeting wealth. In the eyes of an anti-immigrant partisan, these deficiencies were held at the responsibility of immigrants because prior to the surge of incomers, Americans weren’t familiar with facing such issues. As a result, a coalition formed towards pushing legislative actions to establish quotas to limit the number of immigrants coming, more specifically Jewish people. However, even after they established the quota there was no proof that immigrants were the reason for the increase in crime. Nevertheless, the book goes on to describe how the Lexow Committee uncovered the criminal element of the Jewish community that ranged from different crimes of pickpocketing to prostitution (with or without the consent of the women) and gambling. The revelations of Jewish criminality startled many of the community, and this cast a horrible light on Jewish people. Once viewed as a group of high moral standing, the Jewish community was now seen as a corrupted group and were targets of discrimination and hatred. Continue reading “Jewish Immigration”

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City Museum

Post 2 of 5: Museum of the City of New York

By: Salvatore Fevola

 

Diversity, Money, Creativity, and Density: The threads consolidating New York.

The tour began with 4 words, seemingly pillars, that effectively generalize New York and were examined throughout the exhibits. The first theme that showed up was Money, as it was the main reason for New York being colonized. Beaver pelts were a hot aristocrat item, and it was interesting that the tour began before America. This allowed the tour to be unique in adding details that people may have forgotten or don’t think about. Next is Diversity and Density coming hand in hand as New York became a hub of immigration causing cultures to mix and clash, while forcing the use of every possible piece of land. The approach to these felt a little more lackluster as there wasn’t as much detail put into the interactions that were caused by Diversity and Density. Sure, money was the reason people moved to New York, but there wasn’t much discussion on how different cultures reacted toward one another. Then there is Creativity, which came in the form of movements, the figuring out of problems never seen before, and genuine artistic growth. This includes the progressive era attempting to improve the lives of everyone, trying to manage an extremely dense populous, and things such as the Harlem renaissance.  Continue reading “City Museum”

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City Museum

City Museum of New York

John Semanduyev

Post 2 of 5

The tour portrayed New York’s unique 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 city’s seemingly unbound diversity has a direct correlation to its potential density. As the city of immigrants began to take shape, finding unoccupied land became a major issue. The solution was to start building upwards, and along with the invention of the elevator, the skyscrapers we see today were born.

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Museum of the City of New York

Response 2 of 5

As we were going through the history of New York City throughout the years, one that stood out to me was the “New Immigrant City.” In the time period between 1980 and 2001, a heavy influx of immigrants came to the city. Immigration laws loosened allowing people from countries all over the world experience the city. An important thing to note is that people didn’t just come from Europe but they came from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. This is an important milestone not just for the immigrants that came in but also for the future of New York. I was passing by another sign in the museum and it said, “What makes New York New York?” The answer to that question was money, diversity, density, and creativity. Without the different groups of people inhabiting our city, New York would just be like any other place. It wouldn’t have anything special to it. Our Chinatown and Little Italy are just as important as our SoHo or Williamsburg. Without the blending of cultures, New York city wouldn’t be the same as it is today. As for the other answers to the question, I think that they all are important aspects of the city but that diversity contributes to all of them. For example, the reason why our subways cars are so jam packed and why our sidewalks have no more space to walk is because we have so many people here. One reason why my parents came to live in New York City was because they knew that other Indian people would be there. If only people from Germany lived in New York, immigrants wouldn’t feel as comfortable about moving in.

Questions:

Which racial group/ ethnicity is least represented in the city?

What other cities in America are as diverse as New York City?

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MCNY: Representing Activism or Acts of Omission?

(Response 2 of 5) by Anna

Museum of the City of New York

Contested Terrain: History, Museums, and the Public by James B. Gardner

 

Just like the City it represents, the Museum of the City of New York is not afraid to make bold statements or address controversial topics. The complexities of life and culture in New York City can feel overwhelming and even unintelligible, but the museum manages to present the fullness of the culture in an ordered, intentional way. This is exemplified in Activist New York, a multimedia exhibition that documents the history of activism in NYC. But does this exhibit celebrate some movements only to invalidate others?

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