Spring 2018: The People of New York City
a macaulay honors seminar taught by tamar rabinowitz, ph.d
Rebecca Kreiser
Reflection 5/5
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit – by: Lucette Lagnado
In The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado captures her Jewish- Egyptian father’s inability to embrace the coldness of NYC. By focusing on the ways her father clung to fellow Jewish-Egyptians living in Brooklyn, Lagnado essentially shows her readers how ethnic enclaves form and function in New York.
Response 4 of 5: Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New City Subway by Sunny Stalter-Pace
By: Mariam Esa
Sunny Stalter-Pace’s Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New City Subway considers various views of the subway as voiced by numerous people. The book in a sense represents the city by providing a wide array of subway stories that reminds us of the countless perspectives to be found in New York City. Throughout the course of this book, we are introduced to ideas of the dangers of the subway, the artistic expression of it, the way it portrays diversity, and much more. It allows us to see just how integrated the subway is in making New York City what it is. Continue reading “Subway Stories”
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.
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.
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”.
Continue reading “Disassociation between Immigration and Crime”
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”
Although I was not able to make it for the tour, I was able to grasp the theme of this museum; an in-depth view of New York City’s history and all the different variables, including immigration, protests, and cultural explosions, amongst others, that helped pave the road for what NewYork City is today. Continue reading “City Museum of New York”
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”
Response 3 of 5: Museum of the City of New York
By: Mariam Esa
Visiting the Museum of the City of New York was like receiving a crash course on the history of New York City. We encountered relics from as far back as the 1600s (when it was still New Amsterdam) and saw into the different time periods that each played a crucial role in making this city what it is. Continue reading “Lack of the Immigrant’s Story?”
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.
