One would think that the large groups of immigrants coming to New York would stay to themselves and form “coalitions,” as Reuel R. Rogers puts it. However, he starts off by saying that this is not always true. This can be exemplified by our observations on our walking tour of Jackson Heights. As we saw, one small neighborhood can indeed be extremely diverse and not just made up of one particular race. Furthermore, Roger Sanjek mentions about fifteen different races when describing the make-up of Elmhurst, which New York’s Department of City Planning called “perhaps the most ethnically mixed community in the world.” Clearly, the people of Elmhurst did not form “coalitions,” but instead blended into one another to form one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world.
Coming back to the piece by Rogers, I found it slightly confusing that he talks about the races as if there are only two in existence—black and white. He constantly refers to “Blacks” and “Whites” when referring to the races. Why separate them like that? The “Blacks” and “Whites” each have their own denominations of races under those categories, and it seems trivial to not distinguish them as such. I think Rogers, and many other Americans, have this mindset because of all the years of racial segregation. You never heard about Asian segregation, or Latin-American segregation; only Black.
It may seem silly, but the black and white cookie is an appropriate metaphor for this topic. The two opposite sides of the cookie are separated and have different flavors, yet they come together on one cookie. This is how the neighborhoods Rogers describes should be—the “Blacks” and “Whites” are separate and do indeed have their own “coalitions” in some cases, yet they come together as a whole in one neighborhood.
