In “Communities,” Joshua Zeitz emphasizes the fact that people in the early 20th century usually lived in areas where their ethnicity was predominant. If 55% of all Jews lived in 15 neighborhoods, that shows that they preferred living in heavily Jewish areas. Similarly, Italians tended to live close to other Italians because they found comfort not only in being around people who spoke the same language, but people who had similar beliefs and ideals. Did this really change over time? The answer is double sided. There are still areas such as Chinatown that are mostly inhabited by Chinese, but many other areas have been diversified over time. Ridgewood, for example used to be mostly Italian and German. Today there are two polish groceries on every block. Newly arrived Polish, Romanian, and even Chinese immigrants now mostly inhabit this area. Astoria (I keep bringing this up because everyone asks me if I am Greek) is not as Greek as it used to be. It is now inhabited by many Middle-Easterners, Hispanics, and many white yuppies who recently moved to Astoria to avoid the ridiculous rents in Manhattan.

In my opinion neighborhoods tend to be heavily populated by one or two ethnicities only for a period of one or two generations. Immigrants usually settle in areas where people speak their language because it is convenient and because it gives them a sense of belonging. As their children grow up, go to very diverse schools, and become more Americanized they move away and other groups start inhabiting those areas.

A very interesting point that is brought up in the second article is the analysis of the “idea of places.” At the time whites from other parts of the city as well as other parts of the country saw Harlem as a dangerous slum that was mostly populated by African Americans. Harlem was looked down upon because of this. In reality, Harlem was also the home of many Italians and Puerto Ricans who had to suffer because of people’s idea of where they lived. There was nothing wrong with Harlem, but because outsiders had a bad perception of the area, people who lived in Harlem were looked down upon. This is very similar to what we have been talking about in class dealing with perceptions. While most places have stereotypes, those stereotypes were usually wrong; nonetheless, it appears that throughout the history of New York people have looked at neighborhoods and judged them not based on what was there and what was true, but rather what they have heard about them and what majority public opinion was.