I completely agree with Jessica when she says that communities cannot exist without conflict. Throughout the semester we have seen that ethnic communities were created with some moments of conflict along the way in order to preserve ethnic identity. For example, Piri being ganged upon by Italians once he moved into their neighborhood and other examples show that conflict has occurred in order for people to preserve their community. Now in our last readings, we see this idea in all the readings in which conflict, whether for ethnic or other reasons, was used in order for people to try to save their ideals and core communities. Unfortunately this conflict leads to boycott, demonstrations, and severe riots all for the purpose of saving their community.
In the case of Anbinder I also agree that this was not a racial issue but tension rose more from issues of loyalty to certain groups which boiled over from political elections. Having two different groups with leaders who were very tough and adamant about getting their votes led to them aggressively intimidating innocent people who just wanted to express their rights. As mentioned before, the dominant cause was loyalty and at this time it was loyalty taken on a radical level. To me loyalty was a main factor but another was that it was on contested turf. People have formed different groups such as the Bowery Boys and Dead Rabbits on the same land and it is this that leads to communities going into conflict with each other. These groups want to be able to control the turf and as a result fight with any opposing groups. As a result, riots in which lives are lost occur between groups to try to establish full control.
The articles by Sciorra and Reider show how race can truly be a driving force in riots. For these articles, I believe that deaths and riots came about from fear of the Other. Reider’s piece was really blatant as to how people really did not want African Americans on their turf. It was sad to see how as soon as any African American was seen running through Canarsie, at one point in time some people felt a need to chase them down and beat them. Even when the African Americans did nothing, groups felt so proud when they either beat them or chased them down as seen by the quotes Reider uses. Unfortunately this is what was done to protect one’s turf. People like the Italians thought that this Other would end up completely controlling their neighborhood and could not live peacefully with them. The same went for Sciorra’s article because when other Italians saw him march with other demonstrators for the loss of an African American they were completely shocked and ridiculed him as if he was crazy.
As I read the articles, I realized more about how contested turf plays such a strong role when it is mixed with either the factor of loyalty or race. It is because people at this time who are loyal to a certain group or race do not want to see people who were different. I realized that this was common in many of our readings in which immigrants had ethnic pride and identity when they made up parts of New York City and did not want others to take that from them.
