I agree with the quote that Liz used from the Foner chapter; in many situations, the reality and the image that we see something in are completely different. One main example that Foner talks about was the example of ethnic neighborhoods. Foner mentions a great example of how some people perceived the tenement lifestyle of immigrants. She talks about how the media has idealized what tenements were like for immigrants. Her example is of a Christmas special in which Mrs. Santa went to the Lower East Side in a ” well-furnished, clean, and rather spacious apartment” which goes against all reality of ethnic neighborhoods (Foner 36). This is only one example of how the image and reality are different and how neighborhood horrors were romanticized by society.
Reading about the reality of immigrant neighborhoods allows me to be truly thankful for what I have today. The reading that especially struck me was Anbinder’s neighborhood description in the Five Points. There were so many horrors to take in at once as to how the immigrants were treated. Being crowded in small rooms with families of sometimes more than four kids made these tenements immensely crowded. To read that bathtubs and even beds were considered blessings and luxuries makes me realize how much I have. Children sleeping in rags and even under tables as a daily routine was truly sad to read about. To not even have working sewage lines and live in many people’s waste also angered me as well because landlords actually had immigrants pay for these conditions. Why would someone need to pay just to live in horrendous conditions that are beyond humane; one account in Anbinder talks about how a woman would search sixteen hours a day to find pieces of hair in garbage to sell to wigmakers so that she could pay her $5.00 rent. She did this just so that she could live in a crowded tenement with rarely any heat or lighting. This was not an image but unfortunately the reality of tenement life.
I agree with what Rebecca said about how the rich detested helping the poor. However, seeing that the poor helped out each other with what little they had amazed me. Despite their adversity, they tried to help each other out when society would not. It made me realize how evil the higher classes were during this time. They visited the neighborhoods not to help out the poor but only to watch how they lived; reading that does make you realize how evil human nature can be at times. I wondered why society would not help clean the neighborhoods or show some sort of help to show that they cared about them. Instead, rarely anything was done to help them, making this reality saddening to see and totally different from that Christmas special shown on TV.
