This week’s readings highlight demographic changes that occurred in neighborhoods of New York, such as Brownsville, Brooklyn and Five Points. Excerpts from both books discuss the effect of housing projects on the population of these areas. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, residents at the time were concerned about the effects of the building of the Brownsville Housing in 1950. A few years later, a practice known as blockbusting was all too common. Pritchett discusses this concept that was introduced to us in the movie that we saw in class. Pritchett discusses the impact of this concept on Brownsville whereas the movie discussed the impact on neighborhoods on Long Island. According to Pritchett, “unscrupulous real estate agents used white fears and black demands for housing to reap profits in changing neighborhoods” (151). These real estate agents instilled fears into the White residents, leading them to want to move out of areas quickly and sell their homes to real estate agents for less than their market values. Soon thereafter, the real estate agents would flip over these houses, selling them for higher than their market values to the new African American residents.

In addition to the classes that existed between the Whites and Blacks, there were also cultural clashes between Jews and other Whites, and between the elderly and the youth. These various groups had different ideas about life. Pritchett describes one account of a Jew who was bullied. “One family requested a transfer after their son was beaten up in the stairwell of their building by ‘Negro boys who called him ‘poor white trash’ and dirty Jew’” (157). Pritchett also states that around the time that these neighborhoods increased in population of Blacks, they also were notorious for higher crime rates. He fails to give statistics to back up his claims. He discusses the presence of gang violence in this area as well, just briefly scratching the surface. In general, I think people see what they want to see, and look past what is of not interest to them.

Likewise, the neighborhood of Five Points experienced significant demographic changes. As a result of the Civil War, many men went off to fight in the war, so more local jobs were available in the neighborhood. The residents of Five Points at the time earned higher wages and were afforded the opportunity to move to other, more expensive areas of New York. Beginning at the time, the neighborhood of Five Points was experiencing what was deemed to be the “Urban Renewal.” Five Points was still inhabited by people of various ethnicities; however, the conditions were beginning to improve markedly. New legislation was passed, which regulated the building and function of tenements. Still, the poor were forced into overcrowded conditions.

In the excerpt from Sharman, he further discusses the UPACA gardens. The narrator has various interactions with people of different ethnicities. He had people over to her apartment on the same day as the Feste of the Madonna. His neighbors were all immigrants to America, and they all arrived through JFK airport. They had visions to improve the conditions of the city. Sharman writes, “Faced with the megalopolis of New York City, we were intent on actively engaging the life of the city, not passively consuming what was on offer.” They formed an organization to better the neighborhood of East Harlem. They didn’t always have a clear idea of who the leaders were, but they worked hard to better the city.

I agree with Alex that race and public housing are closely related , because public housing tended to be for minorities who were attracted by the low prices that they could afford.  However, as she mentioned, the public housing situation wasn’t pretty- it was overcrowded, dirty and noisy.  In addition there was a lot of minority violence and crime, which gave the area a bad reputation.  This further increased segregation and racism because the wealthy whites who lived in their nice, expensive suburban towns heard about all this crime in the poor minority neighborhoods, and take it to mean that the minorities are dangerous and inferior, like savages.  So then they’ll continue to further keep their distance and separate themselves, increasing segregation and ostracizing the minorities.  However, what they don’t realize is that the reason for crime and violence isn’t inherently the minorities’ fault.  It’s not like all minorities are prone to violence, it’s because of the poor living situations.  There is an increased crime rate in poorer neighborhoods, and people get confused and think that the issue is a racial one, which it is partly, but it is also an economic one, which people don’t realize.  If a wealthy African American moves into a white suburban neighborhood, it doesn’t mean crime and violence will go up because of the black family- the violence, I believe, is confined to the poor neighborhoods where people are desperate and angry, which leads to crime and violence.

I think its awful that these housing situations for minorities deteriorated after the Civil War and World War II.  It’s so mean- the minorities fight alongside whites in the war, defending America, their country and their freedom, and how do we repay them once it’s over?  By throwing them in the slums.  Yeah, that’s real nice.  Also, in the movie they spoke about the GI Bill and how they conveniently made up reasons why it shouldn’t apply to different minorities, like the African Americans.  That’s just a dirty trick.  Not nice!

I also noticed a lot of people discussing white being the “Times New Roman” default race, and if they would still be the default race if other minorities had a larger population- would white become the new minority, and say African American the new majority, or default?  I just want to say that the words “minority” and “majority” in this context are not based on population (I don’t think).  I’m pretty sure it has to do with which group is in power (the majority) and which groups are the oppressed (minorities), or so I’ve been told in my sociology class last semester.  So if we take that to be right, then it doesn’t matter if some minority groups grow to out-populate the white majority, they will still be minorities until there is a shift in “power” or of some other sort.  As long as a group is being discriminated against, it doesn’t matter how large your population is, you are a minority.

When immigrants first came to the United States, they formed ethnic concentrations with in the neighborhoods of Five Points, Brownsville and Harlem. But what started as ethnic segregation out of convenience slowly transformed (in Five Points after the Civil War and in Brownsville and Harlem after World War II) into segregation based on race. As we discussed in the blogs last week, race is a socially constructed means of labeling individuals based on outward appearances, which corresponds directly to socioeconomic status. It is no coincidence that African Americans, the darkest race, are those located at the bottom of American society. African Americans are on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder through no fault of their own but are placed there by the racial stereotypes on which American society was founded.

In my anthropology class, we covered the linguistic concept of langue as developed by Ferdinand de’ Saussure. Langue is the belief that rationality rather than indexicality give words their meanings. Words gain meaning from other words. For example, we understand the word “Yes” as not “No.” In anthropology, our professor asked us to apply the concept of langue to E.E. Evans Pritchard’s study of Nuer social groups. As a class we discussed how people define and label themselves in relationship to other people. Our reading this week made me think of how American Society works the same way. The white elite label African Americans as inferior in order to view them selves as not black and therefore make themselves the superior group. By creating divisions according to something arbitrary such as race, society creates power and distributes it according to skin color.

While the division of black and white is “black and white,” there is a lot of confusion surrounding the so-called “grey area.” As immigrants varying in skin tone arrived from places such as South America, Puerto Rico and Haiti, the previous categories of white and black became too specific. So, American society evolved and came to accept a spectrum of color between white and black. What I find fascinating is the constant fighting between groups that are more closely related racially (aka: the races whose complexions appear to be the same shade) such as the Puerto Ricans and Italians in Robert Orsi’s article.

As Praveena points out in her blog, the antagonistic relationship between the Italians and Puerto Ricans makes absolutely no sense. Instead of the initial desire to blend in (with the white majority) the Italians and Puerto Ricans wanted to stand out in order to avoid being smushed into the same category as black. The Italians wanted to be regarded and compared to other Europeans and not to the Puerto Ricans who were sometimes mistaken for blacks and the Puerto Ricans wanted to stand out and be defined as not black. The Puerto Ricans understood white to mean not black and so the desire to be “not black” became more important than wanting to be categorized as white.

The question that seems to be floating around this week’s readings is: Are Whites the default race? And as Susan asks, does this same feeling of dominance exist in other countries, by other races?
The importance of race, as many of our readings have mentioned, is purely a figment of imagination. It is made up in order to classify people who are not the same. Race is a way to separate different societies, and was established for the already present Whites of New York to maintain their position of dominance.

To expand on Alex’s suggestion that public housing reinforces the issue of race, it is almost necessary to mention also the movie we watched in class, where we learned that in areas of Long Island, it was nearly impossible for Blacks to buy a house anywhere near where Whites lived, because of the White’s rejection of the Blacks as neighbors, and even as people. When moving into an area, Whites would take into consideration the Black demographic, and if it was too high for their liking, they would choose another area to live.

The idea of race also created problems, because every ethnicity as they moved into the area, began to feel that they were the dominant “race,” which led to many wars between the minorities. People who inhabit one area for many years, begin to think of that area as their own, and they reject any others who move into their area. As Praveena mentions in her post, Orsi talks about how the Italians tried to escape the similarities between them and the Puerto Ricans. Having been there first, the Italians wanted to keep their identity to themselves, and when the Puerto Ricans started moving into their space, they got angry, jealous, and overprotective of their area. This led to many fights between these two ehtnicities. After the introduction of a new race, the Italians wanted to leave the area, not wanting to be associated with the “dark-skinned other.”

In Pritchett’s book, he identifies the problems of public housing projects and how even though they were supposed to promote ethnic diversity in an area, the more ethnicities that moved into Brownsville, the more Whites moved out. As Alex mentions in her post, the more African Americans in the area, the more problems there were with crimes and drug-trades. This, of course was blamed on the increasingly dominant presence of Blacks in the area, and rather than improve the neighborhood, since all the Whites were leaving, buildings and schools began to be demolished in order to increase the amount of public housing.

To answer Alex’s question of Whites being the “default font,” stems from the example Maryam suggested in class last week: that when reading a book, we imagine the characters to be White, without hesitation. This is a hard concept to wrap my mind around, because although early inhabitants of this country were Native Americans, dark-skinned and all, we have this idea that Americans are naturally White. The settlement of Whites in New York City, and their replacement of the Native Americans might have given them an original sense of dominance and superiority over all other ethnicities.

I agree that the quote Praveena took from Sharman’s book sums up this week’s readings pretty well.  I think it shows how urban renewal can have such a huge impact on the feeling of ethnic identity and the identity of someone’s past. As we have seen in several readings, the inhabitants of the ethnic neighborhood developed such a strong bond with the area and those who live within it. Its appearance may of not been so appealing but people still saw this as their neighborhood and a critical part of their lives. For example, Piri Thomas, who did not live a rich lifestyle, still enjoyed Spanish Harlem and had memories that he was able to record several years later. Immigrants did not have everything but they all made the most of what they had and these groups still had such a strong sense of community. So I agree with Praveena, that despite the conditions of the neighborhoods, a connection to the area was still inevitable because of the community each ethnicity had with their own common race. Sure reality was tough, but in the end it was the neighborhood and community that helped immigrants escape the discomfort of the tough reality they had to face.

After realizing how significant the neighborhood was for immigrants, I realize how strong of an impact the theme of urban renewal has on former inhabitants. The quote that Praveena mentioned in the Sharman section is perfect because it defines just how significant urban renewal is. Sharman described Lucille’s neighborhood as her whole world and that alone shows how important the neighborhood was to her. It was her world and it meant everything to her and having it being replaced by different housing shook up her world. Her memories were shattered and her identity with the past was completely shaken. That is how great of an impact urban renewal and gentrification has on a community. Buildings are brought down and sometimes replaced by better buildings that can be only occupied for a higher elite’s personal gain.

Lastly like Alex said, I agree that Italians and African Americans had increased tension due to Italians being associated with their skin color.  Seeing how people just grouped completely separate races together is truly unfair. By doing this, each race’s ethnic identity was just thrown out the window by nativists who could care less what race they were. To natvists, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and blacks were viewed as some kind of other and just grouped them all together.  Yet Italians saw themselves as different from other races and not like the “dark-skinned other”.  In terms of urban renewal, Italians wanted to leave the neighborhood they were in after being associated with a race different from their own. In this example, race conflicts led to Italians leaving their neighborhood and community in order to avoid similarities to the “dark-skinned other”. Some left the place which was their world just like Lucille because of racial issues being so deeply embedded in our society.

The readings this week related a lot to the documentary that we watched in class. When Prichett said “racial change occurred… when neighborhoods were no longer able to attract new white residents” (150), it reminded me of the scene we talked about when the values of the homes in Levittown would drop based on the amount of White people that moved out of the area. At first, I thought this prejudice was based largely on the fact the the Whites outnumbered the minority.

But then this goes back to Alex’s question of “would whites still be considered the default of races even when they became the new minority?” I think the answer to this question is a definite yes, especially after watching the documentary. One of the people had said that everything you accomplish in life (your house, car and money) is not the end, but the starting piece for the next generation. And this is reflected in the quote, “Each one of us feels in and out of place as we move through the streets of our neighborhood and the lives of our neighbors. Each one of us bears the burden of a collective, unchosen history…(Sharman 207).” Because of the long history of White superiority in America, I think Blacks, Latinos, Asians, etc. will always be considered a minority even when the actual population suggests otherwise. This in turn, becomes a vicious cycle because minorities often do not get certain opportunities based on their race. In the documentary, they mentioned how a black student could have the same education as a white student and it wouldn’t matter. The black student would still make less money in the future.

This is an interesting concept to think about and it makes me wonder if in other countries, this ideology works in the opposite manner. Would Whites be considered inferior in a country not their own? I also thought that last week’s discussion was incredibly thought-provoking, especially when Maryam brought up the point about how we visualized people as White when we read books that do not describe the characters. It’s strange, but true. I think that ultimately shows us how ingrained American ideals our and how history stays with us forever.