Greg Antonelli 5/10/11
The problem with the idea of a melting pot is that the ingredients don’t always mix well together. It has been obvious in our readings all semester that people just can not seem to get along. More often than not it is race that is behind the tension but this week’s readings also showed political loyalty to be the cause of brutal gang violence and riots. In Anbinder’s Five Points we saw the conflict between the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys, and other Five Points politically backed gangs. They fought over neighborhoods and “turf” to push as many votes for their political candidates as they could. One of my favorite quotes from Scorsese’s “Gangs Of New York” is when an assistant tells Boss Tweed that Tammany hall’s candidate for sheriff has already won the election by 3,000 more votes than there are voters, to which Tweed responds “Only three? Make it twenty, thirty. We don’t need a victory. We need a Roman triumph.”. I know this movie had a lot of fiction weaved into the story, but the idea of corruption in the government was too true. These political leaders would use gangs, like the Dead Rabbits, as almost a violent campaign tool to ensure votes. Out of loyalty to these politicians these gangs would act as they were told, often rioting and duking it out over political turf. While I agree that these political loyalties seemed to be the largest and most explosive motivating factor behind the turf struggles, it seems unlikely that racial tension was also an important factor, especially noting the statement Marinna made about the difference between the government interference in Brownsville and the interference in the Five Points. Whether the government tries to help the community or (in the case of Five Points) exploit it, the political situation more or less takes a back seat to racial tension. In Brownsville, the government worked to improve living and economic situation, meanwhile street gangs still fought in the streets and in other public places and violence was not avoided. People’s connection to their ethnicity seems to always overshadow other loyalties they could have. And as races come together and grow apart from other races there is an unavoidable sense of fear bred from a lack of understanding. It seems that every new immigrant group is treated poorly by those who are in New York before them and yet the cycle doesn’t break. Every new group looks to the time when it will be their turn to bother the next group and tensions continue to grow. While in many cases this strong bond of community can be a good thing it also hinders the ability of groups to understand each other and this is what creates the fear of the “other” that William mentioned. Like Ashley I’m skeptical to believe these problems have ceased to exist but I can only hope that tensions ease in the future.
Spark (5/10/11)
This week’s reading focused on the problems that arose due to conflicting opinions between different groups. Anbinder’s Five Points, discusses the history of two groups known as the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys, which fought in a riot after a culmination of gang violence that was fueled by political rivalry between the Democratic-supported Tammany Hall and the nativist Know Nothing Party. Similarly, in Pritchett’s Brownsville, we learn about the formation of the BCC or the Brownsville Community Council, which was established in order to fight the “war against poverty”. We also read about the battles over local schools that culminated in the 1968 Teachers Strike. Finally Sciorra and Reider’s articles talked about specific experiences dealing with racism: Sciotta focused on Italian Americans who displayed racism when toward African Americans, while Reider talked about the Jews and Blacks who were displaced in Canarsie.
The chapters in Brownsville particularly interested me this week because I felt that no matter how much effort was placed into bettering the community, no one was ever completely satisfied. This is mainly shown in the Teachers Strike issue that arose. Here’s a little background:
Even though the New York City Board of Education tried to give people in specific neighborhoods control over their schools (through decentralization), the teacher’s unions saw it as a union busting event because it reduced the collective bargaining potential of teachers and staff because education would not be centralized under one administration. The local Black population however, saw it as empowerment against a white bureaucracy. They also saw it as an effort to create an “Afrocentric” curriculum that, they believed, was better attuned to the needs of the blacks.
Ironically, I felt that the more the government tried to help the blacks, the more they just wanted to blend in. Towards the end of chapter 8, it also states that the majority of Brownsville’s black and Latinos left the neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s in search of integrated schools and neighborhoods. Although the “Afrocentric” curriculum would be better attuned, it also meant that the education would be individualized for certain groups. In reality, however, the majority wanted integration and believed in a pluralist society, or one in which diversity is acknowledged. So my question to you all is this: Do you think the singling out the blacks to give them a “better” education was the right approach to fight against the “war on poverty”? And if not, which would be a proper way of dealing with it, which people seem to just want to fit in?
NY Times Article
Here’s the New York Times article I mentioned in class:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/nyregion/19plastic.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=plastic%20surgery&st=cse
Greg Antonelli – Response 4/5
This weeks readings talked a lot about different races and how they viewed the idea of race and class in America. Different immigrant groups were looked at and a lot of the same conclusions were reached. It seems to be a recurring idea that immigrant groups did their best to keep to themselves. Fear of a cultural loss, mixing with other races, discrimination, etc. kept the entire range of immigrants disinterested in leaving the communities that formed. This is understandable considering the trend seen in West Indian population. Like Aurona said, it was the children of immigrants who saw a lot of problems with discrimination and what not. The children were the ones who had to venture out of the communities for things like school while the parents had a little more control over where they worked and lived etc. Having lived in New York my whole life, and seeing what a diverse place it is, I find it interesting that there was a time when people came here and where shocked by divisions and separations between races.
I definitely believe that “The Sting Of Prejudice” is an appropriate chapter title, especially the word sting. While there is always going to be racism in the world, the racism we have seen is interesting. Racism exists as a group starts to immigrate here. Once this group becomes the norm and the next group moves in, racism shifts and evolves and specifically targets the newer immigrants more. That’s why sting is an appropriate way to describe it. It lasts a relatively short span but hurts like hell when it’s happening. This idea ties in with what Aurona said about the term white. Over time it’s grown to encompass all light skinned people, meanwhile back when european groups were immigrating into America by the boatload they were all to eager to separate themselves by more than the color of their skin. Also this shows that color of skin is not the only factor in discrimination. All people felt the sting of discrimination.
Response 3/29
The neighborhood of East Harlem is one that has seen a variety of people over time. On just one corner we could some of the different ethnicities that shaped the streets and history of Spanish Harlem. The residents of East Harlem, whether they intended to stay in the city or not, all felt a certain attachment regardless of their experiences. Even Piri understands the impact that the neighborhood had on his life and the decisions he had to make.
The readings this week were definitely interesting, because reading personal accounts really gives you a closer picture to people’s experiences instead of just a straight up presentation of facts and statistics. The accounts of Maria, Mohamed, Jose and Lucille showed how immigrants came to be a part of the neighborhood. Part of what makes leaving a neighborhood difficult (even if you had decided to stay only temporarily) is that you become attached. I myself have lived in the same neighborhood with my parents for eighteen years—ok well fourteen years since we lived in Florida for a few years—and we came back to the same neighborhood because we were so accustomed to it. Like Shirley said, changes in our neighborhood can be unsettling, and once we came back here we could easily spot the changes in the community like new stores and construction going on.
Greg Antonelli – 3/29/11 Response
I agree with the idea that immigration is hat breathes life into a community. The variety that comes from people immigrating to a city like New York is what makes it different than many other places. It is the idea of the melting pot again. While immigrants tended to group together with people from their home countries, everyone contributed to the day to day life of the community. A neighborhood was like one big organism. I agree with William. My neighborhood is nothing like the ones described in our readings. While there is (mostly) a better standard of living, there is absolutely no sense of community. We don’t get along with the people who live on our street, let alone the entire neighborhood. This just goes to show that although immigrants faced the deplorable situations in the tenements and cheap housing projects, they were able to find a bright side to America.
I definitely agree with Shirley about the inevitability of change in a place like New York. Even on a smaller scale like the neighborhood of East Harlem. At one time this area was called Italian Harlem, That has changed to Spanish Harlem due to the influx of Latin American immigrants. Ethnicities such as Puerto Rican and Mexican have gone through different periods of heavy immigration. A lot of these changes were shown in the accounts of Jose and Lucille. They spoke about the changes in their neighborhood. The rise of the public housing, change in ethnic majority etc. After taking the walking tour, a lot of this came into perspective. We saw the main public housing area. We also learned about the tearing down of old buildings, painting over of murals, building of malls, etc. All of these things are examples of how These neighborhoods change.
Like Shirley said though, jose and Lucille represent a sense of stability in the sense that they are the children of immigrants who grew up in the neighborhood that their parents settled in. This contrasts Maria and Mohammed who were immigrants themselves. They originally planned on keeping their stay in East Harlem relatively short. This, however is not the case and they now call it home. They contribute to the change for Jose and Lucille, yet they are now in a position to start seeing change from their own perspective.
Response (3/29/10)
I love Maryam’s poem because it reflected the different perspective of immigrants and people in general. In response, I am writing about my own experience as an immigrant when I first came to America:
“Scentless flowers and tasteless food, even the air rots one’s teeth.”
That’s was exactly what I felt about America. There was no need to leave China especially when my entire family lived there. Long play dates with my cousins, small trinkets shops and lively arcades were all left behind. But that wasn’t the thing that bothered me the most. The one thing about America that drove me nuts was McDonald’s. The first meal served to me by my mother when we got off the airplane, was the number 2 combo with 2 cheeseburgers and fries. I remember glaring it the food and then sniffing it as if it had poison dowsed throughout the layers of meat and cheese. Where was the good homemade Chinese food? Warm noodles and rice with eggplant cooked with a special sauce…or fish soup and bokchoi? Why was I being forced to eat some thing so foreign and disgusting?
I pushed the tray to the far end of the table and refused to eat it. My mom looked at me with a frustrated face, but didn’t force me to consume the meal. She probably understood that moving halfway across the world wasn’t easy for me…at least she could do was to spare me poison.
Realizing this, my mom packed the food in a to-go bag and took my sister and me to the house owned by my grandma. There we settled down and began unpacking. After three hours of continuous cleaning and organization, I began to realize that my stomach was growling. Having skipped the meal before, I was now starving. I begged my mom to cook the delicious noodles that she was famous for making, but she just pushed me aside and told me to finish my food from before.
I grimaced and held out. I wanted to prove something to my mom by actively protesting the food. Maybe she would see that I was clearly going to die of starvation unless we moved back… But she was just too busy unpacking to realize that my stomach was doing flips and tumbles.
An hour later, I caved. I reached in my mom’s purse and pulled out the stale food. The fries weren’t crispy and the burgers were slightly soggy from the buns’ absorption of ketchup. I took my first bite reluctantly and automatically scrunched my face in disgust before I realized that I actually liked what I was eating. I keep the same face as I bit into it a second and then third time, until I finally was finished with the first burger. This was the process until I got down to the last fry, but because I didn’t want to be ashamed that I was wrong, I told my mom that McDonald’s was disgusting.
She probably realized that was a lie once we went back and I ordered the same thing again and again.
3/15/11 Response
It is interesting to note the various ethnic and racial groups that were present in the 19th-20th centuries. There was an intriguing emergence of cultural practices among the Italians as many have talked about. La Madonna was an important figure that immigrants would go to for guidance. She was a symbol of hope and allowed them to be optimistic about their situation. There were even festes in order to honor her and her image. We can even relate to this today where different groups of people have their own religious/cultural symbol they can go to for moral and/or spiritual support.
I also thought that the preservation of culture was/is a major part of all societies at the various times in history. The Italian “domus” makes us realize how similar many of our cultures are to the Italian moral code and values. In many cultures modesty and respect are key factors in family dynamics. As Silky talked about in the South Asian culture (specifically) our elders are considered very important in our lives. Putting them in a nursing home is definitely frowned upon as this goes against the whole idea of taking care of them. Additionally the independence of the new and rising young Italian generation is also a characteristic in many of the first generation Italians. This sort of attitude is seen in many first generation children that have been raised in America over the years.
New York City is an ethnically diverse mixture of all kinds of people. Each person brings with him/her his or her own values and cultural practices. We learn from each other via transculturation, which what makes New York City what it is and is the reason the way this City developed ever since the first few waves of immigration.
Blog 6
“[Italians are] naturally and essentially a religious people.”
– Louis Giambastiani
Arranged on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, my Nonna has a collection of Pendants, Prayer Cards, and small, four-inch tall figurines of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. Anthony. The crucifix hangs above her bed and her prayer books and clear blue rosary beads sit on her bedside table. On her dresser, there are three, foot high statues of St. Anthony, St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary. Each beautifully painted; these three statues are the only decorations in her bedroom. As my Nonna says, the three most important things in life are: God, Family and Food.
This being said, I found few of the attitudes, customs and religious rituals in “The Madonna of 115th Street” to be unusual. The processions, the food, the unwavering loyalty to family, the respect for elders, and the dressing up for church are all customs that I was already familiar with and have, at one point or another, either heard about or personally experienced.
My Nonna, named Lena, was left out of her paternal grandmothers will because my Nonna’s mother refused to name her after her paternal grandmother because she hated the name Pasqualena. My dad’s first cousin’s were locked in the garage for hours and forced to eat day old spaghetti off the floor when they refused to eat it the night before and my dad was severely punished after being stuck by one of his high school teachers for misbehaving in class. Instead of getting the sympathy he had hoped for from his parents, he got hit with a wooden spoon for disrespecting his teacher and making excuses.
My father’s female first cousins who grew up here in the United States were expected to live at home with their parents until marriage, my aunt Cathy went on chaperoned dates with her fiancé, and my Nonna and her sisters ran their homes under the supervision of their husbands. The man was the “head of the house.”
As Orsi suggests, the Italian domus-centered society had both positive and negative effects: such as closer family ties and the oppression of women. I’m torn. I’m not sure what is better or worse: the American lifestyle (which is almost devoid of familial obligation, respect, close relationships and ultimately of traditional values) or the Italian lifestyle (which brings families together but leaves young women to the mercy of their parents.)
