Response-3/8/11
It is hard to imagine how life was for new immigrants coming to America in the 19th and 20th century. We read about the ways that they lived in those horrible tenements and now we get a sense of the job market during that time as well. Apparently getting and maintaining a job wasn’t as easy as it seems. Obviously there was a lot of competition between groups for jobs but at the same time new immigrants were willing to take any job offered to them even if it required long hours but gave less pay. Like Eden said, sometimes they didn’t have a choice.
Women during that time had it pretty bad as well. They had several responsibilities they had to take care of including home/personal life and their job life. Widows and single moms obviously had to work because it was really their only option in order to survive.
It’s interesting to see that many immigrants today are overqualified for their jobs in this country according to their education in their respective countries. For instance most of my uncles are actually engineers and have been for a number of years but work other jobs in New York City because those qualifications were overlooked. I’m not saying that every person that immigrates here should be without a doubt be given a job according to what he/her says but maybe with translators at hand we can give them a little more credit.
This also leads to the problem of job distribution between natives and new immigrants. New immigrants tend to take any job available when sometimes the natives are left behind. Usually the natives tend to be educated and obtain jobs requiring unique skills rather than basic manual labor skills. Nevertheless, it definitely was not easy getting a job nor is it now. A culture barrier has to be broken in order to understand how this country’s economic system works along with the language barrier.
interactive history website
Response 2/15 – Greg Antonelli
It’s weird trying to think of New York in the colonial era. For our whole lives we’ve known N.Y.C. as an overcrowded metropolis with huge buildings and bustling streets. It’s hard to imagine Manhattan as a small log cabin, farming community run on slave labor. We all know Colonial Americans kept slaves in this time period but just from studying the Civil War and segregation we generally associate slavery with the south. But it does make sense considering the heavy Dutch population in early New York, being that the Dutch were a huge factor in expanding the “triangle trade” that brought a huge amount of slaves here from Africa and the Caribbean. Also I remember learning in High school about how the north was against the consideration of slaves as people because they didn’t want the south to dominate political contests where population was a factor. That only added to this idea of the slave population being inferior to the European colonists.
It’s hard to tell where America would be if it wasn’t for slave labor. Sadly, slave labor has been a huge part of many cultures. Would the Roman Empire or Ancient Egypt have expanded like they did without slaves? It’s impossible to say. In America, slavery was a huge force pushing the early colonial economy along. Therefore it can be said that New York wouldn’t be the same today without slaves because it would not have been able to sustain itself financially. It seems intolerance was not regionally specific. The north could be just as intolerant as the south because the white Europeans held a belief that African American’s were the only ones fit to be slaves. By seeming to be more “lenient”, northern slave owners were not being less cruel, they were just being cruel in a different way. They were made to believe they had it better than other slaves even though they were still viewed as property. Northern slave owners awarded no special opportunities and did their best to squash any attempt at freedom African Americans tried to take. They were hardly different from southern slave owners. It is horrible how colonists treated African Americans, however America only became “The Land of Opportunity”, because those who didn’t have any opportunities were the driving force behind the expansion of the American economy.
Response #2 (2/15/11)
Like William, I was also surprised to find out how big of a role slavery had in the North. In my history classes, the lessons made it seem as if the North was a completely slave free zone. Now that I have a more complete idea of how the North was originally established, I can see that the opposite is the case. Although the North was made to seem like the “good guys”, it seems as if Northerners only used the slaves up until a point. Only when the initial land was established and trade prospered, did the use of slaves seem to gradually lessen.
I do think that New York would be completely different if not for the arrival of slaves. The obvious reason is because man labor is need to build something from scratch. New York is so extravagant now, but it wouldn’t be that way if some elbow grease wasn’t put into it. Another reason is because slavery meant that the African race would be introduced to North America. Now that we are hundred years into the future, you can see the effects of this. America is now a mixture of races and ethnicity. This was the start of the “salad bowl” we talked about earlier.
Another factor of the diversity is trading. Slavery was part of this large trade effort first established by the Dutch East Indian Company. I think these articles, especially Binder.Reimers’s book show us the significance of trade. Because America was open to it, we now experience cultures from around the world. Compare this with China and you can see the difference. Because China resists outside influence, their national pride is extremely strong and traditions are especially upheld. America, as a whole, however, seems largely mixed. You can now find Asian food with Spanish mixes and influences. This is the norm here.
Online Discussion – Schedule
Online Blog Discussion Leaders
Online Blog Discussion Leaders (“Sparks”):
February 8 Context: Race, Assimilation, and Ethnicity
Gregory C. Antonelli
Ashley Barlev
February 15 Peopling of NY: Colonial Period
Marinna Bradfield
Ashley Cruz
February 22 Peopling of NY: Old and New Immigrants
William Dobie
Toniann Fanizzi
March 1 Ethnicity and Neighborhood
Elizabeth Fruchter
Rebecca Gagliardotto
March 8 Immigrant Labor, Work, and Economy
Eden Goykadosh
Jacqueline Helmig
March 15 Neighborhood: “Italian East Harlem”
S. Katarla
Alexa Lempel
March 29 Neighborhood: “Spanish Harlem”
Shirley Mak
Maryam Mudasir
April 5 Race, Class, & Ethnicity
Aurona Qamar
April 12 Changing Neighborhoods, Urban Renewal, and Race/Color
Alexandra Nicoletti
Praveena Persaud
May 10 Race, Class, and Contested Turf
Jessica Sacker
Shan Xu
Welcome to Seminar 2, The Peopling of New York City
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