Rieder’s Canarsie neighborhod is one of dramatic racial tensions between the white and black communities, although of course there is parsing of the white community to specify Italians and Jewish groups. The white, original community felt very hostile towards the encroaching black occupants and tried to resist the racial changes approaching their neighborhood. Often, clashes were violent or at least passionate.However, the tensions are tricky to unravel, as all societal hatreds are.
I suppose the question is one of “chicken or egg” paradox or difficutly or whathavyyou. Simply put, does racism cause tension or tension cause racism?
Obviously, there’s the scapegoat phenomenon. The shifting racial tides were seen as indicative of a lost moral ground, since both the social, moral, and family lives of the black community were assumed “less than,” as those different from oneself are often considered.
However, the unwanted feeling manifested quickly, as black youths clashed with white (and the sentiment between the adults worsened as well).
Crime mounted, the safety of Canarsie worsened, and vigilante justice began among the Italian and Jewish men.
And yet, from where stemmed that racial strife?
As one woman put it, and I paraphrase, “I hate the blacks because they make me constantly look over my shoulder.” Of course, the African-American youths were very often the source of crime and violence, but then again, their very presence in the neighborhood was enough to cause a violent scuffle. Just seeing a group of black teenagers was enough to set off an equally violent gang of Italian-Americans, and sometimes, even group attacks on an individual, like the case recorded in Reider’s article (in which a black teenager is mauled by a group of white teens, and later claimed only to be lost and not up to any crime.)
However, the vigilantism (that led to such easily prompted maulings) really created that sense of danger so despised by the residents even more than the actual danger presented. The need to jump any black youth obviously led to reprecussions, and any wandering of a white man in a black neighborhood obviously led to similar attacks.
Once that precedent had been set, tensions (based on incidents) escalated, as did the frequencies of the incidents. And so on and so forth! The chicken and egg.
I suppose that contemporary racial struggles are much the same. For example, the rate of African-Americans in jail. Since they are present in overwhleming numbers, there exists a stereotype linking AAs to crime, and in fact a sheriff recently testified in front of the Supreme Court and explained his investigation based on a sighting of black and hispanic teens together at night (with the assumption that they’re “up to no good.) Thus, they get arrested far more frequently than their white peers, and are underrepresented, and then do in fact make up a higher percentage of American prisoners.
