Final Spark! (5.8.12)

Sanjek’s reading this week was mainly about the collaborations and clashes between different ethnic groups in the Corona-Elmhurst area.  There come times, when the neighborhood is facing issues such as drugs and crime, that the people come together to rally and make positive change in the neighborhood.  Other times, in an effort to bring children together and mesh/ embrace the range of cultures and ethnicities, schools take on the responsibility to teach students about their fellow classmates’ cultures with events such as “Cultural Sharing Day” in PS19 and the “International Festival.” We see that also as a neighborhood grows, the religious institutions are forced to accommodate to their differentiated congregations. Sanjek gives many examples of Protestant churches that learn to integrate other languages in their services and provide for non-white people in order to stay prominent.  Churches that do not make an effort to include newcomers slowly decline and dwindle as white congregation members slowly but surely move away.

Different peoples also come together when their rights are at stake, as in the case of small businesses vs. large businesses case. Corona, and the larger part of Queens, is made primarily of small, privately owned businesses that contrast large chains like in Manhattan.  I can certainly attest to that; places like Ridgewood are full of little pizzerias, delis, furniture shops, florists; small stores that take up little space.  The small businesses in Corona around the 1980’s had begun to be restricted by laws and by ethnic bias, so banned together to gain rights. Through small leaders that slowly petitioned the government, these businesses became more liberated to stay where they are rather than be forced to close down. We can definitely see evidence for this today. On our walking tour, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of large stores such as McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts. I guess Tulcingo can be considered a chain, but it is certainly not as well known as those two.

There are times, however when people of different ethnicities and races do not get along; an ongoing problem in our society and world. The clash between the African-Americans and Koreans in the C-Town incident and the clash between the Whites and Latin-Americans in the murder of Mayi show that people never simply get along, even when others can in a celebration of culture. This leads me to wonder; will people ever come to the point where they stop putting other races down, where they stop creating stereotypes? Has this barrier between peoples become a permanent stop for overall unity? Just a thought.

In other news, we’re almost done y’all!