I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into for this project. I’ve never been to Astoria and wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood at all coming into this project. However, I feel I actually learned a lot from the visits to Astoria, researching about Astoria, and completing the project as a whole by analyzing our […]
This project forced me to be more aware of my surroundings. I am easily distractable by the constant sensory input of the urban environment; this project required filtering through all the stimuli around me to discern individual events. This was quite painstaking for me as my notes were a jumble of various observations. The outside […]
In Robert G. Lee’s article, the author brings up the point that people of certain ethnicities show better performance and economic standing than others. In modern day society, Asian Americans are often thought of as having high levels of educational attainment, as well as enjoying economic success and stability. The reason behind these achievements are […]
I started off liking the idea of the Broken Windows theory. It made perfect context in regards to my downstairs neighbors, boys who are now moving out in favor of Manhattan or Park Slope because they think Flatbush is grimy. They have always complained about their dump of an apartment, and thus always abused it. With […]
This is a couple of hours late for the extra credit, but I got really engaged with it so I figured I’d share anyway. Link to the original: Earrings One of these earrings comes from a pair that my great-grandmother owned, the only jewelry she ever had. The second earring was made to match the first, […]
Since I was 12, the ring that I wear on the fourth finger of my right hand has been an integral fashion accessory. There has hardly been a day that I haven’t worn it in the six years since my mom gave it to me in honor of my bat mitzvah. At 12, a girl […]
http://yourstory.tenement.org/artifacts/rice Rice. All day everyday. When I asked my parents why I had to eat at least one meal of rice everyday, the answer was simply “It’s our culture.” With its mundane and repetitive taste, rice seemed to be everywhere in my house. Whenever I looked for a snack, my mom’s automated reply was “perhaps […]
The name Pearl River may not sound like much among big brand names like Steinway & Sons and Bosendorfer, but it was the first piano that I played. In 1999 when my grandfather decided to purchase a piano for me and my cousin, I was one year old and he was just born. I started […]
Tradition crosses continents: hitched to backs, etched in minds, clinging to lips. Those customs offered to immigrants’ children stand firmly as testament to endurance through difficult journeys, picking up memories along the way. My grandfather carried his religion with him from Riga, Latvia in 1934, and faithfully clung to it in Tel Aviv, Israel and […]
http://yourstory.tenement.org/artifacts/egg-tart The egg tart is one of my favorite foods that can be labeled as “Chinese food.” I’m not a huge fan of “Chinese food,” or maybe more accurately, “Americanized Chinese food,” the takeout food from Chinese restaurants these days. The egg tart also represents my family’s immigration story quite well, since it represents both […]
I suspect there are some things we just accept to be true, never question, never think about, that we’ve maintained since childhood. Here is a horrible set of assumptions: if a non-white woman is pushing a white baby in a stroller, she is hired help; if a white woman is pushing a non-white baby in a […]
“Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy” by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Rothschild bring attention to the unfortunate side effects of greater equality for women in the western world. The fact that western women have renounced housework and childcare in favor of paid jobs has triggered an ever-increasing demand for other women […]
Daniel Cohen Roots Exercise My family are primarily the descendants of Jewish immigrants from Russia, but even my grandparents are second-generation. However, my family looks very, very white, and doesn’t interact with the Jewish community, resulting in a white American lifestyle, and all the benefits and disadvantages that come with it. My mother went to […]
I didn’t expect the museum to be so small. To me, such a tragic site deserved much more. And yet, the size was perfect. It was intimate. The exhibition was not about slavery alone, but about people. This is made clear when one sees the central display: models of a family gather around to coffins, […]
by Daniel Cohen The African Burial Ground is quiet and peaceful, but it is still in Manhattan. And Manhattan is a very, very noisy place. The burial ground is near the intersection of Lafayette and Centre Streets, not to mention right near Broadway, resulting in the serenity of the memorial sharply interspersed with the noise […]
The African Burial Ground was something I had neither seen nor ever heard of before prior to our trip. The fact that it had never made its way into any of my classrooms before this semester, despite twelve long school years. I found it interesting that I had been to museums and monuments, such as […]
My maternal grandfather completed public high school in Williamsburg. He worked as a clerk for the Metropolitan Transit Authority until his retirement. He did not go to college. My maternal grandmother also grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College. At the time it was free; however she recounts that use of the student […]
The first thing that struck me about the outdoor monument was the scale. I’ve placed a picture of my friend Alice above to indicate the scale of the triangular prism structure at the far end of the monument. This monument really does a good job of impressing the gravity of the site onto visitors. The […]
Daniel Cohen Discussion Blog Post #3 Browsing the BeMore website, I immediately admired their purpose, which seems to be to eliminate the social construct of race. However, the key claim of their “Vision2040” campaign trailer, that there won’t be a racial majority by 2040, seems a bit odd. I find that human attempts to predict […]
The website Be More, predictably, tries to urge people to move beyond race and ethnicity and literally be more. While I think its aims are certainly honorable, I am skeptical. While the team behind it, both the staff and expert advisors, is relatively diverse, it consists of mostly highly educated professionals. In order to truly […]
Although I am not personally qualified to speak on the experience of blacks and Afro-Latinos in America, the article on Dominicans is to me an example of internalized oppression. Because the message that blackness is inherently negative is subtly perpetuated in both Dominican and American society, Dominicans distance themselves from their black ancestry. On an […]
Race is no intrinsic biological component of identity but may be used at the discretion of the individual in order to either strengthen or shed light upon a related longstanding history and culture. In “Racial Formation,” Michael Omi and Howard Winant propose the definition, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and […]
A recent NYT article by Jennifer Schuessler reports about Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond’s upcoming book Evicted: Poverty and Property in the American City that will be published next week: The sociologist William Julius Wilson called Mr. Desmond’s research, which combines ethnographic observation with reams of hard-won data, “one of the most comprehensive field studies of the […]
