STRUGGLING FOR SPACE, CREATING ETHNIC AND RACIAL URBAN CULTURES

BY A.I.

Americans were always Puerto Rico’s dominant trading partners and still are today. Puerto Rico’s economy in early 20^th century thrived on the sugar, tobacco, and coffee industries.  After the Spanish-American War, American companies came to the island and began changing its economy in a way to benefit American consumer needs. Large amounts of land were being used to produce over half the amount of sugar that came into the mainland. Puerto Rico became a one crop economy which is susceptible to market failure when sugar demands decrease. Some benefits American companies accomplished were building up the infrastructure and healthcare on the island, and therefore extending the life expectancy of its people. For Puerto Ricans, the other alternative of not working in sugar production was to move to New York and begin a life in the city in search of the “American Dream”. Many people began this journey to alleviate their struggle in trying to find a job on the island (Ve'lez 2005). The Puerto Rican minority also became the first large migration wave to travel mostly by plane because it was relatively cheap. Most employers paid for the voyage for Puerto Rican workers so they could work for them. The initial movement of Puerto Ricans from the island to New York was in small numbers and they encountered less resistance than other minorities in New York searching for jobs. However, in the 1930s to the mid-1940s and again in the 1950s new Puerto Ricans arriving were met with harsh feelings and discrimination, something uncommon in past decades. Why was it that more Puerto Ricans were leaving the island and how was this increase in migration affecting Puerto Ricans’ status in New York?

New York was a hub for all new immigrants looking for work in the early 20^th century. The migration of Puerto Ricans was encouraged because they provided a cheap workforce for employers and they also could be depended on because of the constant inflow of unskilled laborers (Ve'lez 2005). In 1917, the Jones-Shafroth Act gave all Puerto Ricans the right of limited American citizenship which opened a new wave of migration to the states. Now people from Puerto Rico could travel across to the mainland whenever they wanted to which made it easier to find jobs. During the years of the 1930s to the mid-1940s economic constriction forced many unemployed laborers to seek jobs normally taken by Puerto Ricans and lower income Jews (Marchan). This led to social conflict between Puerto Ricans and whites because they were now competing for the same jobs. The white population began discriminating against Puerto Ricans for having so called “low morals” and being “filthy” by the way they lived in such close quarters. What made it worse was that poor crop conditions during a massive hurricane season sent even more Puerto Ricans to the city only to be turned away from employers because the white majority needed jobs over them (Marchan).  Puerto Ricans who lived in white neighborhoods felt a sense of insecurity as the Great Depression continued. Many moved to barrios where they could isolate themselves from the white majority to feel safer. This had a negative effect because it painted the Puerto Rican individual as a criminal race and non-integrated American other. Times did get better when World War II began and men went off to war. The lack of unskilled labor in factories created another opportunity for Puerto Ricans to come to New York. The Puerto Ricans were exploited for their labor, once again, only when it was useful to white people. It was difficult for Puerto Ricans to establish strong cultural ties to an area because of the constant economic uncertainty of possibly being unemployed.

Once soldiers began to come home from war, white soldiers expected to retake their jobs on the assembly lines. The Puerto Rican minority was once again being pushed away from the jobs they held to help the war cause. Signs even showed up that read “No Dogs or Puerto Ricans Allowed” in shops (Manuel). Eventually migration from Puerto Rico slowed down as economic conditions got better on the island. However, in New York, as discriminatory conditions got worse reverse migration from New York back to Puerto Rico began to occur (Ve'lez 2005). As the years went on, upward mobility for Puerto Ricans was achieved and persecution eased up. The strong will of Puerto Ricans showed they were a force to be reckoned with and we see that in the video shown in class. Through civil disobedience the community was even able to do things such as take back their church and get the garbage men to pick up the trash. Labor issues are important to discuss because they force people to open up their eyes and see that not everyone is well off in our society. We don’t live in a bubble believing everyone is as well off as we are. But, even today the Puerto Rican people still face hardship in the workforce as discrimination still lingers.

Works Cited:

Ve'lez, Edgardo. "The Puerto Rican Journey." Centro. (2005).

https://blackboard.albany.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1235721-dt-content-rid-          

5061298_1/courses/2139-TLCS-288-9065/puerto_rican_journey_2005.pdf (accessed  

September 25, 2013).

Jaffe, Rivke. "Space, ethnicity and capital in reterritorialised Puerto Rican neighbourhoods." University 

            of Leiden (The Netherlands).   http://home.uchicago.edu/~mariosmall/documents/VV_rev_SA.pdf (accessed September 25, 2013).

Marchan, Rafael. "Puerto Rican Laborers during World War I: The Deposition of Rafael  

            Marchán."Washington, D.C.: National Archives.  http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5064/ 

            (accessed September 25, 2013).

Manuel, Roig-Franzia. "A Terrorist in the House." The Washington Post Magazine. .

http://www.yasminhernandez.com/lolitastory.html (accessed September 25, 2013).

CRIMINALIZING RACIAL, ETHNIC OTHERS

CRIMINALIZATION AND "SOCIAL ABUSE" OF LOWER INCOME AND BLACK AMERICANS 

BY BD

Lower income and Black Americans are two groups that have been consistently focused on in academic research on crime as harmful and detrimental to the American way of life - they did not represent the ideal American, with high standards of living, well-educated and wealthy. These groups are not appreciated like middle to upper class whites, and are treated poorly by government organizations and other civilians. Low income Blacks have had it especially bad. A recent example of this abuse is found nearby in Ida J. Yarbrough Homes in Albany. An unannounced police drill near these occupied homes caused outrage among the black residents (Stanforth 2013). This event will be analyzed in this blog post, but it will be up to the reader for a final decision on what to make of it. Are low income Blacks being "abused by society," or are issues being exaggerated and exploited - in essence, is the reverse happening? Are these groups taking advantage of government groups and the media while their past abuse still lingers in the publics' mind?

First, we need to briefly touch on the legacy of this prejudice toward black people in the U.S. Frederick L. Hoffman's 1896 work Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro started a tirade against Blacks. Hoffman used statistics to analyze black crime (Muhammad: 35) - mostly in erroneous ways. Statistics and data analysis were relatively new fields of the time, and it is difficult to tell if the data were manipulated to show what Hoffman wanted, or if he truly believed what he produced was 100% accurate. Statements were made, such as - Blacks having "proclivity to disease and death," higher death rates, and younger average age of death (Muhammad: 44) - which led to further hatred.

Now that we know about some of the data that fed discriminatory behavior against Blacks, we can take a closer look at the Ida J. Yarbrough incident. This is a low income, majority-black area (Coopercenter 2013). Residents brought up the issue of hosting an unannounced police drill in their neighborhood during a community meeting. Families were woken up to shattering glass, flash grenades, and blank ammunition shots. Fake blood and spent shell casings were left behind at the exercise site. Thurston Gross even claims police threatened to arrest him for trespassing when he attempted to return home during the drill (Stanforth 2013). These police drills are unarguably necessary in order to save lives, and it is brought to question whether that justifies the inconveniences this neighborhood went through. Both sides of this issue seem to agree on one point - there should have, at the very least, been a notification this was happening. Was this area chosen because of the group that lives there? Personally, I think the area was picked based on vacancy, and when officials saw the surrounding residents, they approved the drill. Blacks are no longer considered a race inherent to crime, as Franz Boas' 1905 article mitigated that argument (Muhammad: 99). Perhaps now the lingering memories of a time when the general population believed them to be sub-human cause these judgment lapses. The social norm is anti-racism, so I believe if racism was any part of this, it was unintentional and stemmed from our culture's history.

Stanforth, Lauren. 2013. "Anger over unannounced police drill." Times Union. March 26, 2013.    Accessed September 23, 2013. http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Anger-over-           unannounced-drill-4382297.php.

Stanforth, Lauren. 2013. "Police training exercise draws criticism." Times Union. March 25,          2013. Accessed September 23, 2013. http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Training-    exercise-draws-criticism-4379839.php

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. 2010. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Coopercenter. 2013. "The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S." Accessed     September 2013. http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html.

CRIMINALIZING RACIAL, ETHNIC OTHERS

THE EFFECTS OF RACISM ON FAMILIES OF COLOR

BY STUDENT

It is the unbecoming truth of our past, our present, and unfortunately as it seems, our future, that the color of one’s skin will define one’s future. It is not the person’s actions that are used to judge an individual, rather the actions of people of similar color and the stereotypes with which they are associated that define their character. A few days ago, for the first time in American history, an American women of Indian descent was crowned Miss America. Within a few hours of her crowning, social networking sites were flooded with racist comments, calling her a foreigner, an extremist, and a terrorist. This is a recent example that a person’s identity is still more linked to their skin color and ethnicity than it is to their personality. I will discuss the effect of racism on Black families, especially its effect on the daughters and mothers.

As crime was written into culture and not biology, much of the burden of this crime shifted to the women of the family. Parents teach their children the values of respect, friendship, and love. However the lessons parents would teach their children were to “defend their self-pride and personal respect against racial insults from old and new Americans” (Muhammad 115). Parents were teaching their children how to defend their self-worth against peers who were constantly making them feel as if they did belong to the land they were born in, where they were living. At the age that little children should be chasing ice cream trucks, black parents had to accompany their child to school, or they might be attacked by white boys and not even make it to school (Muhammad, 116). These were the conditions the children were raised in.

The mothers of daughters carried another burden. If the mothers worked, they were accused of not providing, “young children with adequate moral guidance,” and if the daughters went to work, they would “expos[e] them (the daughters) to the morally corrup[t]…evil designs of unscrupulous men” (Muhammad 117). With the rise in unemployment for all immigrants of color, especially Blacks, money was an issue for almost all Black families and many people accepted whatever means they could find to earn money. The Mann Act passed shortly after 1910 protected most white females from job agencies that would send females into lives of prostitution. Those agencies would not want to risk being shut down because a white girl was sent to a place where she might live a life of prostitution. Those agencies faced no such risk for sending a black girl to the same place to live a life of prostitution (Muhammad 121). In fact, until 1997, there has been no published evidence of the Mann Act protecting a black female (Muhammad 133). Such racism led to the cultural degradation of Black families, especially Black women.

Du Bois once said, “did not we all know that it was blackness that was condemned and not crime? (Muhammad 141)”. This is a question that has haunted the Black community for decades. This reasoning is what allowed the conscious of so many people to mistreat their fellow humans in such a way. The color of one’s skin took precedence over one’s character. The color black classified these people as criminals, even if they had not committed crimes. The circumstances these people face sometimes did create criminals, but it also created people who fought for what was right. And it is wrong that the wrong actions of certain people defined an entire race. Society has progressed since that era. Today, the president of the United States of America is a Black man and Miss America 2014 is a woman of color. However as a society, we still have a long way to go. The racist comments that arise whenever a person of color achieves a status of position, is not a part of America’s accepting nature, and while there are many who support the assimilation of diversity into society, many hold steadfast to their seemingly outdated beliefs. The day that everyone’s definition of being American will not depend on the ethnicity of the person but rather if that person was born here or became a naturalized citizen is the day I will believe that diversity has assimilated into our society. When someone asks me, “What are you?” I have always answered that I am Indian. But when I think about it, I realize that I am by ethnicity Indian, but as an individual, I am American. I was born and raised in New Jersey and for as long as I can remember, I have placed my right hand over my heart and pledged my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Similarly, people of different ethnicities identify as American; that is the beauty of America—the definition of American is not dependent upon color or ethnicity.

Bibliography:

“Miss America crowns 1^st winner of Indian descent,” CNN.com. Last modified September 17, 2013. 

      http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/showbiz/miss-america-racist-reactions/index.html 

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern 

      Urban America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011.

CRIMINALIZING RACIAL, ETHNIC OTHERS

BY S.M.

Khalil Muhammad highlights some of the most ignorant thoughts historically posed by white scholars as to why black people have been condemned to criminal behavior throughout history.  Muhammad points out that there was a time when Racial Darwinism became a leading theory for black disadvantage.  Racial Darwinism claimed that black people were simply inherently less equipped for survival compared to whites.  Although most would disagree with this today, the Trayvon Martin case seemed to faintly echo some of these shocking thoughts, painting a picture of friend Rachel Jeantel as of an entirely different species than that of American white-bred society (Muhammad, 38).  Although Rachel herself was not on trial, she was portrayed in the media and on social networks to be untrustworthy because of her association with a different culture than what white Americans are used to.  It was difficult for white Americans to trust Rachel’s testimony because she is considered to be aligned with a culture and race characterized by crime. 

Rachel was the last to speak to Trayvon right before he died, making her a key part of his trial. In a Piers Morgan’s interview with Rachel he asked, “Do you think they understand the world you come from?”  It’s interesting that Rachel’s speech and demeanor suggests to Morgan that she is from an entirely different world than us, suggesting that Morgan and his audience is incapable of empathizing even though she is clear in her statements. Although George Zimmerman, Trayvon, and Rachel all live in close proximity, they are considered by the American public to be from “different worlds.”  Labeling Rachel as, above all, a product of her environment (namely, her black environment), allows white Americans to disregard the content of her testimony.  Making Rachel seem like an entirely different species relates back to Khalil Muhammad’s claim that crime is written into race (Muhammad, 93). It is possible that the jury felt completely unbiased towards Rachel’s testimony and simply did not feel there was evidence enough to convict Zimmerman.  However, it is also possible that because of her distractingly different “culture” and race, white members of the jury associated her with dishonesty and criminality.  If being from a black community and being raised within a context of black culture is assumed to be linked with crime, it would be difficult to listen to Jeantel’s testimony without suspicion.  Is it possible to overcome such a deeply engrained notion and be heard for the content of your testimony rather than speech, appearance, and demeanor?

Just as Rachel was accused of not living in the world we do, she was also described by defense attorneys and by the American public as not even being able to speak English.  Jeantel insisted that in her neighborhood, the way she speaks is completely normal.  Jeantel’s struggle to be clear and get her message across was at times interpreted as disrespectful.  Social media websites like Twitter bashed Jeantel for her appearance, her attitude, and mostly for her speech.  Not only was Jeantel being judged and evaluated by a jury, but also by the American public.  The census seemed to be that Jeantel was uneducated, which also led to distrust in her testimony.  By the end of Jeantel’s testimony, it was almost as though she was the one on trial.  In a blog post to PolicyMic, Marina Bolotnikova points out that Jeantel’s testimony highlights the structural disadvantages that many African Americans still experience today.  Bolotnikova says that not only are people like Rachel victim to racial profiling, but also  “linguistic discrimination.”  Although most understood what Rachel was trying to get across, white Americans didn’t like the way she spoke, so she was not  considered credible.

Works Cited

Bolotnikova, Marina, Rachel Jeantel’s Language is English—It’s Just Not Your English,

PolicyMic, July 2013, http://www.policymic.com/articles/52697/rachel

jeantel-s-language-is-english-it-s-just-not-your-english.

Kahlil Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2010), 38, 93.