Every day thousands of vehicles squeeze into the bottleneck on 124th Street between Third and Second Avenues that leads onto the Robert F. Kennedy (formerly Triborough) Bridge. Traveling eastward the drivers of these vehicles are not likely to notice the remarkable mural that covers six stories of a tenement building wall, for you must face west to see it. Called Centro de La Paz (Center for Peace), the mural was sponsored by the Creative Arts Workshop and painted by more than two hundred New Yorkers, many of them poor neighborhood youngsters. See (figure 1.) Their efforts were augmented by some one hundred artists from around the world—Argentina, Ecuador, Nigeria, England, and elsewhere. The names of the artists are duly inscribed on a two-story-high scroll that is part of the mural.
Moses Chaszar, an administrator at Columbia Teachers College, was fourteen years old back in 1995 when he volunteered for the project.
I grew up on 126th Street, and kids like me, we weren’t always seeing the best things. So this mural represented our hopes and dreams. In it there’s this one road through the whole earth, and all around it you have skyscrapers, igloos, pyramids, and the Grand Canyon. And on the side you have Mount Rushmore. Only instead of American presidents, you have Indians. Many of the artists donated money as well as time. It took us two summers working on scaffolds, and we used special paint from Germany that’s supposed to last for eighty years.
In a city with hundreds of murals, this one definitely stands out—in scope, design, beauty, and size. The many immigrant groups depicted and the themes of unity, diversity, and tolerance encompass the aspirations and hopes of the millions of immigrants who have come to New York City since its inception and who have shaped it into one of the greatest cities in the world.
Why is immigration such an important key to understanding New York today? Because more than three million newcomers have made their way here since the mid-1960s, largely in search of economic opportunities but also political freedom. In such numbers they have the power to truly change a city. Their very arrival is change. All new populations bring with them new ways of doing things, new ideas and perspectives, along with a variety of needs, hopes, and expectations that must be met by both government and the existing population. While immigration has slowed somewhat since the late 1990s, it is still growing. The size of these newcomers as a group also means they cannot be ignored. Describing New York City, one immigrant observed, “Everybody here is new at some point. That’s what makes New York so great.”1
Even aspects of the city that seem somewhat peripheral to the immigrants are not. Take gentrification, for instance. When areas are renewed or rebuilt, the somewhat wealthier people moving into these areas must have certain services available to them. The deliverymen on bicycles are often immigrants, both documented and undocumented, as are the laborers who tend the new residents’ gardens, clean their buildings and apartments, and take care of their children. In the process the immigrants observe and learn from the gentrifiers what being a New Yorker can mean to its residents. In some cases the children of the newcomers may even attend the same schools as those of more successful longtime inhabitants. In this town, where the same block can have an inexpensive walk-up and a renovated brownstone, people share space with unlikely and often unequal neighbors and meet in venues ranging from schools and playgrounds to houses of worship and local shops. We do not know much about these interactions, but we should, because they are an integral part of how change occurs.
The immigrants have played a major role in the rebirth of the city. Their energy, drive, and ambition have significantly contributed to a belief that this city has risen from the dark days of nearbankruptcy, drug wars, rampant crime, and an inability to deliver basic services that characterized it in the mid-1970s. And this belief has been borne out by reality. However, the immigrants are not the only factor in New York’s resurgence. The thousands of young and highly educated people who have streamed into Gotham in unprecedented numbers from elsewhere in the United States are an equally important part of the story. The willingness of the private sector to invest in the city, a dynamic government, and better protection for its citizens have all played an enormous and equally important role in New York’s revival.
To walk the streets of this city and speak with its immigrants is to realize that these people, who have often struggled mightily just to get here, are generally hardworking, optimistic, and grateful for the opportunities that this city and the country in general represent. Moreover, their spirit and can-do mentality often carry over into the lives of their children, who, notwithstanding the usual angst and strain of generational differences, are forging ahead and achieving success in ways their parents cannot. The response by longtime residents to their presence is mostly favorable. The older children of immigrants are overwhelmingly seen as industrious and ambitious. Some people do gripe about their clannishness, different values, and seemingly strange customs. The reality is that when distinct and large ethnic and racial groups arrive, speaking a foreign language, fears of displacement, even engulfment, are quite common.
The conversations I had with the city’s immigrants made it clear to me that the transition from their previous lives is complex. They look to the future but release their hold on the past with reluctance, because it is, and always will be, an essential part of their lives. The bifurcation is clearly brought home to me one day as I walk a street in Jamaica, Queens, and spy a man on a quiet block. He has created a beautiful garden along the grassy strip that runs next to the gutter. It’s a small area, about four feet long and three feet wide, surrounded by a miniature white picket fence.
“These flowers are beautiful,” I say by way of starting a conversation.
Small and wiry, with bright white teeth framed in part by a neat mustache, he responds with a soft smile, “They are flowers from my country, Guyana, which I love. I planted them to remind me of home. This way, when I look outside I always remember the beautiful place I lived in before I came here.”
There’s no way to know how many of the city’s immigrants have used their gardens for similar purposes, but it’s unlikely he’s the only one. “Amazing,” I think. We talk about remittances, transnationalism, visits to the homeland, and credit associations as markers of common identity. They are, but it’s also important to see how a person’s identity manifests itself in small yet deeply emotional and even personal displays. In this vignette it is apparent that home is never far from the thoughts of the immigrants. And is this any different from people like earlier generations of Italians who planted fig trees in their gardens that went under wraps every winter?
In this chapter we examine some important aspects of the immigration and adaptation of the newcomers to New York City. First we look at who comes here, where they have settled, and how they have changed the makeup of many neighborhoods. Included among the immigrant population are many undocumented residents who pose special challenges for the city, and these are the subject of a separate discussion.
We then move on to the kinds of work done by the immigrants, many of whom possess incredible drive and ambition. The reasons why they work so hard are also evaluated. This is followed by an examination of the larger struggle to adapt to life in this country while also trying to preserve their identity, and the challenge of what values and lessons to transmit to their children.
There are differences, some subtle, others distinct, among members of the same group. These differences and a discussion of how the immigrants interact with other groups are analyzed, concluding with a look at the possibilities of some groups forming coalitions.
New York City has more legal immigrants and children of immigrants than any other city in the world, with almost seven hundred thousand new immigrants arriving in the last decade alone.2 Together they make up a majority of the 8.3 million people living in the city, with most of them coming from the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Mexico, Guyana, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Russia, India, and Korea, along with those from Puerto Rico, who have a unique status as citizens, plus an estimated half-million-plus undocumented residents. Of course, New York was always a city of immigrants, but the composition was different, with Italians, Jews, Irish, Germans, Poles, Russians, and other European nationalities predominating in earlier days.
Dominicans (12 percent of the total) are the largest foreign-born group, followed by Chinese (11 percent), Jamaicans (6 percent), and Mexicans (6 percent). Puerto Ricans are still the largest Hispanic group in the city, numbering some eight hundred thousand. Overall the Mexican population is increasing the fastest. Generally, among those who are here legally, Mexican females outnumber males, while it appears that more undocumented males than females are living here.
The diversity of the immigrants is truly amazing. They come from virtually every corner of the globe, including Nepal, Malaysia, Yemen, Egypt, the Philippines, Portugal, Ireland, Australia, and Burkina Faso, and they speak more than 170 languages. Dividing these people by, say, religion is not always revealing, because their country of origin frequently trumps their religion in terms of relevance. For example, Muslims from Arab countries like Syria, Egypt, and Iraq have little in common culturally with their coreligionists from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Turkey. In fact, very little is known in general about the immigration experiences of people from these countries.3
Grouping the immigrants solely by income is similarly of little help either. There are wealthy Persians, Indians, Western Europeans, West Indians, and Latin Americans. But except for individual cases, money is not the main criterion by which members of these groups select their friends. Even within countries there are sharp divisions. Guyanese originally from Africa have a strained relationship with people whose origins are from India. The former reside mostly in Brooklyn and the latter in Queens. Russian Jews from the southern republics of Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan have little in common with Russian Jews from Ukraine and other European republics.
The greatest concentration of immigrants is in Queens and Brooklyn, followed by the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Elmhurst, Queens, is the most diverse neighborhood, with representatives from almost 120 lands. But Queens also has some of the most homogeneous communities, like mostly Irish-Catholic Breezy Point and Broad Channel, both in Queens, or the black communities of Cambria Heights and Rosedale. To get a better idea of where the newcomers actually reside, let’s look at a sampling of some of these areas.
Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and in Flushing and Bellerose, Queens, where South Indians also live. Baychester, in the Bronx, is first in Jamaican immigrants, and the contiguous areas of Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatlands, and Canarsie in Brooklyn have major concentrations of West Indians. Sunset Park and Bensonhurst, both in Brooklyn, are home to a very large representation of Chinese newcomers, while Flushing has both Chinese and Koreans in significant numbers. Forest Hills and Jamaica Estates, both in Queens, have substantial numbers of Bukharian Jews and Jews in general, as do the Queens communities of Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, Kew Gardens Hills, and the eastern part of Far Rockaway. In Brooklyn there are big Orthodox Jewish communities, many of them Hasidic, in Borough Park, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, and Flatbush. Russian Jews have long been in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, but in recent years they have moved to Mill Basin, Bensonhurst, Borough Park, all in Brooklyn, and to southern Staten Island, near the beach. Filipino immigrants are most numerous in Forest Hills, with 44 percent of them calling that area home. The Irish, whose immigration has ebbed and flowed according to economic conditions, live primarily in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx (and adjacent South Yonkers) and to a far lesser extent Maspeth, Woodside, and Sunnyside, Queens. Their knowledge of English and the fact that New York has a large Irish population has always made the city a popular destination for Irish newcomers.
Hispanics, a very large group in general, live in every borough, but their largest concentration is in the Bronx. In an example of why “the devil is in the details,” as they say, 93 percent of Morrisania’s population is U.S.-born. Why is that? Because Hispanics, primarily Puerto Ricans, have been living there and in other sections of the Bronx for decades. Mexicans live predominantly in East Harlem, Sunset Park, Corona, and the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. An interesting statistic charts their progress. In 1985 New York City had one tortilla store; by 2001 Mexicans owned six tortilla factories, with a combined weekly output of one million tortillas, all produced in the “Tortilla Triangle,” a small slice of Brooklyn between Bushwick and Williamsburg. Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn, and the Arverne, Edgemere, Cambria Heights, Queens Village, Laurelton, and Jamaica sections of Queens are almost completely black, with a mix of native and foreign-born inhabitants. And the West Bronx has become a magnet for West African immigrants.4
Regardless of its well-deserved reputation for tolerance, New York is still one of the most segregated cities in the nation. One of the negative consequences of residential concentration for the various groups is that it has an isolating effect. Entire neighborhoods, like portions of Corona, most of Bushwick, and sections of the Bronx, are so monolithically Hispanic that they are essentially closed to non-Hispanic speakers. Most of these residents don’t speak English, and the signs in stores and on billboards are in Spanish. Although New York is becoming an international city, it is also one where only group members can communicate in certain parts of it. This is true of West African neighborhoods in the Bronx, and for the Chinese, in Flushing, Queens, and Sunset Park. This language barrier slows down the adaptation of the incoming group even as it gives them a comfort level and sense of security. In short, it’s a mixed blessing.
The speed and sheer numbers of the immigration patterns have created an ever shifting geographical map where change has become the norm. There are still some neighborhoods that haven’t changed much, but they are increasingly unusual. Non-Hispanic whites, mostly gentrifiers and students, are beginning to replace Dominicans in Washington Heights, Manhattan, which has now been dubbed Hudson Heights by enterprising real estate agents seeking to profit from image makeovers. Inwood to the north and lower Washington Heights (between 168th and 135th Streets) are beginning to follow suit, with many students and less-moneyed whites moving there. In Queens more and more Indians are choosing to live in Briarwood and Richmond Hill, and greater numbers of Chinese are buying and renting homes in the formerly Indian sections of Flushing and Queensboro Hill. The Chinese are rapidly becoming more concentrated in Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Fresh Meadows. Their numbers are shrinking in Lower Manhattan and in Jackson Heights and Woodside as Indians and Bangladeshis replace the Chinese in these Queens communities.
The Korean move eastward from Flushing is truly breathtaking as they buy businesses along Northern Boulevard in a 120-block area stretching from Main Street all the way to about 255th Street by the Nassau County border. This was once an overwhelmingly Italian, Irish, and Jewish area. Take a drive up Northern and you can see hundreds of stores—nail salons, gas stations, restaurants, automobile dealerships, bookstores, and so on—most with Korean lettering (and some with Chinese writing) alongside (at least most of the time) English signage. And as you leave Little Neck and enter Nassau County, there’s a giant version of the Korean-owned H Mart grocery chain. Is Nassau the next destination for the most upwardly mobile Koreans (and Chinese)? Yes, and it’s already happening.
The past three decades have witnessed many shifts in where immigrants have come from and in what numbers. One of the most profound changes has been among the Asians. Today, for the first time, the city’s Asian population exceeds one million, nearly one out of eight New Yorkers, larger than the Asian populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. This is a 32 percent increase from 2000 and four times the Hispanic increase in the same period. By contrast, non-Hispanic whites lost 3 percent and blacks 5 percent during the same period. Those of Chinese origin, the first arrivals here, make up half the total. And, of course, South Asians are different from East Asians, and Filipinos are different from both. Some argue that their diverse origins have given the Asians less influence. For instance, in the political sphere only one Asian American, John Liu, has risen to a city government position; Liu is the city comptroller. There are only two Asian council members and only one state legislator. A smaller number of Asian Americans in the voting-age population, relative to others, may be part of this problem. Still, for a group this large, that’s peanuts. Other inequities exist for Asian Americans as well. Despite their being 13 percent of the population, they have snared a mere 1.4 percent of the city council’s discretionary funds. The fact that they are mistakenly seen as an overwhelmingly highly educated group masks the fact that many Asian Americans do not conform to this stereotype, with an income considerably below the city’s average, not to mention deficient English skills.5 Yet a portent of the future may have emerged with the 2012 election of Chinese American Grace Meng of Queens to the U.S. House of Representatives.
As to the native whites whom the new ethnics presumably replaced, that too has a rather surprising twist. Owing in part to gentrification, economic changes, and the general revival of the city, native whites are actually a slight majority in Manhattan. And they are increasing in certain gentrifying neighborhoods like Astoria, Queens, and in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Native whites have, nonetheless, significantly declined in other parts of New York, such as Bensonhurst and Marine Park in Brooklyn and, in northeastern Queens—Bayside, Beechhurst, Whitestone, Murray Hill, Douglaston, and Little Neck. This is due, in great measure, to large influxes of Asians into these areas.
Yet even within areas that experience ethnic succession, certain pockets hold up. In Ozone Park, Queens, between Rockaway Parkway on the north and the Belt Parkway on the south, and between Woodhaven Boulevard on the west and Aqueduct Racetrack on the east, there are some sections that, while mixed in with certain blocks including minorities, still have substantial numbers of white ethnics, largely Italian, I suspect. You know it from the proliferation of American flags, plastic-wrapped fig trees in the winter, and statues of the Virgin Mary in the front yards, and from talking to the residents themselves. In part the Italians have held out because of the boundaries that the roads clearly demarcate. But it’s also due to the fact that, by their nature, Italians won’t let others push them out of a neighborhood without putting up a fierce battle. How fierce may depend on their age and whether their children still live with them. There are even a few Jews living in Ozone Park, but their presence is mostly within mixed marriages, which you can see when Christmas decorations include a small menorah for Hanukah. Such resistance also lingers in sections of the North Bronx and South Brooklyn.
The houses in Ozone Park are mostly Dutch colonials. The neighborhood’s Ozone Park Jewish Center seems to be run mostly by people from nearby Howard Beach, a primarily Italian neighborhood that also has a small Jewish population. Occasionally one does see evidence of a minority family in Ozone Park. West of Woodhaven the area becomes mostly Hispanic. Brooklyn isn’t far beyond and may contribute to that, because the areas bordering this part of Queens have large concentrations of blacks and Hispanics. East of Woodhaven the Queens continuation of Brooklyn’s still somewhat notorious Pitkin Avenue is a quiet, peaceful, almost bucolic place.
Besides shifts in lands of origin, there have also been changes within some of the groups in terms of class origins and the regions from which they originate. The earlier Indian community, whose members came in the ’60s and ’70s, was wealthier and more educated, settling mostly in Manhattan. Many eventually moved to the suburbs. Those who came in the ’80s and ’90s were more similar to typical third-world immigrants and generally moved into Queens. Moreover, while Indians have settled all over the United States, they see New York City as different, cosmopolitan, and therefore more like their homeland. One reason why Queens has traditionally been so attractive to Indians is the many apartment buildings with reasonable rents and close access to Manhattan, where many of them work, not to mention access to La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports.6
Similarly, these days Chinese immigrants are often Mandarin speakers who do not comprehend the Cantonese dialect that predominated among earlier arrivals. And once more Chinese began coming here from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, new groups became part of the immigrant mix. This has consequences not only for the community itself but also for those who service its members and need to better understand it. In one case—which would be comical were its implications not so serious—an occupational therapist at a well-known hospital mistakenly assumed that a stroke patient was deteriorating rapidly because he could not follow basic commands. As it turned out, the therapist was translating her words into Cantonese, when the patient’s native language was Mandarin!
The Jewish population of New York has also been undergoing transformations. In the 1950s the city had about two million Jews. The results of the most recent study, conducted in 2010 by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation (UJA-Federation), were reported in a June 12, 2012, article by Joseph Berger that appeared in the New York Times. The study found that the number of Jews in New York had decreased substantially, to 1.1 million. But there were profound shifts in their makeup. According to the study, the number of stereotypically liberal, highly educated Jews is declining, while the Orthodox are growing very quickly. About 40 percent of the city’s Jewish population identify as such, compared with 33 percent a decade ago. This figure is likely to go much higher in the future, as 74 percent of all Jewish children in New York are Orthodox.
Two other important Jewish groups are Russian Jews, numbering about 185,000 in all, and Israelis, with about 29,000 living in the five counties within New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties. According to the UJA-Federation report, most Russian and Israeli Jews reside in Brooklyn. Much of the population there is older than the Jewish community as a whole. The Russians came to the city mostly in two waves—one in the late 1970s, and the second in the early 1990s. Their levels of education and employment patterns generally resemble those of other Jews, and they are far more likely to identify ethnically as Jews and Russians than religiously.
Manhattan’s Upper West Side, whose Jewish population had declined by the late 1960s, reemerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a Jewish area for younger people and remains so today, rivaling the Upper East Side’s long established Jewish community. Parallel to these developments, Harlem, which is now perhaps onethird white, depending on how one defines the boundaries, includes among its new inhabitants many Jewish yuppies, artists, students, and homesteaders. Emblematic of its changing status, the Lubavitcher Hasidic Movement, which focuses on outreach to unaffiliated Jews, now has a Chabad house, or center there—two, actually, if you include the one at City College of New York. This is only one more indication of how the city is ever changing. Given the fact that Harlem was home to more than 150,000 Jews in the early twentieth century, it also shows how certain migratory patterns repeat themselves over time, though for different reasons. Back then people moved to Harlem because of a desire to leave the slums of the Lower East Side, and today it’s because apartments there are cheaper than in other parts of Manhattan.
Discussing his classic work about New York City’s ethnic and racial groups, Beyond the Melting Pot, that he and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, penned more than four decades ago, Nathan Glazer admits that he could not have foreseen the tremendous increase in immigration.7 This is an important observation because one of the consequences of this influx was to significantly reduce the opportunities for many of the Puerto Ricans and African Americans who were already in New York City when the immigrants arrived and who were mired in poverty. Many of the new groups came with the social and economic capital needed to take advantage of the opportunities in a political, economic, and social climate that was changing for the better. They had networks within their own group, they had financial resources, and they had not experienced the discrimination and prejudice that had sapped the energy and hopes of the Puerto Ricans and African Americans. Understandably, the latter groups greeted the new arrivals with mixed feelings at best.8
Many of the immigrants who have entered this country over the past thirty-five years, especially from Asia but also from the West Indies, are educated and have skills that have enabled them to move quickly up the ladder. And even those like the Dominicans, Yemenis, and Ecuadorians, who are not well educated, have entrepreneurial abilities and a willingness to work hard, accompanied by a belief in the American dream that can carry them through the most difficult times.
And then there are the undocumented immigrants, as those who are in this country illegally are known.9 There are an estimated six hundred thousand undocumented people residing in New York City, but even that figure is a guesstimate, because it isn’t in the interests of the undocumented to let people know they’re here or where they are living. Most of them are people who overstayed their visas. Those who came here illegally in recent years are most likely to be Mexicans or Chinese. Walk into almost any restaurant in New York City and yell “Immigration!” and you will discover they are there as they race out the back door.
And if you’re out for a late-night stroll on a quiet street in Queens or Brooklyn, they may ride past you on a creaky, rust-flecked bike with no light, one you would never buy for your kids. They are on their way to work or home and are likely to have ridden five or ten miles to get there. You can see them clustered on busy streets in the city, hanging out in front of a 24/7 bodega, clad in ill-fitting sweaters or sweatshirts that say Budweiser, Tommy Hilfiger, or Harvard. They chat and laugh among themselves, but always there is this uncertainty, almost a furtiveness about them, that you can see in their eyes and in how they stand. They can never be completely comfortable in this land, not until and unless they receive the green card seal of approval.
Anyone who lives in heavily immigrant-populated areas of the city can tell you stories about apartments or homes that house twenty to thirty residents where only six can live comfortably. They’ve seen the door down their hall open quickly to let someone in, and perhaps they caught a glimpse of a converted living room with five bunk beds, where all rules of safety and health are violated, where people even occupy beds in shifts according to the hours they work. There are streets in neighborhoods like Corona or Sunset Park where an entire block is made up of the undocumented, though you won’t notice it if you’re just driving through.
But the fact that they’re hard to find does not mean they have no impact on the city’s life. They do and in many ways. First, undocumented immigrants work at so many jobs that others don’t want—dishwashers, unskilled factory and construction laborers, waiters, maids, cab drivers, car wash employees, to name a few. If they didn’t do these jobs, who would do them? And what would be the cost and benefits to both employers and employees? When an undocumented housekeeper takes care of a family, for example, it frees the woman of the house to go to a Wednesday matinee or a museum. Every penny that she spends—tickets, train fare, lunch, taxis, and so on—sustains the city’s economy. If such help were not available, there would surely be people who wouldn’t have a housekeeper, at least not a live-in one. And if they had to pay more, they might not have the money to spend on entertainment or expensive clothes. This is just one of many examples, but the point is obvious. Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared in a 2006 Senate hearing that the city’s economy “would collapse if they were deported.” They are also involved in illegal activities—prostitution, black marketeering, gambling, and drugs—often just to survive.
The undocumented, especially in large numbers, have a profound effect on the economic sector, whether it’s construction, maintenance, light manufacturing, immigration lawyers, the service economy, or many other areas. U.S. citizens who want to legalize the undocumented are well aware that to do so would drive up costs in many industries. But they also feel it’s the right thing to do, that it will offer both protection and a future to them. This is true because their circumstances mean they don’t go to doctors unless they’re desperate, they don’t report crimes committed against them, they avoid using bank accounts, they can’t legally obtain a driver’s license, and they are largely uninvolved in American communal life.
Without a solution to their dilemma, the undocumented will continue to resort to extralegal methods to gain legal rights, some of which actually work. One Central Asian college student explained it to me like this: “If I’m a full-time student, I can get a license. And to become a full-time student I don’t have to prove I’m here legally.”
“But what about those who aren’t students?” I said.
“In my community everyone knows you have to pay a lawyer if you want to get political asylum.”
“What kind of asylum?” I asked. “Nobody’s fleeing from a war in Kyrgyzstan.”
“Well,” she answered, “you can say you’re being persecuted because you’re a Christian, or because you’re a lesbian.”
The system has many hurdles to overcome that encourage fraud by immigrants desperate to achieve permanent residency status. The annual green card lotteries, which began in 1990, have millions of applicants, with about fifty-five thousand winners each year. And although the government has not deported most of the immigrants who are already living here illegally, they are often terrified that deportation could happen to them. After all, even under the pro-immigration administration of Barack Obama, the number of those currently deported has been about four hundred thousand annually, although this may change in Obama’s second term.
Another consequence of their illegal status is the fact that the undocumented use public services like hospitals and schools. Further complicating matters is the fact that all of their U.S.-born children are legal, which is, of course, one of the main reasons the undocumented risk so much to get here—to give their children American citizenship. Nationwide, an estimated 2.3 million families, about three-fourths of those here illegally, have at least one child who is born in the United States, thus making the families eligible for food stamps and other benefits. These children attend school, though not always regularly, and live in a sort of twilight zone where their parents cannot always help them if they have problems and where they must be careful that their parents’ status as undocumented is not discovered. They are perhaps 11 percent of the total student population in New York City and cost at least $1 billion a year to educate. When these children become adults, they will have children of their own to support. What will happen as their own parents grow older and need more care but lack the social security, pensions, and other benefits that seniors in the U.S. typically have?
Undocumented immigrants are often treated as if they were a separate entity, but that is not really the case. Untold numbers of them have relatives who are in the United States legally. They may well live with those relatives. And while legal immigrants may sympathize with those who are undocumented, what about those who are here legally and are not related to the undocumented, who don’t know them personally? Do some of them feel resentment because they believe the undocumented are taking jobs away from them? The undocumented who have no family here have an even more difficult time. They sometimes form affinity groups along the lines of living or working together. These people become “family” to each other.
On the whole, I found great sympathy for the plight of the undocumented among people from every walk of life and irrespective of whether they lived in neighborhoods where illegals resided or in other communities. District managers of community boards were basically of one mind, best expressed by a Hispanic manager in the Bronx: “I have no problem with them, because they’re willing to work. Shame on employers for not paying them a decent wage. They’re not working for themselves; they’re working for their children. This country’s been founded on illegal activity. End of story.” A Jewish Queens community district manager said, “Why not legitimize people who are here? They’re working hard. They’re not committing crimes.” Indeed there is little evidence of their engaging in criminal activity. If detected, such activities can result in deportation, which is the last thing the undocumented want.
At the same time, there are people who contend that the undocumented take away jobs from citizens and don’t pay taxes. When I asked former mayor Ed Koch about the issue in a July 2012 interview, he responded with this:
I am someone who believes that there should not be a broad amnesty. I am for immigration and believe it’s very helpful to the country, and it’s what has made New York City great. But I am not for illegality. I believe we should have compassion, and I support what the president did in saying we’re not going to deport youngsters under the age of sixteen who came here. But as far as the eleven or twelve million illegal immigrants here, I think they have to go home with exceptions for compassion. There is no country in the world more generous than us with respect to immigration. We take in a million immigrants every year—750,000 regular immigrants [and] 250,000 seeking political asylum. I am for putting people who hire them illegally in jail. If you deprive them of jobs, they will go home. In fact, during the recent recession many went home. But as mayor I issued three executive orders, saying, “Don’t hesitate to send your children to school. Don’t hesitate if you are in need of treatment to go to a hospital. And don’t hesitate to tell a cop if you’ve been subject to a criminal attack, because unless you’ve committed another crime, the mere fact that you’re here illegally will not cause our police officers to turn you over to the immigration authorities.” I was criticized for that, but I still believe it to be the compassionate way, and every mayor after me issued those same orders.
Koch’s words highlight the guilt and ambivalence many feel about people who are in the United States without proper documentation. The undocumented and those who employ them are violating the law regardless of whether their presence helps or hinders the economy. On the other hand, people want to be compassionate to other human beings and cannot accept a denial of basic rights such as medical care and safety once they are here.
Immigrants to New York City face an economic world of limited options. Manufacturing has declined for decades, and high-tech positions in a service economy often require skills that these newcomers lack. What’s left are mostly jobs that reward hard work and long hours, including a good number that don’t require much spoken English, that make it possible for entire families to be gainfully employed.10
According to the Bodega Association of the United States, New York City has twenty-five thousand bodegas, or delis, and counting. Their annual sales come to $7 billion a year, and they employ some sixty-five thousand people. While we often think of Hispanics and Koreans running these businesses, the newest group to do so is the Yemenis. They are highly adaptable, speaking enough Spanish in Hispanic neighborhoods to get by. They keep a low profile ethnically, being sensitive to how Muslims may be viewed in the post-9/11 era. As a rule, you can’t tell that Yemenis operate the bodega unless you ask. An exception is an East Harlem establishment near First Avenue and 108th Street, where a big sign over the store reads, “Yemen King Grocery.”
In general, certain ethnic groups dominate certain economic niches. Examples abound—Israelis in the car wash business; Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi gas stations; Asian nail salons. Often these ethnic niches can be traced to individuals who entered the field and opened a path for their fellow ethnics. Other reasons include resources and skills possessed by group members, economic opportunities, labor shortages, timing of arrival, and their own preferences for various occupations. Sometimes their businesses reflect a style that is unique to their culture. For example, while American-run beauty salons and nail salons emphasize friendliness and attentiveness to customers, Korean nail salons stress respect, competence, and efficiency.11 This may also be a matter of necessary adaptation by the Koreans, since the language barrier doesn’t allow as much for the touchy-feely relationships favored by the Americans.
Ethnic dominance in various occupations breeds the usual resentments by others who feel excluded, of whom the conflicts between Koreans and African Americans are perhaps the best known.12 On more than one occasion I heard charges of clannishness from other immigrants. Sometimes it’s not limited to a niche but can be a broader field that’s open to all, but where group favoritism is perceived. What’s interesting is that those who complain about this wax euphoric when it happens to benefit them. For example, I spoke with a Polish contractor in Brooklyn who expressed great bitterness about the Chinese immigrants in Brooklyn. He has lived in New York for twenty years, having immigrated from Bialystok, Poland. “When the Chinese do business, they only help their own,” he said. “Nobody else can do business with these companies. They only use Chinese suppliers, Chinese builders, and Chinese workers. On the surface they are friendly, but they won’t help you.”
Then again, there is the Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union, which blatantly appeals to people’s ethnic backgrounds and loyalties. The bank supports Polish churches, Polish-language schools, and has branches in Glendale and Maspeth, Queens; Greenpoint, Brooklyn; and various Long Island and New Jersey communities, all of which have large Polish populations. This is called making a business out of ethnicity. “But what’s wrong with doing that?” say supporters. Customers like it because it gives them a certain comfort level. They can communicate in their native language, and they feel a level of trust dealing with fellow Poles and Slavs. Even the Polish contractor I spoke with finds nothing wrong with it, ignoring the implied contradiction of his earlier comments.
Similarly, the enclosed African Market on 116th Street in Harlem is a significant commercial center for Africans. There are clothing stores, barber shops, electronic stores, and restaurants. And in the surrounding area there are other enterprises like Mohammed’s Environmental Cleaners. Located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the African Market provides space for many artists and vendors selling African garb, jewelry, paintings, pocketbooks, and the like. Despite strong resistance, this group of merchants was moved from the far more widely visited 125th Street to its present location in Harlem. Were they catering only to tourists, they’d be finished. But having the market here means it’s also in the main area where Africans meet and shop, so Africans can both patronize their own shops and develop a social community, with restaurants that serve as places for exchanging news and allow them a chance to watch TV shows beamed from their homelands. An African museum is also being planned on 109th and Fifth Avenue, on the first floor of a luxury condominium building.
Regardless of its benefits, such protectionism does limit the opportunities for less fortunate groups like poor African Americans and Puerto Ricans and the undocumented. For these groups, collecting bottles or working as an “automobile chaser” or “hustler” is often a decent alternative. Some of them try to steer drivers whose car windows are broken or whose taillights don’t function to local repair shops. If they are Hispanic, possibly they’ll have an edge with Spanish-speaking drivers. They will usually get $10.00 a car for their efforts, and in a good week they can earn $350.00. Where do they work? Where the shops are, around Citi Field in Queens, perhaps, or Hunts Point in the Bronx.13
In their struggles to find work the new immigrants sometimes end up in unlikely professions. Early one morning, around 7:00 AM, I greet a man fixing his pedicab in a garage for them on Fifty-seventh Street, close to the Hudson River. He hails from Honduras and is a pioneer of sorts, as pedicabs didn’t exist until a few years ago. It’s actually the bicycle version of the rickshaw. A permit costs twenty-six hundred dollars. The ride costs one dollar a block. Horse-drawn wagons are more lucrative, it turns out. On Houston Street I see a man, a Palestinian from Beit Iksa, near Jerusalem, who has lived in New York for over thirty years. He does sidewalk art, commercially, often as advertisements to announce events. He’s painting the sidewalk in pastels. He’s done hundreds and they typically last for a year. He has a website and he paints in many locations. “No one objects,” he asserts. “And if they do, by then the message is out.”
If you’re an immigrant or thrifty visitor to the Big Apple, you might want to check out the enthusiastically named American Dream Hostel, a bed-and-breakfast place at 168 East Twentyfourth Street. It’s really a modest, converted four-story tenement building owned by a Peruvian immigrant who, in this offbeat way, achieved his own dream. It’s dedicated “to the youth and teachers from overseas,” according to a flyer in the lobby area. Actually, one of the reasons he chose the name, according to the clerk, is “because alphabetically it’s one of the first names that comes up when you look for places to stay at.” The rooms go for $119 a day, fairly cheap, and are single occupancy with a shared bathroom. Twenty years ago it was an SRO (single-room occupancy) lodging place for poor men in the city. Today, however, with so many homeless shelters, that approach is no longer popular, and there’s other money to be made in the revitalized New York of 2013. In choosing this line of work, this Peruvian man joins thousands of immigrants in New York and throughout the United States who manage or own small hotels or motels.
Most immigrants to the city own or work in small businesses like grocery stores and cheap restaurants, where they often face daunting challenges as they try to make a go of it. Ben Howe describes the travails of surviving in the face of bureaucratic rules, many of which seem petty or, worse yet, make no sense at all.
This spring we’ve been visited by undercover NYPD officers trying to catch us selling liquor on Sundays before noon (11:57 AM, to be precise); Consumer Affairs personnel trying to catch us selling cigarettes and lottery tickets to minors; Consumer Affairs, again, seeing if we pad our scales or use a cat to catch mice; even the Drug Enforcement Agency, looking for contraband sales of cold medicine…. Okay, some of these are legitimate, but the enforcement seems to be a bit overzealous at times. And what about the following listed violations? “having spoons positioned incorrectly in the potato salad (for some reason they’re supposed to be face down).”14
Many Americans take it almost for granted that a prime criterion for a job should be something that makes them happy. Immigrants cannot afford such luxuries. They must think first in terms of economic survival. I speak with Patrick, a Ghanaian immigrant, who is a guard in a Bible museum.
“How do you deal with this job? Aren’t you bored standing here all day?” I ask.
“Well,” he answers, “I look at the paintings of Jesus and I meditate about life.”
“But still,” I insist, “it must be boring. You can’t meditate all day unless you’re a saint or a yogi.”
“Well, yes, that’s true,” Patrick agrees reluctantly, “but I have to make a living. But do you know of another job I could get?”
I suddenly feel guilty. Maybe I’m sowing seeds of unhappiness in him that he was only dimly aware of before. “How long have you been doing this?” I say.
“About ten years.”
“What would you like to do?”
“Fraud investigations,” he answers without hesitation, fishing out a card from his pants pocket to prove his bona fides. It reads, “Fraud Investigator,” and is for a company named Black Star Shipping. He knows that this was the name of one of Marcus Garvey’s companies. He also has accounting experience.
“What’s the most interesting experience you’ve had since coming here ten years ago?” I ask.
“Well, one time some Greeks came in here. They had an exhibit of the Greek Orthodox Church and they wanted to light candles. And I told them, ‘You can’t light candles here. This is a museum.’ ”
I suggested that the museum could have lit electric candles, an idea he found amusing. Patrick is a nice man. His example of the most interesting experience in ten years only confirms that many jobs, and lives, can be very uninteresting indeed.
Walking on a Bushwick street one bright sunny day, I pass a young Hispanic man wearing a T-shirt on which is emblazoned the slogan, “Every Damn Day—Just Do It.” It exemplifies the struggle of life, one applying even more to the immigrants, perhaps—you gotta get up every day and just keep going. For them that’s what life is all about.
Koreans are often associated with this stereotype of just plugging away until you make it. Nor are they likely to deny it. Listen again to Ben Howe’s description of it in his funny and highly informative book, My Korean Deli: “the people who took over the deli industry from the Greeks and the Italians, the people who drove the Chinese out of the dry-cleaning trade, the people who took away nail polishing from African-Americans, and the people who made it impossible for underachievers like me [the author is a WASP married to a Korean American] to get into the same colleges our parents had attended.”15 A Korean American grocery store owner explained his twenty-eight-year record of economic success: “There is a supermarket two blocks from my produce store. But I have been able to successfully compete. Why? Because I go to Hunts Point Market four times a week and choose fresh produce items I like. But since the supermarket gets produce items delivered by trucks, it has little choice of items. My store can also compete with the supermarket in prices of items because each day I select produce items on special sales at Hunts Point Market.”16 So there you have it. The little guy bests the big guy because he’s willing to work harder.
The Chinese can also match the Koreans in ambitiousness. Is there a shopping center anywhere in America without a small Chinese takeout establishment? On Eighteenth Avenue near Seventythird Street in Bensonhurst, I come across the Brooklyn Center for the Musical Arts, featuring in its front window a large TV screen showing a young Chinese girl of perhaps seven or eight, dressed in a white blouse and a navy jumper. The girl is sitting on a stage, playing a baby grand piano. The repetition of this two-minute scene, looped to play over and over, effectively conveys the school’s idea that practice makes perfect and that one must be totally dedicated if one wishes to succeed. I cannot hear the music on the street, but I know it must be great. In any event it’s a wonderful way to sell the school, one of hundreds that, along with test preparation and tutoring centers, have sprouted as storefront operations in Asian neighborhoods throughout the city.
Parked on the corner of Fifty-fourth Street and Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen area is one of the city’s ubiquitous Sabrett hot dog stands. The smell from the frankfurters floating in boiled water is at once familiar and pungent–just about every New Yorker knows it. I strike up a conversation with the hot dog vendor, an olive-skinned, dour-faced man named Ram. He is from Punjab and has been in this country for almost twenty years, during which time he has never taken a vacation. I think about what it means to have dreamed the immigrant dream of success in America and to end up in this job. Is this man bitterly disappointed that he has been doing this for nine hours a day, six days a week, for many years?
When I ask him this question, he responds, “What can I do? This is my life. I must make money for my family. I don’t want to do nothing, to take for free, like some of the people in this building.” He waves dismissively at a nearby, low-income apartment building where some people are hanging out, guzzling beer.
Only when he talks about his children, now attending college, does his face become animated, infused with expression. And I realize that Ram sees himself primarily as a bridge between his past and the future, one centering on those he has brought into the world. Having visited India and seen the widespread poverty there—much worse than in New York City—I suspect that this man truly appreciates whatever he has.
Other vendors with whom I speak tell similar stories. Ram’s comments are strikingly like those of an Indian deli owner on Staten Island, who says, “I work very hard and open early, at 5:30 AM. I go sleep at 10:00 PM. On Fourth of July I took a small vacation and went with my kids to Canada. The really big vacation I take is when we go back to India for a month in December/January.”
“Are your kids going to work in the deli?” I ask him.
“I hope not. I tell them, ‘You do something better. Money no problem. I do anything struggling. But you guys gotta do something better, because I don’t wanna see you just standing here, slicing up the meat.’ ”
“How long are you here?” I ask.
“About five years.”
“Did you think you were going to end up in the deli when you came to America?”
His response is surprising. “Actually, I had a grocery store in India, but I never thought I would do it here. Before Staten Island I worked for seven years in a deli in New Jersey.” And here we see by his response that not everyone who takes this kind of job has never done it before. This deli owner did the same job in India.
People think of the deli as a business that an immigrant can make a living from, but it’s like so many things: if you’re willing to work hard—no, very hard—you can actually make a mint. Sunny’s deli operates on a well-traveled Brooklyn street selling the staples of such businesses, lottery tickets and cigarettes. But the real money is in the hot food. Sunny sells falafel, shawarma, turkey burgers, cheeseburgers, you name it. He is a Palestinian, a place best known to most New Yorkers for its struggle to establish a homeland. But like so many immigrants in New York, his primary politics is business, which is why he enjoys good relations even with his Israeli customers. His wife is Sicilian. What’s most remarkable is his volume. “Now this place is worth no less than a million and a half,” he crows. “You don’t touch this place for less. Not even a hundred thousand dollars less, you won’t touch it. Because this is an eighty- to ninety-thousand-dollar-a-week business. Twenty-four hours.”
And that’s the key—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But you have to be willing to work that hard. In the winter, Sunny, the owner, works the lucrative night shift. That’s where the big money is. “In winter, I never see the daylight,” he says. But most of all, as Tug McGraw, of New York Mets fame, said, “You gotta believe.” Sunny has self-confidence up the wazoo. His words say it all. “Listen, I am a man with five languages, you know? I can make this business up to the sky.” Sunny says that he takes home between eight and ten thousand dollars a week. That’s almost half a million dollars a year. But in any case the trajectory of his family is classically American. Make the dream come true, offer the spoils to your children, and listen as they say, “No, Dad, I’m not going to work like that, no.” Sunny says, “They want to go to be a pharmacist, or, like, a doctor, you know? Lawyers. They don’t want to work. They want to go to school, college. You know?” To Sunny, the professions may have status. But they’re not like real work.17
People like Sunny, if they don’t take their profits and return to their homelands to live in splendor, move to the suburbs or to wealthy enclaves in the city. Mill Basin, in the southern part of Brooklyn, is one of these destinations. (See figure 2). In recent years it has become popular with successful immigrants, many of them Russian, and even an occasional mobster. Originally it was a Jewish, Italian, and Asian area with modest ranches, split-levels, and colonials, and there are still many members of those groups living there. Location probably plays a role in this decision, since Brighton Beach, an area of first settlement for Russians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, is not far away.
Today many of the homes in this area are large, beautiful, and lavish, much like the homes in the Italian American Todt Hill section on Staten Island, and often one of a kind. Behind the tall gates of one home I saw a Porsche, a Bentley, and a Maybach (about four hundred thousand dollars). Any one of these luxury cars would have been plenty, but all three? Over the top, screaming, “I made it!” Two menacing German shepherds prowled the property, growling and barking as I stood there. The house is a hodgepodge of styles, with a green mansard roof, curved walls made of white brick, a three-story-high entrance hall. Opposite, on the water, is another gorgeous home. This one is in the Romanesque style, with huge stone urns outside and a tiled roof. Yet another mini-palace features a guardhouse in front of it.
And so we see that beyond the need for economic survival is another level: the need or the desire to succeed. Those who have it possess a different personal makeup from people who are content with a reasonable income. They may also have certain talents or abilities. And what jump-starts their often Herculean efforts is undoubtedly the fact that, as opposed to the limited opportunities in their native lands, they see a chance to make it really big in this country. It’s these two factors—necessity and ambition—that fuel their great energy.
To the neighbors of the newcomers these successes are often fascinating. They talk about the “new Russian millionaires” in the same way tour guides in Beverly Hills talk about celebrities, providing tidbits of gossip and stories about the people and the parties inside these homes. In its glorification of ostentatiousness, it is but the latest incarnation of the American dream that has captivated and motivated generations of past, and now present, immigrants. Why some groups have a greater need to flaunt what they have would make for an interesting study.
But some immigrants are not interested in this marker of success. They have other criteria in mind—namely, their position in society. Consider the following case: According to a knowledgeable woman in the South Indian community, running a hot dog stand can be pretty lucrative. “These are well-off people. They can easily make maybe seventy thousand dollars a year, and they pay very little in taxes. They declare maybe ten or twenty thousand in income. And if they make so little money on the books, they can then get free Medicaid and free schools. So it’s a good job economically.”
“Is your husband a hot dog vendor then?”
“No, he’s an engineer.”
“And how much does he make?”
“He only makes sixty-five thousand dollars a year.”
“Is he angry about that?”
“Yes, but he wants to be an engineer.”
“Would you marry a hot dog vendor or an engineer if you had to make that choice?”
“An engineer, and I did.”
“Why?”
“Because of the status of being an engineer. My father’s an engineer. It’s not only about the money.”
This, too, is part of the American dream—to be respected. Cab drivers may earn one hundred thousand dollars a year without paying a lot of taxes. But they lack status. Like Americans, the newcomers, depending on the cultural and economic levels of the societies or communities from which they came, are stratified not only by income but also by prestige.
Regardless of what jobs they do, the immigrants of recent decades have much stronger transnational connections than did earlier waves of newcomers. They send money home, travel frequently to their native countries, and, with varying degrees of seriousness, consider returning home one day. A newly emerging trend is a reverse migration of the second generation, the highly educated children of immigrants who are moving to their parents’ countries of origin. This trend is fueled largely by economic conditions in the United States and abroad that have made it more attractive to work in nations like India and China than in the States. Just how many people are doing so and whether the trend is temporary or long-lasting remains to be seen, but it is a phenomenon that could not have been dreamed of in previous generations, when the overwhelming majority of immigrants came here for good. Not only economic conditions and a global economy but also the ease of travel in the twenty-first century as well as the Internet have made distances irrelevant and communication instant.18
Female participation in the workforce has greatly increased in the last thirty years among all groups, but there are variations from group to group. Jamaican women, for example, are more likely to work than Dominican women, largely because the Jamaicans speak English, have higher educational levels, and come from a society that already has high female participation in the workforce.19 Dominicans are culturally proscribed from working once their conditions improve, because not working is seen as a sign of status—as in “They don’t have to work.” Besides, if they don’t work, they can take care of their children. This, too, is changing. Children sometimes help out, but they are not a major presence. You may see them in a Chinese takeout joint, or they may accompany their housekeeper mothers to work, but these are often forms of day care when there is no one with whom to leave the kids.
For most immigrants the driving force behind their decision is economic, accompanied by a desire to reunite with their families. Some have even become the subjects of famous, if somewhat apocryphal, success stories that exemplify rapid and successful adaptation. Take the Kennedy Fried Chicken chain, a multimillion-dollar operation with about one thousand stores in New York City’s poor areas and in other East Coast cities. It was started in 1979 by two Afghanis, Taeb Zia and Abdul Karim, who, the story goes, realized that their own names wouldn’t carry much weight if tacked onto a store sign. So they looked for a familiar name and decided that a former U.S. president’s surname would suit their needs perfectly. Their red and white colors and the initials KFC have sometimes gotten them into trouble with another famous name, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The New York chain has also spawned imitators, like Lincoln Fried Chicken, JFK Chicken, and even Obama Fried Chicken, the last of which has drawn some flack for stereotyping. The positive side of this story is that you can make it big here. The negative side is that there is usually envy from other immigrants, most of whom have not enjoyed such success.
Some immigrant groups have substantial economic capital. They often sell products imported from their native lands, but, despite their resources, the transition and adaptation to American norms and tastes can sometimes be awkward and literally “lost in translation.” In the windows of a small, crowded discount store in Queens, owned by Chinese people who barely speak English, are some boxes that contain Barbie-type dolls. The dolls, which come with accessories, are named “Defa Lucy,” and the description on the box succinctly reveals the gap between native and foreign. It reads, in part, “Here, are full of laughter and pleasure; Please, let joy go on. There are colorful flowers all over the earth…. Look! Defa Lucy is dancing with butterflies.” The wording is not terrible, but something is clearly off. Just as it is when Chinese restaurants select names like Happy Broccoli, Eastern Strawberry, or New Golden Billion.
Economics is only one piece in understanding what it takes to succeed. In her network analysis of the Gujaratis, an Indian ethnic group, sociologist Maritsa Poros shows how immigrants employ friends, their native land, community organizations, professional associations, and business connections to help their people advance. But there are negative consequences too that result from using connections. When insiders do wrong, they’re often forgiven, because ostracizing them could result in the leaking of confidential information about how the group operates, its sources of supply, how its members “cut corners,” and the like. Giving them a pass also serves to prevent insiders from leaving to pursue business opportunities that involve contact with outsiders. In this way the group’s insularity is enhanced, but then the social adaptation process slows down. And it is also a reason why outsiders are often excluded from doing business with Gujaratis. As outsiders they cannot be easily controlled. Ostracism means nothing to them. They cannot be shamed within the community, because they are not really part of it.20
Education has long been a key to successful adaptation. But many groups like to preserve parts of their ethos even as they acculturate, and creating private schools is one way of doing so. Catholics and Jews have long done this with their parochial, day, and afternoon schools, and so have Muslims. Many of the Muslim schools, like the Al-Noor School in Brooklyn on Fourth Avenue near Twenty-first Street, encourage their high school graduates to attend college. Education is separated by the sexes, and a religious program is offered too. The school motto sums up the combination: “Education for Life and for Hereafter.”
On 134th Street and Rockaway Turnpike in Queens, I see the Ali San Academy. And, ironically, across the street is the Rav-Bariach security products store. It’s a well-known Israeli company that makes door locks and keys. “Do they sell to the academy?” I wonder. It seems from appearances that the students there may be Guyanese Muslims, representing a fusion of nationality and religion.
Those from countries with few immigrants here—Malaysia, Norway, Bhutan, Uruguay—generally receive scant attention from immigration specialists, who understandably opt for examining the larger groups, whose impact on the city is greater. I’m reminded of this when I pass by the Manakamana Mai Deli & Grocery (named after a Hindu deity) on Myrtle Avenue in Glendale, Queens near Seventy-first Street. The young man working there is a twenty-twoyear-old Nepalese named Laxu. He exhibits fascination and great pleasure when I tell him that his name is similar to the acronym for Los Angeles International Airport, LAX. I tell him to Google it.
He does and exclaims, “Wow!” in wonderment.
I joke with him. “Imagine,” I say. “You’re named after a huge airport.”
He laughs appreciatively. I wonder that no one has ever told him this.
“How’s your government doing these days?” I inquire.
“Bad,” he says. “It’s the Maoist guerillas.”
He’s been here two years and I ask him how he is able to speak English so well. He tells me he learned it in Nepal, and I’m reminded of how important knowing English is to the adaptation process. Some in his community live in nearby Ridgewood, near Myrtle and Wyckoff Avenues. The main Nepalese community is in Jackson Heights, Queens, where there are restaurants like the Himalayan Yak that serve as their gathering places. Laxu passes the time playing online poker with eight other players—for fun, not for money—using video poker chips. This is a minor way in which the Big Apple has changed in the last thirty-five years—technology. People can fiddle around on the Internet to relieve their boredom while they’re working. Laxu plays every day for four or five hours, both at work and at home. Although he uses his computer to play poker, there’s little doubt that those able to navigate the Internet in English will adjust faster to life here, as his ability to almost immediately find LAX online attests to.
One event that has probably had a significant psychological impact on how the newcomers feel about their new home is the election of President Barack Obama. As a result, people—black, white, and other—feel that race relations have improved. Obama’s election (and reelection) speaks to the possibility of anyone rising to the top, irrespective of their origins. After the election, as I walked through various ethnic neighborhoods, I could see that the enthusiasm for the new president was both high and unmistakable, especially among teenagers of all backgrounds.
The adaptation of older immigrants is truly under-studied. Observations on this by sociologist Judith Treas suggest why this is so. “They never win spelling bees,” she says. “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.” In other words, older immigrants are not an important group in terms of what sociologists investigate. But they are important to younger people. They are babysitters and important carriers of the old traditions with their families, as well as role models. They also experience the typical problems that all senior citizens have and that society addresses—depression, physical ailments, and loneliness. There are cultural reasons for their importance too. In Asian societies the aged are respected far more than they are in the United States. Devendra Singh, a seventy-nineyear-old Indian, ruefully reflects, “In India there is a favorable bias toward the elders. Here people think about what is convenient and inconvenient for them.” And that can apply to the immigrants’ own Americanized children as well.21
At times outside events can seriously hamper a community’s ability to adjust to life in New York City. One factor that greatly affected the Muslim community’s ability to adapt and be accepted was 9/11. I found that many Muslims make it a point to disassociate themselves from what happened. A Yemeni bodega owner’s response was typical: “I don’t agree with Muslims who believe their religion tells them they can kill other people. If you kill a thousand, you’re going to the hell fire. Anyone who does that must be a communist who doesn’t believe in God. God does not want you to kill others. My kids are in school here, and I want them have a good life here as full Americans.” As I listened to this man talk, his voice trying to rise above the cacophony of some Spanish speakers rummaging through a pile of socks on display near some plantains, my mind flitted to his origins. Fifteen years ago, living in a Yemeni village, could he ever have imagined himself in a Washington Heights bodega, declaiming loudly about his Muslim coreligionists and 9/11? Like so many others, he is trying to piece together a new existence, to reinvent himself, for his sake and that of his family.
Some Muslims go even further in their efforts to empathize with how Americans feel about them. Following an attack on an Egyptian-owned coffee shop in Astoria, Queens, after the World Trade Center went down, the store owner declined to press charges, saying he understood the anger. The culprits in turn apologized and offered to pay for the damages. An Arab cabbie discussed the incident candidly and insightfully from a broader perspective:
Do we all have to be blamed for something we didn’t commit? We cannot change our face. We can’t make plastic surgery just for the time being and when the next terrorist is Chinese or a white guy, we can come back to our original faces…. I’ve been here since 1989 and I never once been up in the World Trade Center. But that was where I make my living. Twelve times a day I was dropping people off, picking them up there. When a tourist comes to New York, the first thing they say, “Where is the World Trade Center?” If you’re coming from Pennsylvania or uptown at 195th Street, you point with your finger and you find those two buildings. They were the same for me as the pyramid of Giza or the Sphinx. When you’re in Egypt, anywhere you go you see them. After 7,000 years to see them collapse, it’s like a part of my soul collapse.22
Today, more than ten years after 9/11, Muslims are still singled out for special surveillance. Regardless of one’s views on the matter, the effects on Muslims in the city are profound, despite their general success in acclimating to their new surroundings. I asked former mayor Koch what he thought were the permanent effects of 9/11. His answer revealed how deeply passions can run on this subject.
I believe that we’re in a war with Islamist fanatics, terrorists, and that this war will go on for fifty years, maybe more, and the question is, Will our country have the intestinal fortitude and the courage to stand up in that war? I believe that the impact of that catastrophic tragedy is great because there will be a reminder each year in a memorial ceremony. It will strengthen the country. We’re a society—I’m talking about Western civilization—that loves life. So the question is, Who will prevail? Those who love life or those who want to die? That’s a question that no one can really answer. Obviously Muslims are not all terrorists, but even a small proportion, maybe 10 percent out of a billion, is enormous when they support terrorism, even if [they themselves are not] committed to terrorist acts. The police commissioner of New York City has units to combat terrorism here, in London, and in New Jersey. And some so-called civil libertarians want to stop it. That’s nuts!
These are the challenges facing one group of immigrants. There are also many who, for one reason or another, fail to adapt on an individual level, and it happens within every group. Some return to their native lands; others lead unsatisfying lives here, surviving on the margins; and still others end their lives in tragic ways. Statistics and patterns are important, but they do not even begin to tell the human stories that highlight the aspirations, pain, and even disaster that are part of the immigrant saga.
I heard and read about many such cases during my research on the streets of New York, but none were sadder and more poignant than that of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a Guatemalan man who came to New York in 2002 to make a new life and to earn enough money to buy a larger piece of land for his family back home. His family was made up of subsistence farmers who grew corn on a tiny plot in the highlands. Hugo’s dream died a most cruel death on April 18, 2010, when he was stabbed in the stomach in South Jamaica, Queens, reportedly after trying to help a woman having a heated argument with a man. What was especially tragic was that, as captured on video, Hugo lay bleeding on the ground facedown for over an hour before he died as dozens of people walked past him and did nothing. Maybe they thought he was just drunk and homeless, but what about the blood that was oozing out from under him? Was that not worth a second look and perhaps a call to 911?
Hugo was a skilled carpenter, but, like many other people, the recession had rendered him jobless and unable to fulfill the family dream, even as he promised his father a month earlier, “I will get through the difficulties and carry out the plan.” And there were real difficulties that he was embarrassed to tell his family about. His joblessness had led to excessive drinking and ultimately to homelessness, with a playground on Ninety-first Avenue near the Van Wyck Expressway serving as a makeshift home for him. After his funeral, Hugo’s body was shipped home, “reversing a trek that cost him $6,000 and took him 14 days to complete; he walked through Mexico into Texas.”23
And for what? Here was a good, hardworking man who wanted nothing more than to improve his life and that of his family. Back home Hugo’s family and the village would have served as a support system. Even when he was down and beset by hardship, feeling, as his brother said, ashamed that he could not make it in America, Hugo died by showing kindness to another human being. That is something to be proud of, and for this reason alone he should not be forgotten. As of this writing, his murderer has not been found.
Immigrants try to maintain their group identity in many ways. The most common are through language, politics, religion, maintaining family ties, food, music and other forms of entertainment, sports, literature, ethnic media, educational and cultural programs, visits to the homeland, and living near one another. The importance of this and the many ways in which it manifests itself was brought home to me when at noon on December 3, 2010, I was walking in a neighborhood of African immigrants along 116th Street west of Malcolm X Boulevard. Suddenly I noticed a commotion outside a small restaurant. (See figure 3.) Young black men were bringing in food, shouting, and clapping one another on the back. Some of them seemed angry, others were happy, all were quite animated. I walked inside, where a number of men were eating rice, beans, and chicken gizzards, mostly at long tables. Their attention was riveted to a large-screen TV that was broadcasting the disputed results of the presidential election in Ivory Coast, and they ignored my arrival, even though I was the only white there. At one point the TV showed an official tearing up ballots of a candidate he didn’t like. But just at that moment the official tally had been announced declaring the opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara, the surprise winner over the incumbent, President Laurent Gbagbo. The whoops and shouts of joy and dismay made crystal clear the degree to which these African immigrants still identify with their homeland. For them, it was as if the election were being held in New York City.24 Walk into any ethnic restaurant, bar, or barbershop—whether it’s Polish, Dominican, Australian, or Uzbeki—and you will see TV programs of all kinds beamed from the homeland.
American sports, in particular, have a way of capturing the enthusiasm of the immigrants, perhaps because, unlike native music or language, sports are essentially not ethnic. To the millions of Americans from every background who avidly follow some sort of sport, the players’ performance is far more important than their race or ethnicity. But for the immigrants, their children, and even their grandchildren, it’s extremely significant, for it tells everyone that someone from their homeland has made it into a mainstream arena.
The following two stories—both about Dominican immigrants, but only by happenstance—describe identity maintenance but do so in totally different ways, each of which has the potential to expand our understanding of how identity is shaped. The first story concerns sports, whereas the second is what I would call imaginative and somewhat opportunistic.
I see and enter a restaurant on 191st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights called El Nuevo Caridad. It features photos of the owner, Miguel Montas, with famous ballplayers, mostly New York Mets and Yankees. The Formica tables are laminated with photos of players. Baseball gloves and bats are displayed along the walkway leading into the place. Some forty-odd menu offerings, a mix of Spanish, West Indian, and generic food, are named after the players, most of them Hispanic and some of them eternally famous, like retired Giants pitcher Juan Marichal. It reminds me of Larry David’s Los Angeles deli, where the sandwiches are identified by the names of famous Hollywood actors and personalities. The vertical bars of the railing at El Nuevo Caridad are actually bats, interspersed with gloves. By eating here, customers get deferred status from the players who have also dined here and are reminded that at least some of their people have succeeded big-time in America.25
Identity is not only where you find it but also what you make of it. I stop in at 106 Fort Washington Avenue, at the corner of 164th Street, in Upper Manhattan, a building where my family once lived for a while. The building superintendent—or, as New Yorkers would say, the super—is Mike, a balding fifty-five-year-old Dominican man with three children. We strike up a conversation. I listen as he tells me how the area has improved and who’s moving in, the long waiting list, his children, and what they’re doing. Suddenly he says, seemingly out of nowhere, “Can you believe it? This building is called Samana Mansion. When you look at a map of the Dominican Republic, on the east side, on the northern tip is the Samana Peninsula. That’s where a very famous whale came from Alaska, and the tourists come there. And this building is full of Dominicans! There’s a Dominican province named Samana and a peninsula. There’s even a mountain range there named Samana.”
“It was called Samana when I lived here,” I respond, “even before this became a Dominican area.”
“Really,” he says in a surprised but not defensive way. “All I know is what it means to me.” His answer indicates a search for a connection to his own people. It’s a way of showing that the Dominicans have a place here in the city, however tenuous the link may be. In this way meaning is extracted from a coincidence.
The name of the building is engraved into the white-painted concrete atop its entrance. Why was it named Samana? It turns out that Samana has other meanings too. Samana was the name given to a group of wandering Indian ascetics, one of whom was Gautama Buddha, of Siddhartha fame. It is also the name of a mountain range in Pakistan, as well as a town in the Punjab region of India called Samana. But we’ll never know why the building carries the name. Beyond the fact that it was built in 1920, more than ninety years ago, no further information is available, so the mystery remains.
Religion often plays a major role in immigrant adjustment. Ministers counsel them, church services console them, and agencies affiliated with religious institutions assist them. The prominent role of religion in the United States creates an environment that is conducive for its propagation.26 Here’s an excerpt from a sermon given by a minister at a Nigerian Pentecostal church in Queens:
I pray for the cab drivers, that you protect them from accident, from robbery, from receiving unnecessary tickets, and help them to keep their job. I pray for the nurses, that they will not give wrong medications, that they will not be sued or contract diseases…. I pray for all the children of this church that you will give them wisdom and understanding, that they will be grade A students…. I pray for those that are in business, that they will prosper, Lord, that you will be their business partner, that they will be safe on the street, that they will not be pushed into the subway track, that you will shield them from bullets and police that misunderstand who they really are.27
The minister apparently knows all the right notes to hit. She has an intimate understanding of the newcomers’ struggles and the challenges they face every day, thereby making religion relevant to their lives.
Entering an African/Caribbean church in Brownsville on a Sunday morning, it’s easy to comprehend the deep spiritual and emotional needs that religion fills for so many immigrants. The women wear traditional dress—gaily colored turbans and dresses. It’s called Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry, located at 180 Blake Avenue near Amboy Street. Hundreds of worshipers are singing ecstatically, swaying in unison, gesticulating, hands pointing upward in delirium. The music and chanting is beautiful, and I am moved by the emotional involvement of the participants. Here again is testimony to the great power of religion in this city to attract its residents, both old and new, rich and poor, and many in between. It’s what goes on in hundreds of churches throughout the city every Sunday.
When a white person walks into a black church, he or she is is noticed and, in this case, warmly welcomed. Members of the congregation so much want you to share in their happiness and feel their joy; they believe so much in what they do that they feel they must encourage you to join them, thereby validating their own faith. In this church color brings together people from Africa, Haiti, Jamaica, and elsewhere. It’s an example, too, of Pan-Africanism, which is normally a political movement but can also manifest itself in the religious sphere.
The level of religious interest among immigrants is not limited by any means to Pentecostal-type churches. It’s just as present in the larger denominations, albeit more formally expressed. The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, bishop of the Brooklyn Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church (which also serves the faithful of Queens), explained to me in an interview how important the immigrants are in the church’s activities and their larger impact.
The immigrants are critical to our work. There are so many of them and their faith is often very intense. Some groups are more involved than others. For example, the Haitians are very active. I have sixtyfour seminarians, and maybe eleven are black and a good number of them are Haitians, which is incredibly high. Several thousand West Indian Catholics march in the parade as Catholics, proud to be members of the faith. The parade gets to be a little risqué. But [chuckling] we march in the front. We don’t see that. It’s a strong and very supportive culture. Next year we’ll be reaching out to the Chinese in particular, because so many of them are unaffiliated.
And a big change over the years has been that religion has become much more of a common denominator. When a Catholic Irish person marries a Catholic Dominican and they identify as such, then we’ve made it and they have too. It demonstrates one of the successes of immigration in this city.
Immigrants often breathe new life into dying churches. Where once the Catholic church primarily served the Irish, Italians, and Germans, today it’s much more attended by Hispanics, Haitians, and Asians. Ditto for the Protestant churches, whose clientele has also shifted dramatically. For example, there’s the First United Methodist Church of Flushing. In 1986 it had 30 native Englishspeaking members but 450 Koreans. Even then there were already more than 300 Korean churches in New York, mostly in Queens. The English speakers credit the Koreans with financing the improvement of the building. “They have money and we don’t,” says one. But there are differences in worship, style, and outlook. The pastor has a different sermon for each group. The Koreans like long sermons that are almost exclusively devoted to biblical themes. The English speakers prefer short sermons focused on social and political topics. Today there are hundreds of churches throughout the city that advertise services being held in multiple languages: Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Polish, and Creole, along with English.28
New arrivals to New York frequently feel pressure not to reveal their origins, although immigrant efforts to retain their culture have become far more acceptable than they were fifty years ago. An article in the New York Times reports that Muslim deli owners often feel they must sell pork and alcohol and allow the sale of lottery tickets even though all of these violate Koranic prohibitions. The conflict is well expressed by Khairul Kabir, a Bangladeshi immigrant who owns a deli in East Harlem, who says, “Selling haram [forbidden] is the same as eating haram. I feel guilty, totally guilty. I want to sell the business and go home and not sell haram. Every day I’m thinking I should do that.” Kabir acknowledges, however, that his “thinking” about selling is tempered by the recession. The fact is that options are limited for an immigrant who has found an economic niche. And so, instead, he gives his mea culpa: “I am doing a lot of bad things. I pray to Allah to forgive me.” It’s an example—one faced by uncounted numbers of immigrants over the past two hundred years—of having to choose between economic priorities and group loyalties or beliefs. Often, as in this case, the former wins out.
Kabir’s imam, Mohammed Fayek Uddin of the Jackson Heights Islamic Center, took a decidedly liberal, even perhaps a separation-of-church-and-state, view of Kabir’s quandary. “In this country everyone has to do something. I deliver my speech in front of the people; it depends on their choice. No punishment, not here. Allah will give punishment on the Day of Judgment; I do not have an authority to do that.”29
The sociologist Philip Kasinitz and his coauthors carried out interviews, did ethnographic research, and conducted surveys over a decade and wrote the most definitive book to date on the second generation of immigrants to America. They note that New York City has more adult immigrants and children of immigrants than any other city in the United States. The parents worry that their children may become too American and lose their cultural ties to their communities. The most important finding from Kasinitz and his colleagues is that most of the children of immigrants are doing very well.
This optimistic assessment is not shared by everyone, however. Immigrants often reside in poor areas and have a high unemployment rate. As a result, their children could become what sociologists Ruben Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes have dubbed a “rainbow underclass.”30 In New York City the Mexican second generation is experiencing the greatest problems. As opposed to their hardworking immigrant parents, many of the younger generation are failing. Approximately 41 percent of those between sixteen and nineteen have either dropped out of school or never attended in the first place. And Mexicans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in the city: about 266,000 in 2007, compared to 61,722 in 1990.31 Add the undocumented immigrants, who are not necessarily counted in U.S. Census data, and the numbers are even higher. Those who are here illegally are afraid to get help for their children; there are also problems with the language barrier, the need for several jobs to make ends meet, and the overall lack of social capital.
Discussing his childhood after coming here illegally from Mexico, Iván Lucero, a waiter, recalled, “You don’t think of nothing else but having fun with your friends, meeting up with girls, having your boys with you. The last thing you think of is school.”32 This is borne out by conversations with people in the community who cite all the attendant issues of family conflict, teenage drinking, petty crime, and just hanging out aimlessly. If the problem isn’t addressed, this “lost generation” of immigrants will become a much more serious problem when the children become adults.
To outsiders they may all seem alike, but there are often significant differences within nationalities, starting with class. I stop outside a restaurant on 100th Street, near Lexington Avenue, called LaGalette, which advertises “fine Senegalese cuisine.” It’s a cinch that, at the prices, Senegalese vendors of knock-off pocketbooks on Canal Street aren’t dining there. A Haitian describes how the “higherclass” Haitians are more apt to attend Sacred Heart Church in Cambria Heights, while those of lower class will choose St. Ann’s in nearby Queens Village.
Sometimes these class differences become intertwined with the group’s priorities and perceptions. Listen to how the middle- and upper-class Chinese, known as the “Uptown Chinese,” as opposed to the poorer “Downtown Chinese,” express their disdain for American values:
In the eyes of Chinese immigrant parents, American children, white as well as black, have no work ethic because the schools don’t give them enough to do and American parents don’t bother to teach them discipline. While white kids play sports after school, Chinese kids are typically enrolled in an activity with an academic component. “I think they have too much free time,” Taiwan-born stayat-home suburban mother Mrs. Chung explains her strategy, “and I hate to see kids waste their time. You know, I don’t think life should be like that, you know, waste time. So then I heard some other friends, their children are learning music.” …. American kids lack respect for their elders and authority in general, eat the wrong things—particularly too much fried food—and spend too much time pondering deviant sexual behavior that can lead to their own gender confusion.33
Class differences can also lead to open hostility. Teju Cole, the Nigerian writer, tells of his encounter with an African cabbie, who says to him: “Not good, not good at all, you know, the way you came into my cab without saying hello, that was bad. Hey, I’m African just like you, why you do this?” Cole apologizes, but to no avail. The damage is done. The driver stares ahead at the road, his silence speaking for itself.34
It’s worth noting that many immigrants may be poor upon arrival in the city but come from middle-class backgrounds and have middle-class values. They left looking for opportunity and often plan to return. Still others, like some of the Chinese and Koreans in Flushing, or Persian Jews who initially settled in Kew Gardens, Queens, moved rapidly to the suburbs. On the other hand, not all group members fit the stereotype. We’re accustomed to thinking of Jews as highly educated—doctors, lawyers, MBAs—but the Bukharian immigrants have changed that perception a bit. They are predominantly shoemakers, barbers, tailors, contractors, a whole segment of working-class Jews, and very unlike the concert pianists, doctors, and computer programmers emanating from the European portions of Russia. Many are very traditional. You see a person with a kippa, or skullcap, running a shoe repair shop. There’s something old-world about it as you watch him sitting by an old-fashioned gooseneck lamp, bent over a lathe, fixing what has to be repaired in a tiny shop on, of all places, Sixty-sixth Street between First and Second Avenues. You’ll also find the Bukharian Jews in Richmond Hill or Middle Village, Queens, both non-Jewish areas.
In addition to class, there are religious, tribal, linguistic, and geographic distinctions within the groups too numerous to go into. But the issue is the same: the immigrants must navigate these shoals among themselves in addition to dealing with those on the outside. It’s a daunting task, fraught with perils and challenges that must be overcome if they are to achieve parity with other Americans.
The arrival of so many groups in a relatively short period of time has resulted in contacts of all sorts between peoples who have had limited or no experience with one another. America has always been a melting pot, but each new mix of peoples is unique, with its own tensions, challenges, and opportunities. Changing social attitudes, technology, and economic conditions further complicate matters.
I enter a grocery store, an Asian bodega, on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, run by Sri Lankans. What attracted my attention was the sign outside: “We carry products from Sri Lanka, India, and the West Indies.” This strikes me as an example of syncretism. True, the store caters largely to Asians, but the distance between Sri Lanka and the West Indies is several thousand miles and the cultural circumstances are not the same. I wonder also if the owner is carrying items specific to the different countries. It turns out he is. I pick up a jar of Maldives fish chips produced in Sri Lanka. The small collection of CDs available features music from all three areas. Among the different types of candles for sale is a Jewish yahrzeit, or memorial, candle. Curious as to what the clerk will say about this fourth group, there being no Jewish population in the area, I ask him what it is. “Oh, that; they’re church candles that religious people sometimes buy.”
I come across a similar establishment in Ridgewood, another part of Queens that is home to many nationalities. It’s a deli, selling European, Balkan, and Middle Eastern specialties, with the innocuous and seemingly incongruous name of Parrot. Inside there are Polish, Hungarian, French, Romanian, Greek, and Bulgarian cheeses, to mention only a few of the many offerings. There’s also Hungarian salami and the spicier Gypsy salami. All of these ethnic groups have settled in the adjoining areas of Greenpoint, Ridgewood, Glendale, Sunnyside, and Maspeth. In this Romanian-run establishment they sell two Israeli brands of hair shampoo, as well as German shampoo. You get the feeling that the whole world is represented here. “Everybody comes here,” intones the manager in answer to my question of who the customers are. It’s a common pattern—increase sales by appealing to as many groups as possible.
Another example of syncretism is on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. Many stores advertise halal (sanctioned by Islamic law) meat, but this one says, “Musa’s Halal Chinese Food.” There’s a drawing of a chicken on one side of the sign and a cow on the other side, meaning, by its absence, the store sells no pork.35 And it is sandwiched (no pun intended) between a Veterans of Foreign Wars center and a Domino’s Pizza. Two doors down is the Mexican El Texano eatery. That the owners of these shops are located cheek-to-jowl next to each other assures that they will have contact with and get to know each other, as will their clienteles. Sometimes the appeal is explicit, as in the sign I saw outside a Harlem pizza/chicken joint proclaiming, “No Pork on My Fork.”
But there’s more to a neighborhood’s identity than food. These food stores identify an area as multiethnic, but the real contacts take place in the neighborhoods themselves—in the buildings, on the streets, in parks, community centers, schools, and sometimes houses of worship, all places where immigrants have met and mingled for more than a century. Visiting Intermediate School 194, built in 2003 on Waterbury Avenue east of Castle Hill Avenue, I learn that this part of the Bronx has many Muslim Asian immigrants, especially Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, as well as Guyanese. The school is about 50 percent Asian and 45 percent Hispanic, and it also has some whites and blacks, a good number of whom come from nearby Parkchester. It’s a beautiful, spacious, and spotless institution. But most important, it’s the perfect place for groups to learn about and appreciate each other.
Contacts do not happen only in these places, however. Sometimes they occur in locations that we don’t ordinarily think of. I’m sitting in a kosher fast-food place on the Upper West Side and observing the Mexican workers. I find myself thinking that besides their daily problems of earning a living, when they send their kids off to school these immigrants often have no idea of the cultural groups their kids meet. What stereotypes about Jews are being reinforced or challenged here? It’s especially true in this type of situation, because people have a way of treating fast-food workers, busboys, car wash attendants, and the like as if they were pieces of furniture, talking, arguing, and sharing secrets as though these people aren’t there. Before arriving in New York City, the Mexicans, often coming from small villages, had never met Jews. And they are generally unfamiliar with American culture. The same bewilderment must surface if they’re hired as maintenance workers in a Polish cultural center, or as dishwashers in an Irish bar. They certainly won’t get the nuances. We do not explore this sufficiently. These experiences, occurring in many locales throughout the city, are important, both for what they tell us about the past lives of these immigrants and about how their future perceptions will be shaped.
When different ethnic groups live in the same neighborhoods, they often view each other in stereotypical terms, but the following comments by a longtime German-Jewish resident in Washington Heights, which is today largely Dominican, reveal how complex people’s impressions can be. We also see how people struggle with each other’s opinions, which they suspect may not be entirely fair. “It seems that the Dominicans and Jews here get along pretty well,” I observe. The man, an Orthodox Jew and an accountant, responds:
When the Dominicans came here, the German Jews were taken aback by the loud music, the graffiti, the noise, and the garbage. I don’t want to be a racist, because I understand that in the islands that’s what you do with garbage …. you dump it in the middle of the street. [This is certainly no longer the case today.] On the other hand, my mother was walking on 181st Street fifteen years ago and she was mugged, and this Hispanic shopkeeper came running out, ran after the mugger, caught him, and yelled, “Don’t you ever come back to this neighborhood, or I’ll knock the daylights out of you.” [This is an example of an alliance among the “decent folks” that transcends ethnicity.] My wife will be riding in a train, and who will get up and give her a seat?—a Hispanic. Not only that, but my mother was sitting shiva [in mourning], and the Hispanic people in the building came out in droves. And we have other contacts with them too. Orthodox Jews got involved in the school boards because there were issues of concern to them, like you might not want a school built next to the synagogue. Of course, the Hispanics became upset, saying, “If you don’t send your kids to the school, why should you have a say in what happens to them?”
The contacts are uneven and sometimes situationally defined. For example, when Leiby Kletzky, a young Hasidic boy, went missing (he was murdered and dismembered by someone who belonged to the Orthodox community), about twenty Pakistani volunteers participated in the search, demonstrating the solidarity and concern of Muslims who operate businesses in the area.36 Was this a way of gaining favorable publicity for them, as some cynically observed, or simply an act of human compassion for neighbors, or both? Regardless, it was noteworthy. As one Jewish resident told me, “It was amazing and made a deep impression on me.”
I pass by a Manhattan Jewish temple located across the street from a Pakistani-owned government building. “Do you have anything to do with the people in the temple?” I ask a Pakistani employee standing outside, thinking there are tensions but also friendly contacts between Muslims and Jews.
“No,” he responds. “We’re friendly, say hello, but that’s it.”
Is this an opportunity lost, or does it sometimes take a crisis like the Kletzky case to energize people? How frequently do such openings for communication emerge, and how often do people take advantage of them? We simply don’t know.
In general, many relationships that are strained in the homeland become different in the Melting Pot Capital of the world. Indians and Pakistanis seem to get along fine here.37 Devout Muslims and Orthodox Jews live and work together amicably side by side in Flatbush. (See figure 4.) Their beliefs regarding modest women’s dress become one reason for working together, as well as the fact that both groups take their religion seriously. Polish superintendents have found a niche in this area too, and one of the more popular neighborhoods for them is Borough Park, home to many Orthodox Jews. It doesn’t matter that the Poles were regarded as very anti-Semitic in Europe. Here it’s irrelevant. In fact, Orthodox Jews express preferences at times for Polish household help, a symbiotic relationship quite common in the shtetls, or small villages, of pre–World War II Poland. A Polish contractor tells me of his close relationship with Rabbi Menashe Klein, a prominent leader in Borough Park, saying, “He wanted me to go to Israel to design a synagogue for him.”
Frequently the view appears to be that there’s no room for such conflicts in the new land. But more than that may be at work here. One mitigating fact is that the basis for conflicts often lies in land disputes that really have no salience here. Also, local issues like crime, jobs, and education take precedence for the immigrants. Third, groups with differences between them, like Chinese and Koreans, may find themselves experiencing the same kinds of prejudice, and that unites them. Finally, the groups are aware of their past differences but may wish to seize a fortuitous opportunity to try to repair them. And in that sense the city becomes a hothouse laboratory for conflict resolution, demonstrating that in another context warring groups can live together in harmony. It’s a view that reinforces the most optimistic hopes of the immigrants—namely, that they can leave their age-old conflicts behind them and start over again. Whatever the individual motivations, by the time second-generation immigrants have reached adulthood, they have been here for most of their lives and cannot relate to conflicts with which they have no real familiarity. At the same time, if group members are taught prejudice, it may yet take hold.
But the immigrants are only part of the trend toward tolerance. Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, gave me an example of such interactions when I interviewed him in January 2013. He’s an articulate, charismatic, and engaging man with an excellent reputation for reaching out to people of all backgrounds.
Some years ago I was invited to the installation of Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, who is now at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. He sent me two tickets—we had been cohosts on my weekly show on WABC Talk Radio/770, Religion on the Line. When I arrived that day, there was an elderly Catholic woman who desperately wanted to enter, but she had no ticket. As I had an extra ticket, I offered it to her and she said, “Who are you?” “I’m a rabbi,” I told her. “Only in America,” she said, “does a Catholic need a rabbi to help her get into St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a ceremony.” This reflects the current reality. It is commonplace in the city today for people of different faiths to see each other as members of the human family. And I see it all the time in the depth of human relationships we share with the diverse faith communities.
What about coalitions that meet true needs? Alliances are often forged as a matter of convenience, even necessity, motivated by common needs and interests. But because of real differences, jealousies, suspicions, and the fact that that there’s just so much available for each contending group, these coalitions have often foundered or have prevailed only in small geographical areas. Look at the tensions when Hispanics and blacks tried to work together in the ’60s and ’70s.38 Today, differences often occur within groups such as West Indians and African Americans or between Hispanic groups like Dominicans and Puerto Ricans.
Hispanics can at least claim a common language and, very broadly speaking, a common geographic origin. Asians cannot so easily do so. Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a similar East Asian heritage and geographic location, though they speak different languages and have had negative experiences with one another in the past. Still, they would seem to have more in common than they do with South Asians. But the South Asians also have strong differences among themselves. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Indians may have a common geographic origin, and they look indistinguishable from one another, at least to outsiders. But Indians are predominantly Hindu while Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are overwhelmingly Muslim. And relations between Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are strained, despite their common religion. And where would we categorize the Guyanese? Fifty percent of the Guyanese in the United States are of Indian heritage. Yet they come from a South American nation, have not lived in India for generations, and are divided into Christians, Hindus, and Moslems, with some incorporating elements of all three faiths.
Hispanics share similar problems. Those from Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador, as well as Bolivia, are culturally separate from Caribbean Hispanics. Yet within that grouping, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans are also different from one another. What all this means is that lumping Asians, or Hispanics, or blacks, into one large group may be of limited value, because alliances between such disparate peoples may be very tenuous, just as they have been among other groups. And that includes another unmentioned group—those from Africa. The cultures and histories of countries like Kenya, Angola, Nigeria, and Liberia, are quite dissimilar.
These grand, all-inclusive alliances often work better in theory than in practice, it would seem. Yet without large coalitions, none of these immigrant groups will have real political and economic power. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that the group’s identity is often shaped from without rather than from within, and this may provide a rallying cry around which different groups can coalesce. Just look at the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s or how the Irish, Slavs, and Italians became the “unmeltable ethnics” that Michael Novak wrote about.39 And in the end, even the Jews frequently came to be seen merely as whites by blacks and Hispanics. It’s complicated, to say the least, but the shifting mosaic does illustrate the vast changes in the makeup of the city’s population mix, with the outcome remaining to be both defined and determined.