Race in New York City has a strange double quality. On the one hand it is a pretty liberal place, a place where if you have a good education you can do well no matter what your colour, where most people will not try to force you into one box or another and you can just be yourself. And yet, on the other hand, it is profoundly racist. Something that stands out clearly in the Sean Bell killing, in how some neighbourhoods are as white as snow and others as black as coal, in how the neighbourhood can change suddenly when you cross a street.
New York is about one third white, one fourth black and 40% everything else – mostly Chinese and Latin American but also everything else under the sun. It is a city of 800 languages. Babel backwards. Not only do people come to New York from all over the world, but they even mix and create colours that are seen nowhere else – except maybe in London or Paris.
In most of the rest of the country there is just black and white and people who try to force you into one box or the other. But in New York, because there is a broad middle between black and white, because it has in it strange colours that no one can figure out, you can pretty much live your life without being forced into a box. And that gives you a freedom to be yourself in a way you cannot do in most of America.
This is not to say that when you go to look for work or for a place to live, employers and landlords are not going to look at you and come to unspoken conclusions about your colour. You can have an Ivy League education and still there will be plenty of white people who think you are not as good as they are and turn you away – or pay you less than whites.
But the thing is New York needs people with good educations, more than there are. That helps to make your education matter more and your colour less.
And yet the police are beyond bad. Sean Bell was just what made the papers. The police, in general, do not care much about black lives – not even black middle-class ones. As I found out from living in Jamaica, Queens, they care more about the lives of even white foreigners than they do about black Americans.
And it is very hard, at least for me, to see poor black neighbourhoods less than a mile away from rich white ones. But in New York you see that. It was something I saw day after day, year after year. I still cannot get it out of my mind. And there is no way for me to make sense of that other than naked racism on the part of whites. Either that or their hearts are made of stone.
See also:
Abagond 
Interesting post. Here is an “only in NY” racial twist. See especially about 10 minutes in:
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr10-17-08.html
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Interesting post as always, Aba.
This post touches on how institutional racism trumps social racism nowadays. Nobody’s going to call you a “n****r” to your face but systematically, they damn sure regard you as such.
It’s funny you post Rosario Dawson as the NYC poster girl. She’s said that race was never really a real issue for her, while growing up in NYC. It didn’t become an issue until she reached Hollywood. It was there, that race began to define her to everyone.
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That is just why I put her picture there: because she is a good example of how inside the city people do not try to put you in a box so much, but outside the city, where things are much more black and white, they do.
I also put her there because she is a New Yorker who is a mix of races and because I had a picture of her with the city behind her.
The picture of Club Kahlua is there because it represents the other end: it is where Sean Bell was shot.
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Interesting post until the end when you lay all of the blame on the “White Community.”
I’m from Los Angeles and I have to say that the police out there are MUCH worse than the ones out here, though to be fair, I have only lived in Sugar Hill, so I can’t say for every place in the city.
At some point though, the blame has to be split between the Government (not the whites as people as a whole do not have the power to put racist actions into place) and the community itself.
This may also exist only in New York because it is very BLOCK focessed while in other areas, like South Carolina, Atlanta, Los Angeles – these are very wealthy black areas where people do not pisss on the streets of their own neighborhoods and throw trash on the streets without regard of the consequences. It goes back to the parenting of the children – and for some reason, the amount of teen pregnancy in poor areas creates a continuous class of people who do not have propper parenting at home because they themselves have not matured into adulthood.
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Also, Sean Bell was not shot by white cop, right?
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In response to the comment above:
Doesn’t matter. The motive was the same.
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Stal:
1. One of the three cops was white. The white one shot most of the bullets and is the only one who reloaded.
2. Blacks can be racist against blacks too. In fact, I would say they are more racist against blacks than against whites.
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Out of curiousity, what makes you think that blacks are more racist against themselves than whites are?
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No, what I meant was that blacks are more racist against blacks than against whites:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/all-blacks-are-racist/
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Stal:
Back in the 1960s there were people who said blacks were poor because of the high number of children born out of wedlock and the breakdown of the black family. While that certainly made matters worse, it was hardly the root cause. After all, the white illegitimacy rate is now higher than the black rate was back then.
When Harlem became an outright slum in the 1930s, blacks had a higher rate of marriage than whites did in those days.
It is a comforting thing for whites to believe – and a profitable thing for black conservative opinion-makers to say – but it does not hold up when you look into it.
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I’ve only gone to NYC as a tourist, and that was written all over me. When I took my two kids there the last time, they were 12 and 5, back in 2000.
At a deli on Broadway the management was very nasty – not to us, because I was obviously a tourist with her children, but at the young, well-dressed young black couples in their early 20s coming in behind me to order. They looked like they were coming from a movie and were polite. The body language and hate glares were so unwarranted from the deli person. It was appalling.
The black young adults looked uncomfortable but ignored it, like they were used to it and only wanted some damn sandwiches. If this had been the only incident I witnessed, I’d shrug it off, but it happened again at another deli on Broadway.
A chatty old white guy who rode us in the horse and carriage tourist thing talked about the great rent controlled building he lived in. He knew I was a professional b/c he had asked in casual conversation. I asked him what the wait list was there, and he said I’d never get in, they don’t accept blacks although they won’t say this.
I visited Wall Street too, and noticed that hardly any of the suit and tie crowd was black. I thought this odd.
I like NYC for all the entertainment there, but it does have serious race issues.
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Kit & Stal:
Thank you very much for your comments – #4 and #11. Read together – first #11 and then #4 – they are much more powerful than either one standing alone – or anything I could have written from my own single point of view.
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I’d like to know more about the history of race relations in NY other than the more recent ones that are in the news. I’d like to know more about the pre-20th century race relations of NYC.
Steph
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Great suggestion! I will post on it before the end of November (that and the gentrification of Harlem).
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Abagond … I think you’re right. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and the poverty stricken black neighborhoods you speak of were very close to that of the rich white ones. I grew up in Canarsie. When my family first moved there, there was a lot of whites (Italians and Jews mainly) but over the years it has changed. It is now mostly black and while it isn’t poverty stricken it is well on its way. Then there are the Flatbush, Bedford Stuyvesant, ENY, Redhook neighborhoods that are poor and mainly black not too far away from the rich, mainly white neighborhoods such as Bensonhurst, Mill Basin (however, I do see gentrification taking place there), and Boerum Hill. It is sad, but it is reality. In high school I worked in a clothing store in SoHo that required you send in a photo through email along with your job application before they’d hire you. Being young, dumb, and broke I did it and I got the job (didn’t keep it very long though) … now I feel as if I’m realizing why they enforced such a strange policy and I wish I hadn’t.
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What if we did a reality show called “Hood Swap” where we took children from different neighborhoods and had them lived with different families. To make an incentive, we could give those kids college credits towards their education. In the long run, it would do a good deal for creating true understadning of race when they get older. the key really is just undertadning why certain people do things. Like, say, if I were a kid and lived with a Puerto Rican Family when i was younger, I would understand why they play their music so fucking loud. Ok. Ok. I kid. But really – this stuff must be addressed at an early age so that people of different races and religions are not so unfamiliar with each other. I grew up in a very mixed area, so wherever I have lived has to be mixed or i start to feel wierd.
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There are an estimated 1.5 million Black men in prison and another 3.5 million on probation. Black males make up more than 70 percent of the total prison population, even though they make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population.
Although blacks are 12% of the population in reality it is just 2% of the blacks that commit 50% of the murders and a greater percentage of other crimes. Consider: black females – 6%. Blacks from zero yrs. to 12 yrs. and black males from 50-100 years commit an infinitesimal percentage of the crimes. Therefore we are left with two percent. If we eliminate crimes committed by this two percent from the U.S. statistics our country compares very favorably with all Western countries. Fact — blacks kill 7 times more than whites kill. Fact — blacks kill whites 20 times more than whites kill blacks. Fact — blacks mug or commit group crime against whites 50 times more than whites commit against blacks. Fact — blacks rape white women 2000 (yes 2000) times more than whites rape black women. In New York City, about 300 white women are raped by blacks every year BUT there has not been a black woman raped by a white male in anybody¢s memory (going back over 20 yrs.) Consider: Al Sharpton had to go upstate New York to find a hoax and that was almost 20 years ago. (Source NYT 4/22/05)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2004 report (released May 2006), blacks commit 54 percent of the homicides in America even though they constitute only 12 percent of the population.
An individual black male is seven times more likely to commit murder than an individual white male. It so happens that black felons commit 43 percent of aggravated assaults, 66 percent of armed robberies, 27 percent of rapes and 85 percent of interracial crimes of violence, mainly against whites (this last figure from a Justice Department report 2003). However, it’s not just in the United States. The greatest dicators in recent years have emerged in Africa. People like Idi Amin of Uganda, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi, Mobutu Sese Seko, in Zaire, self-anointed Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Mohammed Saidi Barre in Somalia, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe — the list is endless.
Blacks are dumber as well, statistics analyzed by the New York Times (July 4, 1999) dispel the poverty argument by establishing that impoverished white children whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year score higher on standardized SAT tests than black children whose parents earn more than $70,000 a year. Also, nearly 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
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Nicole,
Please do me a favor. Shut up!
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This is exactly why I normally just read articles and ignore the commentary. Why? because there is always a racist troll or race baiter lurking around with an agenda looking to offend someone else. Nicole, go to your kitchen, turn on the gas and light a match!
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“And there is no way for me to make sense of that other than naked racism on the part of whites. Either that or their hearts are made of stone.”
BOTH.
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@msday, LOLOLOL LMAO!!!
@Nicole, I bet you got a warm & fuzzy feeling typing all those lies.
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I lived in NYC from 1987 – 1995. Indeed, one of the reasons I moved there was because “it has in it strange colours that no one can figure out, you can pretty much live your life without being forced into a box. And that gives you a freedom to be yourself in a way you cannot do in most of America.”
But, it was still profoundly racist. It had just reeled from the Howard Beach hate crime, and I was there during the Bensonhurst hate crime murders and the Crown Heights riots. When I was looking for an apartment, I had many realtors refuse to show me apartments unless I told them what my nationality was. (The funny thing is, I told each and every one of them that I was an American of XXX and YYY descent. But the reply question was, “But, what country are you from?” —
). They refused to show apartments to an Asian-American friend of mine who wanted to room with a university-educated black woman. They told her that they could find apartments for *her*, but not for her with her friend. :-\
When my company had layoffs, the vast majority affected the Black, Hispanic and Latino staff. The few white people let go were the ones labelled as “gay”.
Could not have been pure chance.
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^^^ Yup.
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“When my company had layoffs, the vast majority affected the Black, Hispanic and Latino staff. ”
Sorry, I meant to say Black, Hispanic and Asian staff, especially in the front office departments. Back office staff was more ethnically and sexually (both gender and orientation) diverse.
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@ Jefe
I remember Crown Heights and all that. Also: Eleanor Bumpurs, Bernie Goetz, the Central Park Jogger thing, Tawana Brawley, the Crack Era. There is probably other stuff I am forgetting.
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Oh, yes, the central park jogger, Bernie Goetz.
By the way, I was mugged on the subway coming home from the Bronx in rush hour, and had my money and watch stolen. I went to report it to Transit Police in Grand Central Station, but they seemed to think it was such a non-issue that they thought it was not even worth reporting. :-\
My roommate was jumped and robbed by a couple of guys walking home from the subway station.
I have been robbed or mugged or assaulted many times in different cities and states in the USA.
Where I live now, I never have to worry about street crime, EVER. I think people in the USA think it is normal.
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I lived in Manhattan from 78 until 86…before I came, I thought all the differant kinds of people living there would be a wonderful happy blend..I found out they all hate each other…(that is an exageration , but, ethinic blocks are very well defined and are defended territory)
I used to play wedding in those Jersey wedding factories, building that have about 5 or 6 differant rooms for differant wedding receptions. I reccomended to a leader to use a black Puerto Rican bass player to do a gig out there. After the gig, the leadere told me the managers informed him to not hire a black musician ever again…It really left a bad taste in my mouth I have never forgot…
About the people who said the staff at a resarurant was rude, I remember visiting New York before I decided to live there and I went downstairs from my flop hotel to get some food and i saw a guy ordering a falafal…it seemed like in their natural conversation of interaction for the purchase, they were saying “F U” in their tones of voice to each other….I took note of that
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The was an incident here in NYC back in the 80s, I believe, where a young Black guy — his name, I don’t recall — died while in police custody. His death written off as being due to “an accidental fall down the stairs”. What didn’t add up to that explanation was the fact that, after this guy died, supposedly from falling down a flight of stairs (a broken neck, maybe?), the coroner felt the need to remove both of the eyes from the dead man’s body.
The cops must have been repeatedly punching that guy in the eyes when they were murdering him. Luckily for them they had a coroner in their corner, or back pocket, as it were.
It reminds me of a recent incident where this guy used gasoline to sprayed down a woman in an elevator, he then set her ablaze with a barbecue lighter. The man himself exited the elevator untouched by the flames as was shown on surveillance video. Mysteriously enough though, a photograph of the perpetrator at his arraignment showed him with half of his face very badly burned and its eyelid greatly swollen (the other half of his face was unaffected). The injury of course was explained away as being caused by an accident he’d supposedly had at his home before he turned himself in.
Hmm. I wonder just what it was he doing that would / could cause only half of his face and no other parts of his body to be burned so badlly
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“I lived in Manhattan from 78 until 86…before I came, I thought all the differant kinds of people living there would be a wonderful happy blend..I found out they all hate each other…(that is an exageration , but, ethinic blocks are very well defined and are defended territory)”
*****
B.R.
I believe the separation of ethnic groups by neighborhoods is by design – – it’s not the common everyday people that’s doing the “steering.”
Meanwhile the gentrification of Harlem in NYC continues unabated with more whites continually moving in as new and renovated (more expen$ive) housing becomes available. The Bronx, by comparison, for the most part, is a non-white enclave.
The mayor of New York covers his rear against accusations of racial steering by permitting *some* (a FEW) black and brown folks to now live in Manhattan neighborhoods (in mixed income dwellings) that remains predominantly white.
Diverse people might be less apt to hate one another – over time – if they live, work and play in the same neighborhoods/areas – having the same/similar experiences… But of course we know that there are powerful forces/interests that benefit FINANCIALLY/POLITICALLY by maintaining the status quo.
NYC, imho, would be a much better city if all neighborhoods were occupied by a equal mixture, more or less, of people from ALL ethnic backgrounds!
But *THEY* aren’t about to let that happen.
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Bulanik,
My memories of what I heard about the incident are sketchy. I remembered that his first name was Michael. By doing a Google search, this is what I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stewart_(graffiti_artist)
According to the above linked article, there was a belief that Michael Stewart was stranguled, which makes sense as to why the coroner would remove (and subsequently ‘misplace’) Michael’s eyes.
Hemorrhaging in the eyes can be taken as one sign (among others that a strangulation has taken place.
Also, while this article doesn’t seem to mention the police explanation of “a fall down the stairs”, it was a prominent (and ridiculous) part of the story back then, and was probably issued as a way of explaining away all the bruising the victim had on his body.
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Absolutly, Matari….white flight…New York was definitly part of that, and, thanks for pointing out how Bloomberg is dealing with that today
Heck, I left New York when the crudy apartment I lived in near Radio City Music Hall wanted to raise the rent from 600 to 700 ??!! ( I lived with a girl in the really cool artists building , the Manhattan Plaza, rent stabalised , and she kicked me out after 5 years…darn it, it was her apartment)
I mean its ridiculas now and I honestly dont know how you can live in Manhattan with out having a fortune, which leaves a lot of people out
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Matari, yes, its very revealing how local government officials combined with realters to create white flight and create ghettos.And then white racists criticise black people for conditions in the ghetto. Its mind boggling the denial…
At the same time, there was an enormous migration from the South of black people that were funneled right into these ghettos.
I even remember reports back then that southern white officials actualy paid bus fare for the poorest black people to get them out of their communities and dump them up into the northern ghettos.
Now,there surely are a tremendous amount of individuals from the south who were part of that migration that actualy florished in the norh and found better lives and made something out of themselves.
But, the way it was set up to fill poor black ghettos with huge amounts of poor people , only would agravate a manipulated situation even more. If they had been allowed to move into integrated communities with good school systems and equal infrastucture, how might that have made a differance in the social problems we see as a result of the white racist manipulated nothern city ghettos?
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All of what you said in this article could also be said about the Bay Area in California. As a matter of fact, some of the statements in this article are probably truer of the Bay Area than they are of New York City. NYC is diverse, but NY and its people have always come across as hyper aware of race and profoundly openly racist in my opinion. New Yorkers aren’t exactly shy about being openly and vocally racist like say, DC residents who are passively aggressively racist. The movie Do The Right Thing perfectly encapsulated race relations in New York City. New York has only become less segregated on a neighborhood basis due to gentrification. Prior to gentrification, you had incidents like the death of Yusef Hawkins to illustrate how deeply segregated NY neighborhoods were and hateful and racist New Yorkers could be.
The Bay Area create people who have more people who are allowed to be themselves moreso than NYC in regards to identity politics like race. Just last decade, the Bay Area spawned many eccentric viral personalities because of their controversial disregard for sociocultural American norms. Viral white girl rap stars from Oakland Kreayshawn and V Nasty made waves last decade for their unapologetic use of the n-word. But people outside of the Bay Area do not realize how diverse and integrated inner city areas in the Bay Area are. In San Francisco, there was never an all black or nearly all-black neighborhood like Bed-Stuy or Harlem. San Francisco and Oakland rank as some of the least segregated cities for black people to live in unlike NYC. V Nasty was indeed from East Oakland and her life story was verified. And use of the n-word by all races in Bay Area inner city areas is normalized. Another viral rapper Ezale from East Oakland made waves with a series of rap videos showcasing his largely Asian American ghetto neighborhood of Funktown. A place where blacks and Asians live side by side in the ghetto without much real racial tension. It’s ironic that the city that birthed the Black Panthers could be the most colorblind from a unified POC perspective. But not really. If you know the history of the Black Panthers, Brown Berets and Asian Nationalists supported the movement in the Bay back in the day.
The Bay Area in a lot of ways has always been ahead of the rest of the country. After all, it’s the unofficial capital of liberal white America. Acceptance of homosexuals and transgender folks has always been big in the Bay Area. Same with relaxed attitudes when it comes to open recreational marijuana usage that has since spread nationwide with the decriminalization of cannabis. But in some ways, the super liberal policies that take place in the Bay Area are extremely bad for people of color. For example, San Francisco has had the worst case of black flight of any big city. A huge percentage of the Latino population of SF has been pushed out of the barrio of the Mission district. Oakland has also lost about half its black population in the past 25 years. The aggressive gentrification practices that have taken place in the Bay are being replicated in other big cities like DC. For example, San Francisco spent last decade tearing down all of the infamous predominantly black housing projects in Hunter’s Point, which was once a place with the highest concentration of black owned real estate and black owned businesses in the entire state of California in the 80’s prior to the crack epidemic, while DC decided to evict all of the inhabitants of the infamous Barry Farm in SE DC last year. DC is the most aggressively gentrifying big city in America. I wouldn’t surprised in 25 years if there were less than 10% black people left in DC and you had to be a millionaire to live there plus a raging homeless drug addict problem just like San Francisco.
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