Bespoiling New York

Posted by BooMan | Aug 23, 2010 | 28 |

One day, probably two years ago now, I had a devil of a time getting out of Manhattan because traffic across the island was obstructed by the Pakistan Day Parade. Apparently, this parade has been an annual event for the last twenty-five years. I had never heard of it before, as it gets much less press than the annual Puerto Rican and Irish parades. Regardless, the Pakistan Day Parade is now an institution in New York City and no one seems to mind aside from the hassle that all such parades present for crosstown traffic.

Maybe I just take things a bit personally since I consider New York City to be my hometown (having grown up in its media market), but otherness is celebrated in the Big Apple, not demonized. Two of New York’s most enduring symbols are the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, both of which point to the generations of unwashed immigrants who have come to our shores and peopled our country. One of my great-grandfathers came to Ellis Island from northern Italy and signed his name with an ‘x’ because he was illiterate. They asked him the name of his hometown and used that for his new surname. I doubt that he spoke a lick of English and he wasn’t a Protestant like most of the people then living in this country. I have other ancestors that came on the Mayflower, so how much of me is a ‘Real American’?

The Republicans must stop setting Americans against each other. New Yorkers are proud of their diversity and their tolerance, but take a look at what’s happening in Gotham now:

That’s not New York. That’s the opposite of New York

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

28 Comments

seabe on August 23, 2010 at 5:54 pm

What part of Italy? My relatives came roughly around the same time from Abruzzo.

Apparently the rest were killed in an earthquake, but my aunt found one remaining somewhere the last time she went over there.
DaveW on August 23, 2010 at 7:32 pm

Has anybody tried to determine how many of these screaming asswipes are New Yorkers? I’d bet they don’t even make up a majority of the whining losers.
- Davis X Machina on August 23, 2010 at 8:59 pm
  
  They could be from Staten Island. Hell, they probably are from Staten Island….
  - Mum on August 24, 2010 at 4:24 am
    
    Yes, I’d put money on them being from Staten Island.
  - Ed J on August 24, 2010 at 6:49 am
    
    as New Yorkers.
  - DaveW on August 24, 2010 at 4:46 pm
    
    That’s the giant garbage dump, right? Seems appropriate.
shergald on August 23, 2010 at 7:41 pm

THe persistent attempt to get the ‘Mosque Supports Hamas” sign before the camera goes a lot deeper about the uses of this Islamophobic episode than just the GOP looking to develop another hate issue to attract voters.
Ed J on August 23, 2010 at 7:46 pm

I’m a native of New York City and we’ve always had our share of jerks. The asshole in the hardhat is no different from the assholes in hardhats who harassed us when we marched against the war in Vietnam.
- Mum on August 24, 2010 at 4:23 am
  
  Absolutely. While marching against the war in Vietnam in 1971 down Sixth Avenue, we had the distinct honor of having eggs and some other rather disgusting material dropped on our heads by hardhats working 10 stories up. And several among us were Vietnam vets who were protesting the war, a couple of whom had to be restrained from going up those 10 stories to confront the construction workers with questions about THEIR draft status.
shergald on August 23, 2010 at 8:04 pm

Just have to share this deep discussion of the Mosque topic by Juan Cole. Sorry about the length; permission granted.

What would Martin Luther King Say? Mosques and the New Jim Crow in America

August 23, 2010 by Juan Cole

The demonstration held on Sunday against the Park 51 Muslim community center in lower Manhattan was an attempt by the right wing to strike at first amendment freedoms, but at the same time, it was simply a revival of urban policies of discrimination that were routine in the last century.

That the demonstration had racist overtones is clear from this video of the event at YouTube, which caught the crowd’s harassment of and near attack on an African-American carpenter the rightwingers perceived as a Park 51 supporter. He is caught on audio pointing out that the mob actually did not have the slightest idea what he thought about anything.

The opposition to the Muslim center contravenes the ideals of the US constitution, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The 18th century English can throw us now, or seem obscure. Under British colonialism, the Established Church in, e.g. Virginia, was Anglicanism, the branch of Protestant Christianity of which King George III was the head. The Anglican Church received state funding (Virginians who did not like it were taxed to pay the salaries of corrupt clergymen sent out from London anyway). It was also arrogant and oppressive. Its officials had Quakers who declined to be baptized tossed in prison. That was what an Establishment of a religion was, which the Constitution seeks to prevent in the new Republic. It was an imposition by the Government of an official religion, supported monetarily by the state, and the punishment of those groups that offended the Established one.

We could translate the Clause: “The US Congress is forbidden from trying to make one religion more special than another, and from stopping people from worshiping as they please.” Originally, this principle applied mainly to the Federal government, but over time the states gradually adopted it into their constitutions, as well.

The rightwingers in Manhattan yesterday were attempting to assert that the site of the destroyed World Trade Center is Christian or perhaps `Judeo-Christian,’ and that those traditions have a special prerogative in that area. In contrast, they identify Islam with the attackers (even though Usama Bin Laden openly said of the hijackers that `those young men had no fiqh [Islamic law]`- i.e. they were lawless secret operatives rather than proper Muslims.) Al-Qaeda is a vicious cult, as little connected to mainstream Islam as Timothy McVeigh was to Christianity.

The demonstrators want to get around the Constitution by creating a sacred geography of sentiment that is outside ordinary legal reality. It consists of a space of white American Judeo-Christian victimhood and of another realm, of a brown, foreign, hostile Islam that must be excluded from lower Manhattan (never mind that these characterizations of American Muslims are pure falsehood). It is an attempt to create a space within which one religious tradition is favored over another, and an attempt to deny members of a religion the opportunity to practice it wherever they like. They grant the technical `right’ to the Muslims to worship there, but then seek to withdraw that right on the ground of hurt feelings or inappropriate geography. We saw this sort of thinking in the Jim Crow era, when African Americans, though full American citizens, were prevented from living, shopping, working, and inevitably from worshiping, in certain geographical areas, on the grounds that their doing so would offend and hurt the feelings of the White majority.

Of course, the abstract ideal of the Establishment and Practice Clauses of the Constitution has not suddenly been achieved in American history with no struggle. The early understanding of the Establishment Clause was less expansive than our current approach. But on the way to our current understanding of the First Amendment, urban America made a very big and unfortunate detour.

The controversy of the siting of the Muslim community center in lower Manhattan is nothing new in American history. Although we now forget previous decades of residential and religious discrimination, telling people where they can live and worship within a city was common in the first half of the twentieth century. “Protective Associations” agitated to keep Buddhist temples or even Japanese churches from being built. In Los Angeles, African-Americans and Japanese were only allowed to live in certain neighborhoods. Synagogues were also carefully policed. Limitations on where places of worship could be built were central to this effort to create and and preserve privileges for people who thought of themselves as white Christians.

Some historians assume that residential segregation was economic, that minorities could not afford to live in the white areas. But as historians have gotten into the municipal archives, they have found that city councils made rules about where people could live and worship, and that urban young people formed race-based gangs to harass minority members who tried to move out of the areas formally designated for them. Where those rules were struck down by the courts, people turned to private `covenants,’ written into real estate sale deeds, which performed the same function. While the Supreme Court found the latter unconstitutional in 1949, the covenants continued being used in the 1950s and 1960s.

See, e.g., Michael E. Engh, “A Multiplicity and Diversity of Faiths”: Religion’s Impact on Los Angeles and the Urban West, 1890-1940,” The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 463-492:

Residential segregation through restrictive policies [and real estate covenants] dramatically affected the religious geography of Los Angeles and led to an identifiable spatial distribution of worship sites for denominations throughout the city. Many areas of Los Angeles were effectively closed to churches such as the AME Church, congregations of the National Baptist Convention, and the Church of God in Christ, as well as to all synagogues and Buddhist temples, to cite the most obvious examples. Furthermore, mainline Christian denominations encountered virulent opposition to efforts to construct churches in certain neighborhoods. Two examples are the Methodist Episcopal mission to the Japanese in the Pico Heights district in 1919 and the Japanese Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in 1923.19 Non-Asian “protective associations” pressured the sponsoring churches and publicized opposition to the establishment of religious institutions for the benefit of the Japanese.

By excluding certain religious groups from particular neighborhoods, racially restrictive covenants circumscribed the locus of religious observance by people of color and by Jews in Los Angeles and infringed upon their free expression of religion. This exclusionary practice indirectly but powerfully promoted religious mistrust and ignorance by denying to minorities the ordinary human interaction possible in integrated neighborhoods. The consequences of such prejudice plague the city to the present day and have contributed to the 1965 and 1992 outbreaks of violence. Recognizing this legacy of discrimination, pastors and other religious leaders in recent years formed the “Heal LA” coalition to counteract these long-standing divisions. The legacy of thecovenants, however, poses serious challenges to their efforts.20

19 Modell, Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation, 60 -65.

20 For a further description of Heal LA, see John B. Err, Donald E. Miller, Wade Clarke Roof, and J. Gordon Melton, Politics of the Spirit: Religion and Multiethnicity in Los Angeles( Los Angeles, 1994).

Those who say that not everyone who opposes the Cordoba community center is a racist may be right, but everyone who opposes it is supporting a practice that has in the American past been deeply connected to racism, which is the dictation to minorities of where they may live and worship within American cities. Just as today’s protesters said that they don’t challenge the right of Muslims to build mosques and worship, “just not here,” so the `protective councils’ in early twentieth century Los Angeles said exactly the same thing to Jews about their synagogues and Japanese Buddhists about their temples. Moreover, the fact is that the building of mosques is being widely opposed and interfered with throughout the country and not just in lower Manhattan. This generalized bigotry is clearly racist, and looks exactly like the prejudice implemented against other minorities in the age of `separate but equal.’

Just as the rights of African-Americans were recognized under Jim Crow, but it was simply insisted that they practice their rights somewhere else than in white department stores and build their churches somewhere else than in white bastions, so too in today’s America Muslims’ requests to local councils for permission to build a mosque is too often being denied on grounds that all Muslims are dangerous (just as it was thought by many whites in the early twentieth century that all African-Americans, all Jews, etc., were dangerous in one way or another).

As for those who counsel the Park 51 Muslims that now is not the time, that Manhattan is not the place, that they should not hurt feelings, they are taking exactly the same line as the clergymen who wrote Martin Luther King to urge him to desist from his direct action campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, as a result of which he had been jailed. King wrote in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” . He says that they called his campaign “unwise and untimely,” characterized it as “outsiders coming in,” and asserted that negotiations would be better than direct action. They implicitly accused him of impatience, of rocking the boat, of hurting the feelings of white folk who were not ready for his message.

King replied, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

`We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant `Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” `

Muslim Americans are Americans. There can be no government Establishment of Judeo-Christian traditions, and no prohibition on how and where Muslim Americans worship. We are seeing attempts to foment a new Jim Crow, centered on mosques, which involves all the same fear-mongering, segregation, and special pleading for the majority that characterized the old one. It is important that this campaign against a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan not succeed, or it will be only the first in a long series of discriminatory policies throughout the country, as opportunistic politicians jump on the Islamophobic bandwagon. Those who believe that giving the Lazios and Palins and Gingriches this one will deflate the tension are misreading the historical moment. These are ravenous beasts, and giving them red meat will only send them into a greater frenzy, not satiate them. Asking people to give up their rights for too long will undermine those rights, just as justice too long delayed is justice denied.
Andrew Longman on August 23, 2010 at 8:59 pm

Boo, I share your feelings about NYC and your current outrage in flyover and asswipe America (not to slight everyone there as our roots are there too) over what residence in NYC might want to allow (heaven forbid we question a bridge in Alaska or 4 lane to Altoona).

But also keep in mind that NYC has a long history of race riots and violence against minorities going back centuries. Great grandpa didn’t have it easy. Buttheads are accepted and even embraced in NYC as part of the spirit of diversity (see New Yorker sean Hannity)
- BooMan on August 23, 2010 at 10:52 pm
  
  New Yorkers sometimes fight each other, but they always digest newcomers. And Manhattan is different from Staten Island or Crown Heights. I can’t remember a race riot in Manhattan. I guess there was some ordeal between blacks and Koreans in Harlem sometime in the 1990’s, but I can’t even remember the details. When I walk in Central Park, English may be the most common language I hear but it makes up less than half of what I hear. It’s an international island.
  - Hurria on August 24, 2010 at 3:29 am
    
    Based on my experiences and observations at the airport every time I am forced to re-enter the country via New York as opposed to any other city, I find it difficult to believe that New Yorkers are OK with newcomers. They treat re-entering American citizens like shit, and based on what I have seen they are even less welcoming to non-citizens. I had an experience last year trying to help a young (Christian) woman from Syria who spoke no English with a very minor problem that should have been easily solved. Those nice, tolerant New Yorkers would just as soon have shipped her back to Syria than take the very simple steps needed to solve the problem. Fortunately, I had several hours between flights, and can be fairly – ummm – “persistent” when enough is at stake, so they did not succeed in getting rid of her.
    - Brendan Skwire on August 24, 2010 at 10:57 am
      
      nah, that’s just TSA (total stupid assholes). TSA treats everyone like shit. Here in Philly, they’re always getting written up in the newspaper for abusing this person or that.
      - Hurria on August 25, 2010 at 2:54 am
        
        Actually, I have been treated courteously, and at times almost apologetically by the TSA in other cities than New York, so I don’t buy it. To fly into New York is to be subjected to several layers of abuse.
  - MassCommons on August 24, 2010 at 7:42 am
    
    Booman, I agree with the main thrust of your point. As for race riots in Manhattan, there were major riots (death and destruction) in Harlem in 1935, 1943 and 1964—not to mention the blackout of 1977 across the entire city.
    
    Going back to the 19th century, the largest and deadliest riot in US history (still) was the 1863 draft riot, put down by US troops rushed by train from the battlefield at Gettysburg.
    
    The late, great Harold Washington, when he was preparing to run for mayor of Chicago said words to this effect: “This is America—where anyone can walk up to that door, knock it down (!), and claim a seat at the table.”
    
    It’s a robust and pugilistic vision of the American dream. But then, he was trying simultaneously to fire up his supporters and to steel them for the struggle to elect the first African-American mayor of one of America’s most segregated cities.
    
    Washington’s Chicago has much in common with New York City. Nobody’s going to give you anything—starting with a seat on the bus, or even space to walk down the sidewalk. But every morning it starts again: you can get up, go outside, and fight for your place in the city. If you do, most people will respect you (whether they like you or not).
    - Andrew Longman on August 24, 2010 at 9:06 am
      
      Yup. Said well. Those are the event and the thinking I had in mind. That said I don’t have a big problem with a pugilistic diversity. Have to earn a seat at the table, with clear and mostly fair rules, even if they are tough beats tyranny of the majority or handing anyone and everyone everything.
    - BooMan on August 24, 2010 at 9:07 am
      
      Right, but I was born in 1969 and don’t remember anything prior to 1972. It’s been a long time since Manhattan had a full-on race riot.
      - on August 24, 2010 at 10:47 am
        
        Not a race riot, and not about religion, but you have to be aware of 1970 and the Hard Hat Riot — and example of intolerance of otherness of political belief.
        
        Happened just days after Kent State, with hundreds of pro-war NY construction workers showing up to counter-demonstrate — aggressively and loudly — against antiwar protesters. Some hard hats attacked the peaceful antiwar group; dozens injured. Quite an ugly incident in the history of that city.
      - BooMan on August 24, 2010 at 11:51 am
        
        It’s not a news flash that the country was badly divided by the Vietnam War. Just looking at the clash at Columbia should put that debate to rest.
MNPundit on August 23, 2010 at 9:10 pm

Haha, that’s going to be a hoot and a half when the righties catch on to that.

Anyhow I am clearly more of a real American than BooMan. My ancestors are Mesoamericans and Spaniards (maybe some Arab and Berber in there too, you never know) and my family were part of the original Texas annexations by the US.
wilderness wench on August 23, 2010 at 11:34 pm

At this point NYC is as much of a brand as it is an actual place & the Right has attempted to own the brand since 9/11.
The actual place is even beside the point.
Davis X Machina on August 24, 2010 at 1:15 am

One of my great-grandfathers came to Ellis Island from northern Italy and signed his name with an ‘x’ because he was illiterate.

Jeez, I hope he wasn’t originally named “Vito Andolini”….
Hurria on August 24, 2010 at 3:11 am

“The Republicans must stop setting Americans against each other.“

Oh, please! Stop putting this all on the Republicans. There are more than enough Democrats who are happy to display their clueless bigotry on this issue, and not all of them are politicians, either. The fact that for the most part they are a bit more sophisticated in the way they state things does not make them better than the brute in the hard hat.

In fact, even some of them who say they are not opposed to the building of the not-at-ground-zero-non-mosque end up exhibiting their true sentiments in roundabout ways. Like the local, very liberal, and generally decent radio talk host who the other day kept justifying his support for the not-at-ground-zero-non-mosque by saying Americans need to show forgiveness – as if the people planning the Center, and the community it is intended to serve, not to mention Muslims in general, have done something for which they need to be forgiven. Well, you know, not ALL Muslims are bad people, after all.

Anti-Islamism did not begin with 9/11, and it is looking more and more clearly like the 21st century’s version of anti-Semitism.
- TarheelDem on August 24, 2010 at 9:28 am
  
  But anti-Islamism and anti-Semitism (cultural and religious) are forms of Christian bigotry. And not the only forms of Christian bigotry in the US. Nor are Christians the only bigots in the US.
TarheelDem on August 24, 2010 at 7:37 am

A Daily Kos diary, DEVELOPING: Ground Zero Mosque brought to you by DC Lobbyist firm, ties to “King Birther” Gaffney, follows the money and domain name trail in this issue.

The site stopthe911mosque.com is registered to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy an astroturf lobbying firm (“think tank”) funded in part by the Koch brothers, billionaire shareholders in the oil firm Koch industries.

BTW, it turns out that centerforsecuritypolicy.org was registered August 6, 2001. That should stir up the “truthers” again, shouldn’t it.
QueerReader on August 24, 2010 at 10:01 am

BooMan thank you so much for posting this horrible video.

I love New York, but this is not the New York that I love.
on August 24, 2010 at 10:40 am

In a city the size of NY, it would be remarkable indeed if there wasn’t that 20% or so of knuckledragging bigots in its population. I believe NYC is different from other places in so many respects, but just not in the area of being completely free of prejudice against otherness of race, ethnicity, religion or political belief.

Re anti-Muslim attitudes there, I recall fairly vividly the post-911 concert held in the city for the first responders and their families. Among the many stars who showed up to lend support was peace advocate actor Richard Gere who walked out on stage to make a few brief comments, which included at one point a sincere appeal that our country not tarnish the entire world of Islam with the brush of Al Queda. He was greeted with very robust booing from what sounded like a large number of the first-responder audience.

I’d like to think that in terms of religious tolerance, the vast majority of NYers reflect the noble sentiments of the current mayor Bloomberg. But it’s also important to acknowledge this is also the same city that elected an intolerant Rudy Giuliani several times.

Bespoiling New York

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