- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
This week I focused on finding a couple of peer-reviewed journal articles that either discussed the topic of gentrification, history of Williamsburg, race relations in Brooklyn, or community organizations like El Puente.
- What is your initial impression of the data?
I found the data to be very informational. For example, I heard about the Ocean Hill-Brownsville disturbances, however, I did not know much about it until reading the articles. Further, I found the last article on the effect of gentrification on industrial displacement to be extremely helpful in thinking beyond residential displacement to work/industrial displacement. I was not thinking about how gentrification affects business and work, therefore it would be a good and valuable question to ask.
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
It has made me want to add more questions to my interview protocol.
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
No real challenges, just need to read more articles!
- What are your next steps?
I plan on finding more articles that deal with race relations in Williamsburg, the effects of gentrification on industry, and the role of the church in combating gentrification.
- 2-3 annotations.
Sales, William W., and Rod Bush. 2000. “The Political Awakening of Blacks and Latinos in New York City: Competition or Cooperation?” Social Justice 27, no. 1 (79): 19-42.
I focused on the section titled: “Building Power at the Grass Roots” in this article (Sales and Bush 2000:32). This section begins by describing the unity within the Black and Latino community in New York City through various cultural forms, such as break dancing and rap (Sales and Bush 2000:33). According to Sales and Bush, “There has been much discussion about the political significance of the rap youth culture…several positive expressions of it have appeared and reflect the considerable contribution it can make to strengthening political coalitions between Blacks and Latinos” (2000:33). The authors highlight the role of community organizations, like El Puente, in creating a unified coalition of Blacks and Latinos. They consider Luis Garden Acosta’s push for a multiracial school board in Williamsburg, as a prime example of this unity (Sales and Bush 2000:33). Further, in this section Sales and Bush tell of the “benchmark for Black and Latino grass-roots cooperation in Brooklyn,” which was the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville protest. The Ocean Hill-Brownsville struggle was a response by Black and Latinx families against the forced integration of community schools (Sales and Bush 2000:34). The community was calling for “quality education not integration” (Sales and Bush 2000:34). This section concludes with the notion the “Black-Latino collaboration is central to challenging institutional racism because these groups constitute the bulk of the subproleterain strata in the United States” (Sales and Bush 2000: 37).
Pollock, John C., and Laurel M. Whitney. 1997. “Newspapers and Racial/ Ethnic Conflict: Comparing City Demographics and Nationwide Reporting on the Crown Heights (Brooklyn, NY) Incidents.” New Jersey Journal of Communication 5(2): 127-149.
This article discusses the “Crown Heights” crisis in Brooklyn, which was “an incident resulting in conflicts between elements of a Caribbean-American community and elements of an Orthodox Jewish community” (Pollock and Whitney 1997:127). The problem began when a “Hasidic Jew” ran through a red light, which caused the death of one young Carribean child and injury of another (Pollock and Whitney 1997:131). As a result, approximately three hours after that fateful accident, a gang of Black youths fatally stabbed a member of the Orthodox Jewish community (Pollock and Whitney 1997:131). Pollock and Whitney focus on the way this event was portrayed in public media and newspapers. More specifically, they analyze “the amount of attention an article received in a paper and the direction of the article (‘pluralist,’ ‘partisan,’ or ‘balanced/neutral’) to yield a single score for each paper” (Pollock and Whitney 1997:127). The researchers note that they chose to focus on the various ways this event was written about in newspapers as a way to “illuminate the audience perspective journalists might use in other situations involving potential ethnic or racial conflict” (Pollock and Whitney 1997:128). They conclude that critical event research and news that deals with ethnic or racial conflict needs to steer away from bias and impassioned partisan reporting (Pollock and Whitney 1997:145).
Ledogar, Robert J., Luis Garden Acosta, and Analia Penchaszadeh. 1999.”Building International Public Health Vision Through Local Community Research: The El Puente–CIET Partnership.” American Journal of Public Health 89(12): 1795-1797.
In this editorial, Roberts Ledogar, Luis Garden Acosta, and Analia Penchaszadeh discuss the partnership of El Puente and CIET (Centro de Investigación de Epidemiología Tropical). I chose this article to get a better understanding of the mission of El Puente, as well as the organizations associated with it. El Puente is defined as ” a community learning and development institution in the Williamsburg and Bushwick sections of Brooklyn” (Ledgar et al. 1999:1795). More specifically, El Puente was founded on “the principles of community learning and collective self-help,” which includes “explicit rejection of paternalistic social research or social assistance approaches that imply that outside experts know what is best for the community” (Ledgar et al. 1999:1796). Therefore, it is post-colonial in its essence. Further, this community organization sponsors community health programs, as well as advocate for community learning. In doing so, the goal is not for El Puente to solve the communities problems, but rather to come together and learn from one another. The editorial ends with El Puente’s “vision for the future,” which consists of “holistic and truly authentic community research center” that integrates and implements the “physical, intellectual, spiritual, social, and global dimensions of the ever-present struggles for health, peace, and justice” (Ledgar et al. 1999:1797).
Sutton, Stacey. 2018.”Gentrification and the Increasing Significance of Racial Transition in New York City 1970-2010.” Urban Affairs Review 00(0): 1-31.
In this article, Stacey Sutton traces the effects of gentrification on changes in the demographic composition of New York City neighborhoods. She uses 1970-2010 census data and retail data for New York City (Sutton 2018:1). She finds that there is an “inverse relationship between Black and Latino residents and the pace of gentrification”–as gentrification increases, the number of Blacks and Latinos decreases (Sutton 2018:1). This research demonstrates the racial and class conflicts that arise when middle-class Whites move to predominately/historically Black and Latino neighborhoods (Sitton 2018:2). In her article, Stacey Sutton notes that the term”gentrification” derives from British sociologist Ruth Glass, who used the term in 1964 to describe the “rapid process in which ‘all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed'” (Sutton 2018:2). Sutton finds that though much of gentrification literature focuses on the displacement of low-income residents, her study suggests that middle-class Blacks and latinos also “have become increasingly susceptible to displacement or voluntary relocation in gentrifying neighborhoods” (Sutton 2018:25). She considers racial wage gaps, discrimination, and change in racial composition to contribute to the displacement of middle-income Blacks and Latinos (Sutton 2018:25).
Curran, Winifred. 2007. “‘From the Frying Pan to the Oven’: Gentrification and the Experience of Industrial Displacement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Urban Studies 44(8): 1427-1440.
This article focuses on the effects of gentrification on industrial workers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Specifically, small manufacturers and immigrant workers (Curran 2007:1427). The author highlights that displacement is a main tenet of gentrification as, at its core, gentrification is a competition over space (Curran 2007:1427). Curran notes that “as urban neighborhoods [like Williamsburg] gentrify, these manufacturers are faced with displacement because their space has become attractive to developers who convert lofts into residences, often illegally” ( 2007:1428). Further, he considers displacement to be a result of multiple actors that include: “real estate developers, city planners, policy-makers, landlords, and individual gentrifiers” (Curran 2007: 1428). Therefore, making it all the more difficult for the disenfranchised to fight gentrification. Curran gives an overview of Williamsburg’s industrial history, noting that most people came to Williamsburg in search for jobs. Williamsburg was home to “breweries, oil refineries and apparel manufacturing” (Curran 2007:1431). The demographics of Williamsburg changed overtime, as it was first predominantly Irish and German and then became Jewish and Italian at the turn of the 20th century. Further, after WWII a sect of Hasidic Jews moved into Williamsburg, and then in the 1950s and 60s a large wave of Puerto Rican immigrants called Williamsburg home (Curran 2007: 1431). Curran notes that Williamsburg became attractive to gentrifiers due to its close proximity to Manhattan, waterfront view, and industrial buildings (Curran 2007: 1431). More importantly, he notes that the rise of industrial-chic loft seekers has also led to an increase in gentrification (Curran 2007:1431). Through interviews with current and former small business owners, using the database of displaced businesses, Curran found that displacement of the business owners/ businesses resulted in loss of blue-collar jobs (Curran 2007:1438). This job displacement had significant negative effects on lower-income and immigrant workers as many found it hard to find another job, while others faced the threat of homelessness, or return to their countries of origin (Curran 2007:1438).
Lopez’s Comments:
Juliana, you continue to make good progress on your project, and you have put together a list of relevant sources. I was thinking, you really should look at Arlene Davila’s book Barrio Dreams that deal specifically with the displacement of Latinos in Spanish Harlem. Remember we wrote this book during the Latinos course.