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Introduction Introduction Benjamin P. Bowser and Chelli Devadutt The Statue of Liberty sits at the foot of New York City’s harbor, a quintessential icon for both the city and the nation. The statue is the figure of a welcom- ing woman, not of a conquering male hero, nor of a benevolent nobleman. Rather than brandishing a sword or a rifle, she holds a torch to light the way for weary refugees. As a gift from France, Lady Liberty underscores a common bond between the United States and France: two nations forged in the revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality. The plaque at the base of the statute reads: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door! (National Park Service, 2016) Emma Lazarus, a young woman of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish descent, wrote these words in 1883. In them, she expresses an ideal of equality that makes the U.S. unique among nations. Over time, the pursuit of this ideal has provided New York City with a special character and mission. Early on, New York became the gateway for millions of foreign-born immigrants entering the United States—a place where individuals would become New Yorkers first, and then transform themselves into Americans prepared to disperse throughout the nation. No one could have anticipated what Emma Lazarus set in motion with the aspirations she expressed in her dedication. However, ambition is one thing, reality is another, and the two are in perpetual conflict. In 1883, such aspirations faced formidable challenges. Women could neither vote, nor own xxvii © 2019 State University of New York Press, Albany xxviii Bowser and Devadutt property. The millions of European immigrants sailing into New York harbor were not free to do whatever they wanted. Instead, they entered America as laborers for an emerging manufacturing and industrial economy (Hirschman and Mogford, 2009). They worked twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, often in dangerous and unhealthful conditions. They had no benefits, no vacations, no health insurance, or retirement. Wages started low and were kept that way by employers who replaced one group of ethnic workers with newer arrivals. Each group was willing to work for less than their predecessors. Universal education was still a dream. In effect, Europeans arriving in the United States were a laboring underclass. Their immigrant status was the basis for their social and economic inequality, relative to those born in America, and who came before them (Thernstrom 1994). Despite the challenge immigrants faced in 1883, things improved over the next century, and many of the aspirations expressed by Emma Lazarus came to pass. By 1960, unions had formed, wages had improved, women had the right to vote and own property, and a five-day workweek and eight-hour workday were law. Health insurance, unemployment benefits, and retirement plans were common worker benefits. Education through the 12th grade was universal. Workers now even had leisure time. After only a few years of work, they could buy a car, move out of worker apartments, and purchase single-family homes in the suburbs. The ideals embodied in the Statue of Liberty became a reality. The sons, daughters, and grandchildren of immigrants have been assimilated into Ameri- can society (Alba and Nee, 2003) and became part of the new majority middle class. As their circumstances improved, their identity as immigrants waned. They, their children, and their grandchildren became increasingly indistinguish- able from long-term, White native-born Americans.1 The inequality that had separated these former immigrants from other Americans decreased, as well. Americans whose parents were immigrants experienced a degree of social mobility they would not have imagined in their native countries. As a result, they developed two strong convictions. First, they believed that any- one, who was disciplined, worked hard and made sacrifices, could advance into the middle class. Second, they concluded that their children would do better than the past generation, and subsequent generations would achieve even more. It was in other countries that family status at birth determined an individual’s social mobility. In America, these same people could firmly reject the idea that someone’s entire life is prescribed at birth, based solely on social identity, religion, or ethnicity. However, now, many of the great-great-grandchildren of these immi- grants see themselves left behind and facing a cliff of downward mobility ahead. Perhaps, it is time to look more carefully at the existing architecture © 2019 State University of New York Press, Albany Introduction xxix of social inequality in the nation and New York City. However, the starting point for such an inquiry must be with racial stratification, the foundations on which inequality in the United States started and continues. Racial Inequality What about “the tired, the poor and the wretched” who were already here? Emma Lazarus’s ideals were not explicit about their status. For many already here, the ideals embodied in the Statue of Liberty, and in Emma Lazarus’s words, did not apply. For instance, Native Americans had been eliminated from New York City and State more than a century before her words were inscribed. In 1883, the forced removal of native peoples, from the East coast and then to reservations in the West, was nearly complete, as was the appro- priation of their lands. Before the Civil War, the South had been the most prosperous region of the United States. Slaves did virtually all the manual labor in both agri- culture and manufacturing. They were the miners, the steelworkers, and the builders who made it possible for the South to thrive. The 1866 emancipation of slaves freed more than a million workers and artisans who had the craft and language skills to do the industrial work New York and northern states desired. There were no oceans for these workers to cross. Yet these ex-slaves were overlooked in favor of millions of Germans, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Russians, and Eastern Europeans who spoke no English, and were mostly unskilled. Before massive immigration from Europe, Black labor eclipsed European immigrants in both skills and sometimes in numbers in New York City and elsewhere in the nation (Bowser 2007). In New York City, slaves and free Blacks were fourteen percent of the workforce in 1820. They made up one-third of the population and the majority of laborers in Kings County, now Brooklyn, until New York State abolished slavery in 1827 (Rael, 2005). African Americans living in New York City during European immigration served as an example of how Black labor is overlooked (Sacks, 2005). Blacks faced levels of racial discrimination slaves had experienced in the South. This was despite the fact that African Americans had done these jobs and crafts since the 1600s (Ottley & Weatherby, 1967). It was immigrant workers and their children who got the jobs in all the emerging industries in New York, and other large U.S. cities. The abolition of slavery was not a ticket into the economy. As Emma Lazarus wrote her poem, the Black Codes, laws that specified what slaves could and could not do, were re-introduced as an elaborate and comprehensive system for guaranteeing White racial supremacy in the South. “Jim Crow” laws © 2019 State University of New York Press, Albany xxx Bowser and Devadutt would freeze former slaves and poor Whites alike into a form of servitude that would last another century. As of 1929, and the Great Depression, Blacks from the South and Caribbean were the last hired, rather than the first. They were used only as a reserve labor force. If immigrant workers made wage or benefit demands, employers would threaten to hire Blacks for less, using them as replacement workers during strikes. This century-long history of racial discrimination and subordination in New York City’s industrial workforce was in place from 1900 until the eve of World War II (Dodson, Moore, & Yancey, 2000). It was not until the mid-20th century, and the civil rights movement from 1955 through the 1960s, that the goal of racial equality was acknowledged as the same dream stated in Emma Lazarus’ words. The 19th-century history of Black exclusion set the stage for racial inequality today. There is a new challenge, however, in today’s brand of racial inequality, and it goes beyond the basic differences between White and Black New Yorkers. Since World War II, Western Europe has become a center of relative affluence, thereby eliminating the historical incentives for massive emigration to the United States. Things have changed in another way since the 1965 Immigrant Act. Immigrants to the United States are primarily from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Eastern Europe. Except Eastern Europeans, immigrants today are racially distinct from those arriving in the past. The all-important question now is whether these later immigrants will experience the same upward mobility across generations as did the European immigrants who came before them. More specifically, will these people of color from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, who cannot pass for White, have the same upward mobility after three generations, as did the earlier waves of Europeans? Based on new changes in the national and New York’s regional economy and globalization, partial answers to this question may already be apparent. Mid-20th Century Assessments Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) was a landmark assessment, and introduction to racial inequality for the second half of the twentieth century. It was the first comprehensive description of race relations in the United States, summarizing the work of virtually every scholar and researcher who had addressed the issue to date.
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