Color-Full Before Color Blind: the Emergence of Multiracial Neighborhood Politics in Queens, New York City

ROGER SANJEK1 Department of Anthropology Queens College CUNY Flushing, NY Color-Full before Color Blind: The Emergence of Multiracial Neighborhood Politics in Queens, New York City The United States is undergoing a "majority minority" transition, with the historic European-ancestry white majority pro- jected to fall beneath 50% of the population in the second half of the current century. Elmhurst-Corona, a neighborhood in Queens, New York City, was 98% white in 1960 but by 1990 had become intensely multiracial, multiethnic, and multilin- gual, with neither African Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, nor the remaining whites constituting a majority of the local population. Based on ethnographic fieldwork between 1983 and 1996, in this article I trace the growth of cross-racial political interaction in Elmhurst-Corona, highlighting initial resistance by white residents, entry of newcomers into civic politics, innovation by female civic activists, and acceptance of shared local "quality of life" concerns as representation at the central political arena, the neighborhood's appointed community board, became more inclusive, [political anthropology, race, immigration, New York City, United States] I European ancestries now lived among Africans, African Americans, Chinese, Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, The United States is in the midst of a great transition. In Ecuadorians, Filipinos, Haitians, Indians, Koreans, Mexi- less than one hundred years, Americans of African, Asian, cans, Puerto Ricans, and other new neighbors. In 1992, and Latin American ancestry will outnumber those of New York's Department of City Planning called Elmhurst- European origin. According to one demographic projec- Corona "perhaps the most ethnically mixed community in tion, by 2080 the proportion of whites will fall from its the world" (Salvo et al. 1992:4). present 74% to 50%, and the rest of the U.S. population My fieldwork in this neighborhood began in 1983, and I will be 23% Latin American, 15% black, and 12% Asian followed its changing political life over more than a dozen 2 (Bouvier and Gardner 1986:27). The great transition years. I worked with a team of researchers who mirrored among America's children will arrive even sooner. By the the cultural and linguistic complexity of the Elmhurst- year 2035, only 49% of children under age 18 will be white Corona population. Their work focused on Chinese, Ko- (O'Hare 1992:18). rean, African American, Indian, and the diverse Latin The pace of multiracial change is faster on the nation's American residents (Chen 1992; Danta 1989; Gregory coasts and in its cities than in its heartland and suburbs 1998;Khandelwal 1991; Park 1997; Ricourt 1994). My as- (Frey 1995). New York City crossed the "majority minor- signment was the white residents (Sanjek 1998). ity" threshold in the early 1980s (Falcon 1985), and by Our team's overall charge was to assess how far Elm- 1990 the city's white population stood at 43%, down from hurst-Corona's diverse population had come in forming 52% in 1980. It is in New York's diverse, changing neigh- what Guinier terms "an integrated body politic in which all borhoods like Elmhurst-Corona in northwest Queens, the perspectives are represented, and in which all people work subject of this paper, that clues about the future of us all together to find common ground" (1994:6). I took primary may first be glimpsed. responsibility for this by focusing on what Jacobs defines Elmhurst-Corona underwent its "majority minority" as the "district-level" political field.3 In her classic Death transition in the 1970s. The neighborhood's white popula- and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs distinguished tion fell from 98% in 1960 to 67% in 1970, 34% in 1980, three levels of urban existence: "the city as a whole," in and 18% in 1990. Over these same decades, immigrant and which people find jobs, visit museums, support baseball African American newcomers arrived in substantial teams, and vote for mayor; "the street neighborhood" of number, and by 1990 Elmhurst-Corona was 45% Latin immediate daily interaction; and "the district," which "me- American, 26% Asian, and 10% black. Established resi- diate [s] between the . politically powerless street neigh- dents of German, Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, and other borhoods, and the inherently powerful city as a whole" American Anthropologist 102(4):762-772. Copyright © 2001, American Anthropological Association SANJEK / COLOR-FULL BEFORE COLOR BLIND 763 (1961:117-121). In contemporary New York City, she remaining by the 1990s from what had been larger, grow- noted, districts range from 80,000 to 200,000 residents in ing households in earlier decades. size. African Americans arrived under very different circum- Jacobs envisaged district-level political power emerging stances than the diverse immigrants. Following a federal from "churches, PTA's, business associations, political housing discrimination suit at the 4,600-unit Lefrak City clubs, civic groups, [and] block . associations." For a apartment complex in 1970, white flight occurred, and by 1980 Lefrak City was 65% black. Most black newcomers district "to be big and powerful enough to fight City Hall," settled here or nearby so that even in 1990 only 3 of the 35 political "interweaving" of its groups and associations was census tracts contained 86% of Elmhurst-Corona's black required. In a "successful" district, "working relationships population. The historically white local real estate sector, [exist] among people, usually leaders, who enlarge their lo- now including large numbers of immigrant-owned firms, cal public life beyond the neighborhoods of streets and had opened up to Latin American, Asian, and even Haitian specific organizations or institutions, and [who] form rela- renters and homebuyers, but not to African Americans.4 tionships with people whose roots and backgrounds are in entirely different constituencies. It takes surprisingly I traced the emerging relations among Elmhurst-Co- few people to weld a district into a real Thing. A hundred rona's whites, blacks, and immigrants from 1983 to 1996 or so ... do it in a population a thousand times their size" through participant-observation, and also back to a 1960 (Jacobs 1961:122-134). baseline with archival sources. My fieldwork centered on The composition and scale of Elmhurst-Corona's dis- Community Board 4 (CB4). The most immediate layer of government in New York City, the 59 local community trict-level political field matched Jacobs's description. boards of up to fifty appointed members each were created Within it I could readily do what an ethnographer does: ob- as part of "the nation's most ambitious attempt at urban de- serve ongoing events and listen to speech-in-action (Sanjek centralization" (Pecorella 1994:3) in the late 1960s; their 1990:210-213, 243-247; 1996). Its participants included purview includes land-use review, city budget recommen- black and immigrant newcomers, but the majority contin- dations, and the monitoring of municipal service deliver}'. ued to be long-established white residents. Some local Their maturation as arenas for local politics coincided with whites were antagonistic or indifferent to their new neigh- Elmhurst-Corona's growing ethnic and racial diversity. bors. Others sought accommodation and even formed new I attended 123 meetings and public hearings of CB4 and friendships. All were intensely aware of change going on its district services cabinet. From there I worked outward around them. It was impossible to do otherwise. to 50 meetings of civic associations, small business groups, redistricting bodies, and mayoral commissions and local II "town hall" events. I also observed 83 public rituals that Already by 1970, salsa stars Tito Puente and Orquesta ranged from Christmas tree lightings, ethnic festivals, pro- Broadway were appearing on Roosevelt Avenue, and Do- test rallies, and block cleanups to award ceremonies, park minicans and Colombians referred to sections of Corona openings, anti-drug marches, and International Day pro- and Elmhurst as "Sabana Iglesias" and "Chapinerito," grams in schools. I attended 75 services and social events named after locales in their homelands. Korean Christian at three historically white Protestant churches and visited churches sprouted up everywhere, joined by Spanish- several other white, African American, Asian, and Latin language Protestant congregations, a Pakistani mosque, a American houses of worship. Moreover, I spent numerous Hindu temple, and a Chinese Zen Buddhist church. Enor- hours in walks throughout the area and in parks, an indoor mous crowds came for Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Ko- shopping mall, Elmhurst Hospital, the local police precinct rean festivals in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, where house, libraries, senior centers, and restaurants. I used for- Latin American leagues also played soccer every weekend. mal interviewing strategically and sparingly (Sanjek New Asian and Latin American stores appeared on the dis- 1996), and in my 1,230 pages of field notes, participant-observation outnumbers interviews by 10 to 1. trict's commercial strips, and unfamiliar languages could be heard on subway platforms, in Elmhurst Hospital, at local libraries, in coin laundries, and on every block and Ill apartment building floor. In 1970 just 9% of Lefrak City's tenant population was Latin American and Asian immigrants settled gradually black, and this included many Africans working for the throughout the area, in all of its 35 census tracts. The white United Nations and other international organizations. Fol- population had already begun leaving in the 1950s, and lowing landlord Samuel Lefrak's agreement to end dis- their moves to suburbs and other parts of the United States criminatory rental practices, African American lower- continued, leaving vacant apartments and homes. The middle-class city employees, teachers, and white collar number of white households shrank less than the overall workers who could afford the prevailing rents found they white population, however, with one or two older persons were now treated on a first-come, first-served basis and 764 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL.

Load more