Ke Jiang's blog

The Inevitable Fall of Brownsville

Ke Jiang — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:23:49 +0000

In Pitchett's "Race and Community In Postwar Brooklyn," the various attempts of the Brownsville Neighborhood Council to try their hand at getting the community to be racial integrated garners admiration from readers. However, when placed in conjunction with Baldwin's article, "The Harlem Ghetto," one can easily see the attempts of the BNC would have inevitably proved futile. They were just dreams that were too far from reach, given the current American scene of that time.

To Differentiate

Ke Jiang — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:37:15 +0000

This week’s readings were particularly interesting because they focused on the immigrant groups that were not Black but were also not American enough either. The Italians, Irish, Jews, and Puerto Ricans—just like all immigrants to this country—strove to be accepted by Americans. This term American is also intriguing because from this week’s readings as well as past readings, it seems as if “American” is often considered to be synonymous with “whiteness”.

Jews as scapegoats

Ke Jiang — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:02:12 +0000

I am no expert in Jewish history, nor am I even an amateur. In fact, prior to this class, my knowledge of Jews, their history, and their culture could be said to be a little more than zero. Thus, this week’s reading proved to be a challenge.

The Pushcarts of Today

Ke Jiang — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:40:31 +0000

Personally, I found the pushcart readings very interesting. Both the primary and secondary sources brought up note-worthy ideas. In the Wasserman piece, she wrote about how the "clean and sanitized indoor retail" merchants wanted to get rid of pushcarts, because to them, pushcarts "stood for immigrant with a capital 'I'." Try as they might, they never really succeeded because even when they stopped pushcarts from clogging their front steps, their business went down. And so in the end, no one really won.