From the Encyclopaedia Britannica

 

New York City

THE PEOPLE
There is strong evidence to support the view that, since the turn of the 20th century, demography more than geography has been the key to the many changes in New York City. Except for land added by fill, the boundaries of the city and of its five boroughs have remained the same as they were in 1898; yet, over the intervening period the city has been swept by political, social, and economic upheavals, demographic in origin, that in retrospect seem nothing short of revolutionary. New York City gave birth to much of the urban crossbreeding of capitalism and Socialism that, during the administrations of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to be known as the New Deal. The impact of demography, more than the penal code or police activity, has determined the amount and kinds of crime in the city. Demography, more than educational theory or the quality of teachers, has been responsible for the serious dislocations in public education in New York City--and for the many experiments in the field.
Demography has always been, in fact, a critical factor in shaping the city. First, New York was a Dutch city, then English, then Irish, then Irish-Italian-Jewish, then Jewish-Italian, then Jewish-Italian-black. Most recently--assuming that most Puerto Ricans classify themselves as white--it has become white-black. As each ethnic or religious group has attained power and then moved away and lost power to the succeeding wave of immigrants and migrants, the life-style of the city has undergone transformation. But, no matter how often this has happened, New Yorkers, with short memories of their city's history, have behaved as though each demographic quake was unprecedented. Those who are threatened revile the newcomers and are, in turn, denounced as "the establishment." Physical force, political pressure, and economic muscle are all used by both sides in the periodic demographic struggles.
The past illustrates how attitudes change as demographic tides turn. The city's Jews, it appears, have come to be highly regarded for their ambition, industry, and cleanliness, and their contributions to the city's business and culture are enormous. Many outsiders think of the city--mistakenly--as mainly Jewish, but Jews comprise less than one-sixth of the city's population. Yet, in 1895 an article in The New York Times, appraising the first large waves of Jewish immigration from eastern Europe to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said, "Cleanliness is an unknown quality to these people. They cannot be lifted to a higher plane because they do not want to be." Attacks on the Irish a few decades earlier and on the Italians shortly after the turn of the century were just as savage. As late as the 1920s, opponents of private bathrooms in tenements argued that tenement dwellers would "only put coal in the bathtub." Descendants of these immigrants have made similar comments about blacks and Puerto Ricans, who have been stamped as uniformly filthy, lazy, and criminal--a wholesale menace to society. (see also Index: black American, Puerto Rico)
As in earlier decades there is an element of truth in these charges. The latest waves of immigrants and migrants do live in slums, amid prostitution and crime. They are aggressive in trying to move up in society. They become a threat as they reach for power. A major difference, however, is that the tensions between white and black that exist in New York City are national, if not international, in scope as well. At the same time, journalistic standards have risen, and sharper distinctions are drawn between fact and prejudice.
A study of census figures by the City Planning Commission showed that during the 1970s, when about 1,200,000 more people moved out of the city than into it, the out-migration was two-and-one-half times the figure for 1960-70. Despite this exodus, both the black and Hispanic populations rose. Another significant development traced by the commission showed that during the 1970s thousands of Puerto Rican families moved out of poverty areas into better neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, there were still areas with few Puerto Rican or black residents; and from 1960 to 1980, a period in which courts were handing down decisions for desegregation, ghetto areas in New York City expanded to two and three times their previous size.
The movements of the ethnic groups within the city have shown a strong hostility toward integration by whites. Any integration that does occur is short-term and takes place in areas into which blacks are moving and from which whites are fleeing. Whites do not move into black neighbourhoods, though there are some black neighbourhoods that are more prosperous than some white ones. Most whites living in black areas are elderly, poor, and unable to leave.
The demographic changes, however, are more than just colour. The median age of the black and Hispanic populations is about 10 years lower than that of whites, although the median age for Hispanics is even lower (especially for women) than that of blacks.
The age figures are particularly significant, for crimes of violence in all ethnic groups are most prevalent among the young. So is social unrest. The lower age--combined with the larger families among blacks and Puerto Ricans--also places an enormous strain on the public schools because the blacks and Puerto Ricans, for reasons that, it is alleged, range from fatherless homes to poverty, find it difficult to keep up with non-Puerto Rican whites.
Though the enormity of demographic shifts cannot be underestimated, they are not unprecedented in New York City. The population of the city in 1870 was almost 1,000,000, of whom about 400,000 were foreign-born. Considering the foreign-born plus their New York-born children, the Anglo-Saxon elements that had dominated the city for the first half of the 19th century were outnumbered. The Irish-born, numbering more than 200,000, were already the strongest political force in the city. Another 150,000 had moved from Germany, while England, the second highest homeland, had sent only about 24,400. Smaller numbers had landed from dozens of other countries. The black population of the city at that time was slightly more than 13,000.
The anti- Catholic feeling against the Irish in the city at that time was as bitter in other parts of the nation, often worse. Just as there is animosity in the city now between blacks and Puerto Ricans, so the antipathy between Germans and Irish was so strong that it erupted into bloody clashes. The middle class was moving as fast as it could from the areas being settled by the Irish, the suburbs then being Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island--and a great deal of open land remained in Manhattan. A book of the period noted that "Strangers coming to New York are struck with the fact that there are but two classes in the city--the poor and the rich." (see also Index: Roman Catholicism)
Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that all immigrant--or migrant--peoples in New York City have faced equal difficulties. The Germans of the 19th century encountered much less trouble than the Irish. One reason was that most of them were Protestant, the religion of the group entrenched in power. The Italians, though of the same religion as the Irish, often built their own churches rather than go to those attended by Irish Roman Catholics, partly because they wanted to be able to go to confession to a priest who knew their language. Difference of religion was an important reason for hostility toward Jewish immigrants.
There is a general assumption that blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York City are treated more harshly than earlier immigrants. There is undoubtedly a deep intensity to the anti-black feeling and, by many blacks, to the anti-white feeling. Yet, in many respects, blacks and Puerto Ricans are better off than all earlier immigrants and migrants. None of their predecessors in the frightening city received welfare. During the first two decades of this century immigrants often froze or starved, living in cellars or even in the streets. There was a time when tuberculosis became known as Jews' disease. In the 1920s and 1930s it was common in immigrant areas to see the possessions of these newcomers on the street for failure to pay one month's rent on time. Immigrants were expected to learn English or suffer. They were tormented and taunted for their different customs or their accents.
The city has learned--or been forced to learn--to handle immigrants and migrants with more consideration. Signs in such public buildings as police stations are often in Spanish as well as in English, and many police officers study Spanish. In one hospital near Chinatown, signs in the corridor are in Chinese as well as English, an indication of another demographic trend in the city.
In trying to understand New York, the city he had written about for more than 40 years, Meyer Berger, in his book New York, wrote "The place wasn't always concrete and it wasn't always crowded. It just grew faster than any other city in history." The hordes of strangers were what made it grow so fast.