The northern portion of Manhattan Island is a unique part of New York City. Where most maps end at 125th Street, Harlem, there remains a whole 99 blocks of walk-up tenements and six story apartment buildings as far as the eye can see. And in this sea of densely populated forest of concrete and brick, streets begin to lose that unique New York numbered grid that most people think of when traveling to Manhattan. Lines on maps intersect. And at their cross-roads, neighborhoods are fused together by diverse ethnicity and race.
Inwood, to the furthest north on the island, has the lingering aftertaste of an old Irish neighborhood, now almost completely Dominican, while on its eastern edge are the Dyckman Homes, a public housing project where basketball great Karim Abdul Jabar started playing hoops.
To the south of Inwood is Washington Heights, one of New York's historic Jewish neighborhoods, while home of Mother Francis Cabrini's remains, a popular Italian American Catholic saint, and also the neighborhood where Malcolm X was assassinated.
These neighborhoods are a classic example of both the achievements and the obstacles that have lined the pathway of American opportunity. I was reminded of this yesterday evening while waiting in line at a pharmacy near my apartment in Inwood. Ahead of me, a customer and employee began to get into a fight over incorrect change on an item that was returned. The tension between the two women was heightened when both exchanged disparaging remarks to one another. One person was an immigrant who had difficulty speaking english, while the other person was African American. Their insults rang throughout the store as the customer stormed out with her bag firmly clutched in her hand. And I stood next in line, shaken by the anger between the two.
The lines between racial and ethnic divide are far greater than the lines on the maps that have tried to historically identify them. Eduardo Porter, March 31 New York Times, raised several powerful observations on the difficulties faced when trying to overcome racial and ethnic divides in the United States. Porter stresses the need to find common values to overcome a reluctance that people, in general, have toward overcoming racial preference. Porters angle focused on the abandonment of community support when encountered with diversity. This is ironic, he notes, since we are all essentially immigrants in this country; some choosing to leave the security of their homes to follow their dreams, while others having their dreams destroyed, forced here not by choice but by chains. Yet, in both of these two powerful narratives, the story of American opportunity became the catalyst for families to labor in hopes of greater freedom for their children.
When lines clash, rather than intersect, the road map of our future becomes tangled in our own stubborn humanity, an unhealthy pride that fuels our ignorance and drowns our hope in opportunity for all. It's this unhealthy pride, focusing only on the "me" that keeps us from reaching "We The People."
It's going to take a community to erase the racial and ethnic lines that divide our neighborhoods. Even in neighborhoods that are diverse, there are still lines drawn. And it's not until communities can come together that opportunity for all can fully be realized. Those neighborhoods that have been able to bridge their diversity have crossed these divides. These neighborhoods, like those surrounding downtown Brooklyn or Jackson Heights queens, demonstrate the harmony that can sound out when communities come together. And it is in that harmony where great change can come about; change that can leave us not feeling like we're stuck in line with noplace to go.
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