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The Melting Pot Analysis

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New York is one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse cities in the world and therefore many people consider it to be a great melting pot. However, considering the origins of the term “melting pot” this claim can be disputed. In his play The Melting Pot (1908) famous British author Israel Zangwill used the term “melting pot” as a metaphor to describe a fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities. Even tough New York City is indeed very ethnically diverse, with respect to the actual mixing of ethnicities it is not as fused as often thought because in reality the city is still very segregated with many neighborhoods dominated by a single ethnic group. As Mireya Navarro, housing reporter for the New York Times, points out: “New …show more content…

During the 1940s, the starting years of the so called Second Great Migration, over 6 million African-Americans moved away from the South and into the large cities in the North. The African-American population in New York increased rapidly during and shortly after the Second World War and it quickly became one of the largest urban African-American population in the world. After the Second World War the federal government extended its housing plan to provide financing for urban renewal in the large American cities. However, most of the loan money was channeled towards whites and away from people of color as a result of racist practices within the Federal Housing Agency. With these federally ensured loans white families could move away from public housing into the cities suburbs, leaving behind mostly black families in underdeveloped neighborhoods. In New York government officials applied similar segregation policies and residential segregation was even enforced through Supreme Court rulings. In 1947, for example, three African-American males sued a joint venture between MetLife, a large insurance company, and the City of New York for discriminatory practices in Stuyvesant Town, a private residential area for whites on the east side of Manhattan. However,

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798 Words | 4 Pages

Living with people of the same nationality comforted and brought a sense of reassurance to the new life of the immigrants. The police often found themselves dealing in conflicts between different ethnic groups. “These 'dangerous classes' of New York compelled recognition” because of their vast size and possible wealth (209). The recognition turned to power, but the tenants lacked money. The tenants often looked to other, sometimes illegal, ways to earn money and provide for their families, creating ethnic gangs.

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100 Words | 1 Pages

The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.

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1152 Words | 5 Pages

In 1952, some residents of a neighborhood in San Francisco were victorious in keeping the neighborhood 100 percent white. A former Chinese Nationalist was trying to move his family in, but the residents did not want them. One of the many reasons was because of their presence, it would depress property values. However, all of the reasons added up to the fact that the family was Chinese(document 6). An argument is made that whites and minorities did things together.

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1095 Words | 5 Pages

They liked Roosevelt because he was big on helping them out on getting their rights that they deserved. "One important demographic change underlay the experience of African-Americans during the Roosevelt years. The migration of African-Americans from the South to the urban North, which began in 1910, continued in the 1930s and accelerated in the 1940s during World War II. As a result, black Americans during the Roosevelt years lived for the most part either in the urban North or in the rural South, although the Depression chased increasingly large numbers of blacks to southern cities as well. In the North, blacks encountered de facto segregation, racism, and discrimination in housing and public services; nevertheless, they were able to vote and had better job opportunities.

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1199 Words | 5 Pages

Feel the smooth jazz notes go through your body and straight into your feet, and before you know it you’re dancing in a dimly lit speakeasy while the colorful band plays a lively tune. Your date, a flapper, is smoking and drinking right next to you, along with important political leaders of your city. The room is full of promise, and devoid of concern, alcohol is illegal to everybody, yet everybody is drinking. Your back out onto the dance floor, and dancing the night away spending your time doing something perfectly illegal. That is what a normal weekend night consisted of for most adults during the era called The Jazz Age, more commonly referred to as the Roaring Twenties.

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115 Words | 1 Pages

More than 200,000 African Americans were deployed to France during WW1. Their service stirred black pride and raised the African American community 's political and social expectations, even though it did little to improve race relations in the U.S. More of the country 's racial demographics changed considerably as a result of the war. New jobs in manufacturing and other industries, combined with a shortage of cheap European labor, translated into opportunities for African Americans in New York, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago and other northern side cities. Drawn by the potential for better pay and living conditions, approximately half a million southern black agricultures moved north from 1914 to 1920 in what is known as the Great Migration.

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1996 Words | 8 Pages

Also during the World War 1, there was a great population shift from the rural cities in the South to the cities in the North. This period is known as the Great Migration from 1916 to 1970. This era ties back to my thesis because it shows how after 1919 African Americans still suffered from unequal rights and awful job

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482 Words | 2 Pages

You got it, World War 1, which later caused the Great Migration! The Great Migration was the movement of six million African Americans out of rural, southern United States to urban, northwest, midwest, and western United States. Therefore, the city of Chicago gained a tremendous amount of people. Also, the African American population of Chicago grew from 2% to 33% after the Great Migration. Although it was a rough start, the city provided freedom from legally sanctioned racial discrimination.

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166 Words | 1 Pages

Segregation have created separate housing complexes for Blacks and Whites. Borrowing money for houses is not allowed for Black residents. As cities and suburbs became separated by both race and class, there are more services which leads to more falling apart in several of the inner neighborhoods in the city. These new rules are included in the Housing Act of 1949. This act is created to make the public point of view about housing better.

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224 Words | 1 Pages

New York is America’s “quintessential immigrant city, with a long history of ethnic succession and immigrant inclusion” (Foner 2007 pg. 1001). Since 1900, 10%, or more, of America’s foreign-born population has lived in New York City. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the city served as the major entry place for Southern and Eastern European immigrants. Moreover, New York has been dramatically changed, and dramatically benefited, by massive immigration inflows in the past few decades. Immigration was a crucial factor in New York’s recovery from the devastating financial crisis of 1975.

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1057 Words | 5 Pages

The Great Migration and/in the Congregation The Great Migration was the migration occurred within the United States between 1910 and 1970 which saw the displacement of about seven million African Americans from the southern states to those in the North, Midwest and West. The reasons that led thousands of African Americans to leave the southern states and move to the northern industrial cities were both economic and social, related to racism, job opportunities in the industrial cities and the search of better lives, the attempts to escape racism and the Jim Crow Laws that took them away the right to vote. As every social phenomena, the Great Migration had both positive and negative effects; in my opinion the Great Migration can be considered a negative development in the short and medium term, but, if we analyze the benefits brought to the African-American communities in the long term, their fight for integration has shaped the history of the United States in its progress to democracy and civil rights.

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351 Words | 2 Pages

Some of my sources counterclaim that America is a melting pot and thus to be Americanized one needs to give up any factor that would affect national unity and cultural cohesiveness. In order for America to thrive as a nation, the dominant culture has to conquer the minority and thus allowing the minority culture to assimilate within theirs. This argument is bogus since regardless of America being a melting pot or a salad bowl, the retaining of smaller cultures are important to people who value their cultural roots and ethnic identity. It is clear that America cannot be accounted as a melting pot, thus national unity and cultural cohesiveness is a process that can never be developed. The concept of a black skin, with a white mask is something

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812 Words | 4 Pages

Between that time, African American Families moved from the South to the North and to the West. Following the Civil War, many African Americans had packed up and migrated to urbanized areas like Chicago and New York. By 1920, almost 300,000 African Americans had moved away from the south, Harlem being a very popular destination for the traveling families. New arrivals found jobs in slaughterhouses, factories and foundries, but working conditions were strenuous to their bodies and sometimes dangerous. Many didn 't consider the amounts of people that would be migrating to New York and that made competition for living space harder.

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539 Words | 3 Pages

Hansberry’s drama draws on her own experiences growing up in segregated Chicago, for example, redlining was often used in Chicago to discriminate against [colored people] who were moving into new neighborhoods. “Redlining is the practice of denying key services (like home loans and insurance) or increasing their costs for residents in a defined geographical area... It was almost exclusively a tool to force blacks (and other minorities) into particular geographic areas. ”(Jamelle Bouie, How We Built the Ghettos, page 1). This ties to Hansberry’s play, a Raisin in the Sun, by the Younger family lived in a very cramped and poor area.

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108 Words | 1 Pages

Between 1910 and 1930, African Americans migrated from the rural South to the urban North in search of better economic opportunities and as a means of escaping the racism of the South, but they were disillusioned with what they encountered. To begin, African Americans still experienced racism—segregation, profiling, and unjust law enforcement—In the North, though it was more subtle. As a result, blacks were forced into lower-paying jobs than whites. Thus, while the northern white, middle-class population grew wealthier during the post-WWI economic boom and were moving to the suburbs, blacks and other poor, working-class groups were left in the cities, the state of which grew progressively

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