From Ellis Island to JFK (review)

For those interested in immigrants and New York City, this is must reading. Though some readers may not agree with some of Professor Foner’s interpretations of why or how some group “made it” in the big apple, they will find her overall approach both interesting and provocative.

Basically, she describes and compares two major immigrant movements to New York City. The first is of Jews and Italians from 1880 to 1920, and the other of post- l965 Mexicans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Caribbean Islanders. The earlier movement arrived at Ellis Island after a long and wearying boat ride, while the later arrived at the JFK international airport, after a flight of a few hours or a day at most.

In comparing the two movements, Professor Foner, who is an anthropologist at Purchase College in New York, utilizes a variety of sociological, demographic, literary, and historical sources, as well as some of her studies. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of how immigrant groups confronted and reacted to life and conditions in the city. In comparison to Jews and Italians, some recent immigrant groups, particularly Asians, are generally more educated, financially better off, less given to self-ghetto ization, and more likely to obtain high-paying jobs. Conversely, for today’s uneducated, there are fewer non-skilled jobs available.

With a minimum of academic jargon, Professor Foner explores the many similar and different reasons why immigrants came, the skills and values they brought, the areas they resided in, the work they did, the problems of women, the changing racial and ethnic demography of the city, the prejudices and racism they confronted, the education they had or sought, and the problems of adjusting and acculturating in a huge, multicultural metropolis.

She concludes with a series of haunting questions, such as whether the offspring of today’s immigrants will replicate the successes of earlier Jews and Italians, whether today’s immigrant offspring will retain the emotional, familial, and political attachments their parents had for “the old country,” and, most provocatively, whether race will continue to be a divisive force within and between immigrant groups.

It is her use of critical white theory in dealing with Jews, Italians, African Americans, and current ethnic groups that is debatable. Yes, there were late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century academics, politicians, and demagogues who thought Jews and Italians belonged to an inferior race, but such “racism” was not a problem for them the way it was for Blacks, Indians, and Asians, then or today. In the case of Jews, theological and economic antisemitism was older and more injurious, as was first brazenly displayed by Peter Stuyvesant in old New York when he wanted to expel a boat-load of Jews—those “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.”

Moreover, the word “race” was not all bad, in that many white groups, including Jews and Irish, used the term to describe their group being, just as some Latinos do today. Contrary to Professor Foner neither Jews nor Italians sought to “become white.” Nor did they compete with Blacks, of whom there were comparatively few in early twentieth-century New York City. Nor were all “whites” exempt from being discrim inated against, as with Germans, Scotch Irish, Quakers, Catholics, Baptists, and even Englishmen during the Revolution and War of l812.

Jews—and, indeed, almost all minorities—wanted equal rights and protections, regardless of their group affiliation. When Jews were excluded from jobs, colleges, housing, or public accommodations, it was because they were Jewish—or were not Protestant. If Jews consciously or unconsciously wanted to be “white” in order to benefit by not being identified with Blacks, why the overwhelming support of Jews since the l930s for the Democratic party and the civil rights movement?

As a community relations professional for nigh 40 years, in the south and north, I never heard a Jew express the hope or take delight in being white. For most Jews, whether liberal, democrat, socialist, or even Communist, equality as a...