Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity

A Note on Terminology

D uring the first round of copyediting of this manuscript we tried to regularize the terminology used to refer to groups of people when described by ethnicity, race, and class. We were acutely aware that these categories are socially constructed—that is imagined, created, negotiated, and used—by people with regard to particular places, times, and circumstances, and that all labels can lead to stereotyping and essentializing of what are slippery and constantly transforming social identities. We also were concerned with how racial terms have become historically merged with notions of ethnicity and class, and how racial categories are used to justify discriminatory activities. Nonetheless, our topic was cultural diversity, and to make many of our points—which we believe to be empowering—we needed to write about people as culturally and politically relevant groups rather than as individuals, and with terminology that our interviewees and community co-workers would recognize and use to represent themselves. Equally problematic is that each chapter is based on research conducted at different historical moments when ethnic/racial terms were shifting both within the study population (from Hispanic to Latino and from black to African American) and within the academy (from black to Afro-Caribbean American or African American). We also had problems with an unmarked “white” category , frequently used in park studies in which only the marked social category of “others” is discussed. In New York City and the Northeastern region, “white” covers many distinct ethnic and cultural groups that have very little resemblance to one another in terms of history, class status, language, and residence. For example, recently arrived Russians who use Jacob Riis Park are socially and culturally distinct from long-time Brooklyn residents in terms of their beach use and interests. As another example, we found that fourth-generation Italian Americans at Independence identified so strongly with their language and culture that they did not see the Independence Historical National Park interpretation as related to their cultural group any more than did the Puerto Rican Americans we interviewed. In view of all these problems, we are unable to provide any fixed terminology or categories for referring to or identifying the different cultural, racial, A Note on Terminology ethnic, and class groups we discuss in this book. Instead, we relied on the categories used by the groups themselves, or employed the categories that the park managers and administrators gave us when beginning a project. Therefore, the terminology varies from chapter to chapter, and in some cases varies within a chapter if there are differences between the terms individuals use to refer to themselves and the categories that were mandated for the specific park project. Readers should not have a problem with these variations because, every day, we encounter the decision of whether to use black or African American, Latino or Puerto Rican, white or Jewish. We hope that readers will consider the richness of this ever-changing terminology as both creative, part of the identity-making and affirming of individuals , and also destructive, in that it reflects the distinctions and dualities of black/white, white/people of color, and native/immigrant that pervade our language and can lead to discrimination in U.S. society. Although we do not focus directly on racism in the United States, racist ideology and practices underlie the cultural processes and forms of exclusion we describe in urban parks and beaches. We intend this work to be antiracist at its core, and to contribute to a better understanding of how racism, as a system of racial advantage/ disadvantage, configures everyday park use and management. X R ETHINK ING UR BAN PAR K S ...