tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/brooklyn-16390/articlesBrooklyn – The Conversation2024-02-27T19:40:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225882024-02-27T19:40:15Z2024-02-27T19:40:15ZBetty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577625/original/file-20240223-28-ht6czh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3691%2C2714&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Betty Smith's novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-women-smile-as-they-crowd-around-another-who-news-photo/119076541?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty years ago, in the winter and spring of 1944, Brooklyn-born author <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/smith-betty">Betty Smith</a> was entering a new chapter of life.</p>
<p>A year earlier, she was an unknown writer, negotiating with her publisher about manuscript edits and the date of publication for her first book, “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ATreeGrowsInBrooklynByBettySmith/A+Tree+Grows+In+Brooklyn+by+Betty+Smith_djvu.txt">A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</a>,” a semi-autobiographical novel about the poor but spirited Nolan family. </p>
<p>Now she was one of the lucky few. Her book was spotted in cafes, on buses and in bookstores all over town. The following year, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038190/">when it was being made into a film</a> directed by Elia Kazan, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=H1MEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA43&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj25depp-CDAxXiSTABHYd3C6YQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">Life magazine reported</a>, “Betty Smith’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (2,500,000 copies sold) has become one of the best-loved novels of our time.”</p>
<p>New York in the 1940s was not the city we know today. The Empire State Building had not reached its <a href="https://www.esbnyc.com/about/history">full height</a>, nor had the statue of <a href="https://www.centralpark.com/things-to-do/attractions/alice-in-wonderland/">“Alice in Wonderland” taken up residence in Central Park</a>. And it would be decades before anyone was humming along to a tune that brashly commanded, “Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today, I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!” </p>
<p>Brooklyn, too, was still becoming itself – and no other 20th-century American novel did quite so much for the borough’s reputation.</p>
<h2>Readers fall for Brooklyn</h2>
<p>During World War II, writes law professor <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/when-books-went-to-war-molly-guptill-manning">Molly Guptill Manning</a>, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” was one of the most popular books among the Armed Services Editions, which were mass-produced paperbacks selected by a panel of literary experts for distribution to the U.S. military during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Green horizontal copy of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' with creases along the cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577644/original/file-20240223-28-x187bq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Armed Services Edition of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/03/A-Tree-Grows-in-Brooklyn-ASE.jpg">UNC Libraries</a></span>
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<p>It seemed like everyone wanted to declare some affiliation with the novel-turned-film and, by extension, with Brooklyn. Even readers who had never set foot in the borough nonetheless found themselves enchanted by it through Smith’s portrayal. </p>
<p>As one reader wrote to Smith, “Raised as a ‘rebel of the old South,’ Brooklyn has long been my symbol of all yankee, thus learning to hate it; but now I have learned to love it through Francie’s eyes … as Francie loved it.”</p>
<p>Advertisers also took note, riffing on Smith’s title with tags such as, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&dq=A+Tree+Grows+in+Brooklyn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjgn8vbp-CDAxU6RDABHX3uAF44ChDoAXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=A%20Tree%20Grows%20in%20Brooklyn&f=false">A Dress Grows on Peggy</a>,” or Rheingold extra dry lager – the “beer that grows in Brooklyn.”</p>
<h2>Poverty loses its sheen of shame</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, readers who had grown up in the borough responded enthusiastically to Smith’s evocations of their favorite neighborhood haunts, writing to her to share their own memories of the shops and streets that she had included in the novel. </p>
<p>“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” had done something remarkable for them: It removed the veil of shame that surrounded tenement living and, as historian Judith E. Smith has written, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">helped them reclaim their humble origins</a>.</p>
<p>And not just reclaim them. The novel affirmed the desire to move beyond poverty, as the protagonist, Francie, had done, and Betty Smith, too.</p>
<p>Francie’s wanderings through Brooklyn lead to her discovery of a more inviting public school than her own. With her father’s help, she manages to enroll in the school, which is better funded but farther from home. Despite the extra-long schlep, Francie sees it as “a good thing” to have found this new school: “It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.” </p>
<p>It was a feeling that people of many backgrounds could understand, and not just in Brooklyn. </p>
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<img alt="Red and white brick apartment buildings in Brooklyn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577637/original/file-20240223-16-quqvex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">702 Grand Street in Williamsburg, where Smith spent part of her childhood and which served as the setting for ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,’ pictured in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.compass.com/listing/702-grand-street-brooklyn-ny-11211/265170627315403233/">Compass Real Estate</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Smith certainly understood the importance of broadening her horizons: Although she never finished high school, when her marriage to a University of Michigan graduate student brought her to Ann Arbor, she was able to audit classes as a special student.</p>
<p>There, her work for her playwriting classes led to a prestigious playwriting prize, and then an invitation to study at Yale School of Drama. Divorced at that point, Smith was free to pursue her education in theater at Yale. The theme of self-improvement through education made “A Tree Grows” relatable for readers of modest origins.</p>
<p>Readers were quick to see the novel as a paean to Brooklyn, and often sought to bond with Smith over their presumed shared love of Brooklyn.</p>
<p>“I hope you will give us further stories of the Brooklyn which you know, and, I am sure, love so well,” wrote one reader. </p>
<p>“Some day, if you have time, it might be fun to chew the fat a bit about old Williamsburgh (sic),” journalist Meyer Berger wrote to Smith after reading and reviewing her novel. </p>
<p>“Betty Smith obviously loves Brooklyn and is proud of it,” Orville Prescott declared in his <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/08/18/issue.html">glowing New York Times review</a>.</p>
<h2>Smith scorns the borough’s new arrivals</h2>
<p>But did Betty Smith love Brooklyn? </p>
<p>After all, she wrote the novel while living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – years after having moved away from New York. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bkmag.com/2021/08/20/priced-out-the-2020-census-throws-brooklyns-affordable-housing-crisis-into-relief/">Like so many who leave Brooklyn today</a>, Smith did not return to take up residence, in part because she could not afford to live there on her own. By the time she had earned a windfall from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” she had come to love Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>Smith also left Brooklyn with mixed feelings about her hometown. <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/visions-of-belonging/9780231121712">She wrote to her publishers in 1942</a>, “If Hitler’s bombers should ever get over and if any portion of this great city has to be wiped out, it would be a blessing if it were (Williamsburg).” </p>
<p>“Evil seems to be part of the very materials that the sidewalks are made out of and the wood and the brick of the houses,” she added. </p>
<p>Although writing about Brooklyn had brought her fortune and fame, she had no desire to return. </p>
<p>As she explained in her 1942 letter, Smith perceived Brooklyn’s current situation as the result of a changing population and growing crime: “A hundred years ago, it was a quiet peaceful village settled by hard-working, sturdy, honest burghers,” Smith reflected in her letter, adding that even 25 years ago, Williamsburg was a gentler place. “But now it’s a fearful one.” </p>
<p>Smith offered her own analysis of the situation: “The feuds in the neighborhood came about because most of the Italians originally came from Sicily and were fierce and murderous. The Jews in the neighborhood were mostly Russian Jews, conditioned to pogroms and much fiercer and more ready to fight.”</p>
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<img alt="Kids tug and pull at one another while a woman cries in the background and another woman tries to keep order." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577631/original/file-20240223-26-2gw4kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd gathers in Williamsburg in 1941 to see the corpse of a man shot twice by an unknown gunman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/premium-rates-apply-a-crowd-gathers-in-the-williamsburg-news-photo/2716771?adppopup=true">Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Like many Americans at the time, Smith held some entrenched and intolerant views about immigrants and their character. Since she was often invited to contribute guest essays to publications during the height of her fame, she had ample opportunity to express her worldview. </p>
<p>After World War II, Smith directed this hostility toward foreigners at America’s wartime enemies. In her August 1945 essay “<a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/08/26/305533912.html?pageNumber=104">Thoughts for These Days of Victory</a>,” she encouraged readers not to forget their anger at wartime enemies: “Let us hold this bitterness so that we’ll not again be lulled into a false sense of security. The war proved conclusively that not all men are brothers and that not all nations are sisters.” </p>
<p>A full understanding of the Betty Smith behind the novel that changed how Americans felt about Brooklyn – and their humble origins – are complicated by Smith’s own views and her experiences away from Brooklyn. </p>
<p>As Smith knew, making something of yourself often requires leaving home. It’s hard to tell whether distance made her heart grow fonder. In leaving Brooklyn, Smith had not suddenly started seeing her hometown through rose-colored glasses.</p>
<p>In Chapel Hill she was finally able to see Brooklyn – and write about it – in a way that brought readers of all kinds closer to Brooklyn and legitimized their own origin stories. That, in and of itself, is a kind of love, even if it’s not the unconditional kind so many had imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Gordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.Rachel Gordan, Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2085592023-08-04T12:30:54Z2023-08-04T12:30:54Z‘Knowledge of self’: How a key phrase from Islam became a pillar of hip-hop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539283/original/file-20230725-29-1pw7oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C2977%2C1895&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The popular phrase 'knowledge of self' -- invoked by numerous rappers who adhere to Islam -- is nearly a millennium old.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-nas-pays-tribute-to-old-school-rap-group-eric-b-and-news-photo/51865969">Paul Hawthorne for Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I was 9 years old when Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full” dropped. I have vivid memories of the bass-laden track booming out of car stereos and hearing it on Black radio, like <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/kiss-fm-off-the-air-wbls-nyc-urban-radio-station-317989/">Kiss FM</a>’s top eight at 8 p.m. countdown.</p>
<p>On the track “<a href="https://genius.com/Eric-b-and-rakim-move-the-crowd-lyrics">Move the Crowd</a>,” Rakim – also known as “<a href="https://www.chron.com/culture/music/article/The-God-MC-Rakim-houston-Southern-hip-hop-rapper-16086689.php">the God MC</a>” – rhymes “All praise is due to Allah and that’s a blessing.” <a href="https://pillarsfund.org/content/uploads/2023/06/MNC-CHAPBOOK-FINAL-6.27.23-2-1.pdf">Growing up as a Black Muslim in the Crown Heights</a> neighborhood of Brooklyn, I was already familiar with the phrase. Like all Muslims, I learned to say it during my daily prayers and as an expression of gratitude.</p>
<p>But when Rakim laced those words into the lyrics of what ultimately became a popular song, he affirmed what I was seeing around me in my Brooklyn community – that Islam and Muslims were prominent features of Black life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rapper Flavor Flav and Chuck D film a music video." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rapper Flavor Flav and Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy film their ‘Fight The Power’ music video in 1989.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-flavor-flav-director-spike-lee-and-chuck-d-of-the-news-photo/74291996?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A key concept</h2>
<p>Rakim dropped another familiar phrase in the song: knowledge of self.</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code>With knowledge of self, there’s nothing I can’t solve
At 360 degrees I revolve
This an actual fact, it’s not an act, it’s been proven
Indeed and I proceed to make the crowd keep moving.
</code></pre>
<p>When Rakim extols the benefits of “knowledge of self” to himself as an emcee and a human being, he is drawing on a philosophy that has been critical to <a href="http://www.suadabdulkhabeer.com/black-islam">Black Islam</a>, a term I use to describe the different forms of Islamic belief and practice found in Black America.</p>
<p>Knowledge of self comes from this tradition, beginning roughly a century ago, which has become known for advancing Black consciousness, resistance and redemption. Knowledge of self is an ethical pursuit to understand one’s place in and relationship to the world in order to positively change it.</p>
<p>In my 2016 book, “<a href="http://www.suadabdulkhabeer.com/muslim-cool-book">Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States</a>,” I demonstrate how knowledge of self is fundamental to hip-hop. It is often described as hip-hop’s “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/What-are-the-four-main-elements-of-hip-hop">fifth element</a>,” the others being DJing; emceeing or “rhyming”; graffiti or “writing”; and dance, from “b-boying” to “pop locking.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Artist Lauryn Hill performs on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The concept of ‘knowledge of self’ was instrumental in Lauryn Hill’s breakout 1998 single ‘Doo Wop.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ms-lauryn-hill-performs-during-the-2019-sonoma-harvest-news-photo/1174919334?adppopup=true">Tim Mosenfelder via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>While the phrase and the consciousness that it represents have been mentioned in too many songs to count – from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg">Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power</a>” to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6QKqFPRZSA">Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop</a>” and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kETkgRNSVzk">Talib Kweli’s “K.O.S. (Determination)</a>” – history shows the term has been a part of Islamic literature for nearly a millennium. For example, the first chapter of the celebrated 12th-century Islamic scholar Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali’s famous text “<a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/tah/tah05.htm">The Alchemy of Happiness</a>” is titled “The Knowledge of Self.”</p>
<p>In my book, I make the case that Islam, specifically Black Islam, gave hip-hop knowledge of self.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Elijah Muhammad speaks at a conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chicago-il-elijah-muhammad-leader-of-the-black-muslims-news-photo/515177512?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The lessons</h2>
<p>Rakim’s reference to knowledge of self’s being an “actual fact” is a nod to the “<a href="https://online.fliphtml5.com/xrqx/dcip/#p=2">actual facts</a>” of the “Lost-Found Muslim Lessons,” the catechism taught by Master W.D. Fard Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam on July 4, 1930. Master Fard taught these lessons to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who would become the religious movement’s leader. </p>
<p>These lessons are fundamental to the way that the Nation of Islam understands the world and the role of Black people in it. The lessons are also studied by the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/08/04/5614846/god-the-black-man-and-the-five-percenters">Nation of Gods and Earths</a>, a related spiritual path, of which Rakim is a member. Knowledge of self comes to hip-hop through these lessons.</p>
<p>Rakim was not alone. During the <a href="https://uhhm.org/revolution-of-hip-hop/">golden age of hip-hop</a>, a period from about the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, rappers – influenced by Black Islam – steadily proclaimed their knowledge of self in their music. Big Daddy Kane declared there’s “<a href="https://genius.com/Big-daddy-kane-young-gifted-and-black-lyrics">no pork on my fork</a>,” an acknowledgment of the Islamic injunction against the consumption of swine. The Poor Righteous Teachers gave the Arabic greeting <a href="https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx_LfwFaVQ77HWVnvhYPfS9frgaR6k7o-O">as salaamu alaikum</a> with the dome of Harlem’s Masjid Malcolm Shabazz in the background in the music video for “Rock Dis Funky Joint.” And from Brooklyn to the California Bay, acclaimed emcees like <a href="https://youtu.be/WeoCOdbAy3s">Guru</a> and <a href="https://robflow.bandcamp.com/track/praying-to-the-east-original-version">local acts</a> were rhyming about “praying to the east,” a reference to the Muslim practice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rap group Poor Righteous Teachers in New York City." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poor Righteous Teachers was one of many rap groups whose music was influenced by Black Islam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rap-group-poor-righteous-teachers-appear-in-a-portrait-news-photo/1470055741?adppopup=true">Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The message</h2>
<p>Long before rappers spoke of knowledge of self in the 1980s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad expounded on the term in his book “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/message-to-the-blackman-in-america-messenger-of-allah-leader-and-teacher-to-the-american-so-called-negro/oclc/547614">Message to the Blackman in America</a>,” released in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In it, he emphasized Black self-reliance – with knowledge of self being a key component.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Muhammad Ali sits in his home and reads the book 'Message to the Blackman.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elijah Muhammad’s book ‘Message to the Blackman in America’ played a critical role in Muhammad Ali’s life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-heavyweight-boxing-champion-cassius-clay-or-muhammad-news-photo/517259190?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The so-called Negroes must be taught and given Islam,” Muhammad wrote. “Why Islam? Islam, because it teaches first the knowledge of self. It gives us the knowledge of our own. Then and only then are we able to understand that which surrounds us … this kind of thinking produces an industrious people who are self-independent.”</p>
<p>In some ways, it comes as little surprise that a term promulgated by a fierce advocate of self-reliance in the mid-1960s would be so widely embraced by hip-hop shortly after it was born as a counterculture in the early 1970s.</p>
<h2>Hip-hop’s consciousness</h2>
<p>When Black Islam helped hip-hop culture cultivate knowledge of self, it created an aspiration, arguably unique for contemporary popular music as a whole, to not just rhyme about it or write graffiti about it, and so on, but to apply it in real life. As a result, knowledge of self became hip-hop’s consciousness, emphasizing an awareness of injustice and the imperative to address it through both personal and social transformation. Critically, this consciousness, while informed by Black Islam, is embraced by hip-hop community members of all stripes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing glasses and a suit speaks in front of microphones at a rally." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1989 song ‘Self-Destruction’ opens with a sample of a speech by Malcolm X.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nation-of-islam-leader-malcolm-x-draws-various-reactions-news-photo/515392246?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The consciousness led to different forms of hip-hop-based activism. Songs against gun violence like The Stop the Violence Movement’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxyYP_bS_6s">Self-Destruction</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJD1oDKKMdM">We Are All in the Same Gang</a>” by the West Coast All Stars.</p>
<p>“Self-Destruction” opens, not inconsequentially, with a sample of a speech by Malcolm X, the onetime spokesman for the Nation of Islam and icon of Black Islam. The consciousness also contributed to the formation in 2004 of the <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/23/rap_on_politics_first_national_hip">National Hip-Hop Political Convention</a>, which set the stage for other, albeit less radical and comprehensive, engagements with politics by the hip-hop generation, like the <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/p-diddy-in-8216-vote-or-die-8217-campaign-706486/">Vote or Die</a> campaign and the push for <a href="https://www.npr.org/2008/11/07/96748462/obama-hip-hop-from-mixtapes-to-mainstream">Obama in 2008</a>. </p>
<p>Nearly 10 years later, this consciousness was on display at the 2017 Grammy performance by A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and Consequence that was an open call to “resist” in the Trump era. This consciousness also continues to inspire the many organizations like <a href="https://www.kuumbalynx.com/menu/about-us">Kuumba Lynx</a> and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/02/16/172191234/from-the-inner-city-leading-a-new-generation-of-muslim-americans">Inner-City Muslim Action Network</a> in Chicago that use hip-hop as a form of arts-based activism for youth. </p>
<p>And, of course, it remains in the music.</p>
<h2>The knowledge continues</h2>
<p>On the track “Family Feud,” Jay-Z – like Rakim – praises God, but this time in Arabic: “<a href="https://genius.com/Jay-z-family-feud-lyrics">Alhamdulillah</a>,” <a href="https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxD-lGB_QTKoYq8VQL_M7Fc4myiXNipfIY">Mumu Fresh</a> questions others’ knowledge of self with the line “Good morning, sunshine, welcome to reality/I tried to wake you, but you were sleepin’ so peacefully in your fallacy.” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/night-life/busta-rhymes-extinction-level-event-2-the-wrath-of-god">Busta Rhymes </a> dropped “Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God,” full of warnings and prophecies. And in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmQgSpV3fA">freestyle</a> viewed around the world, Black Thought rhymes about the wisdom he got at the <a href="https://pluralism.org/mosque-minaret-and-mihrab">masjid</a>. This consciousness is so entwined with music that Kendrick Lamar’s “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/753511135/kendrick-lamar-alright-american-anthem-party-protest">Alright</a>” became a Black Lives Matter movement anthem.</p>
<p>Like hip-hop, this consciousness operates globally. Take, for example, the Iraqi-Canadian <a href="https://music.empi.re/iraqforever">Narcy</a>, Cape Town’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_w4TQCloCA">YoungstaCPT</a>, Cuban hip-hop artist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOg7B8NBsc">Robe L. Ninho</a> and the U.K.’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqp_fsJlw5A">Enny</a>, whose works track their own journey for knowledge of self.</p>
<p>Things have changed since Rakim dropped “Move the Crowd” in 1987. Gentrification is pushing my community out of Brooklyn, and Islam and Muslims are more known and subject to the state and interpersonal violence of anti-Muslim racism. Yet hip-hop still affirms what I see around me – knowledge of self is as vital as ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Su'ad Abdul Khabeer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar explains how a concept that appeared in Nation of Islam literature nearly a century ago essentially defines hip-hop’s consciousness today.Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, Associate Professor of American Culture, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1991682023-03-22T19:58:14Z2023-03-22T19:58:14ZCentring race: Why we need to think about gentrification differently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515348/original/file-20230314-6490-w1cjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C51%2C4896%2C3202&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A poster highlighting rising rental costs due to gentrification in Hackney, London. Gentrification often results in the dislocation of marginalized communities who can no longer afford to live in their communities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/centring-race--why-we-need-to-think-about-gentrification-differently" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>When we think of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gentrification/Lees-Slater-Wyly/p/book/9780415950374">gentrification</a>, we often think of how a neighbourhood’s demographics and landscape are transformed. Luxury apartment blocks replace single family homes. Trendy cafes replace independent businesses. Affluent families and businesses move in, often pushing out longstanding residents who can’t afford to stay.</p>
<p>Over the decades, gentrification has had a significant impact on cities across the world. <a href="https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/new-york-neighborhood-gentrification-new-report">One 2016 study</a> by New York University on the city’s gentrifying neighborhoods estimated that some of them had seen an average rent increase of 78.7 per cent between 1990 and 2014, compared to 22.1 per cent citywide. New York consistently ranks among <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/12/world-most-expensive-cities/">the most expensive cities in the world</a>, along with Singapore, Zurich and Hong Kong.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/news/2015/jan/how-ruth-glass-shaped-way-we-approach-our-cities">When gentrification was first introduced into our vocabulary a few decades ago</a>, it was used to describe the economic dimensions of neighbourhood changes. But more recently, it has become clear that gentrification has dramatic effects on racialized communities in particular.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.bcnuej.org/2020/03/24/how-one-of-montreals-poorest-neighborhoods-became-ripe-for-green-gentrification/">Montréal</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/black-homeowners-gentrification.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/black-women-leaving-london">London</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/remembering-hogan-s-alley-hub-of-vancouver-s-black-community-1.3448080">Vancouver</a>, and elsewhere, racialized people continue to disproportionately feel the detrimental impacts of urban development and gentrification.</p>
<p>In the context of <a href="https://inequality.org/facts/inequality-and-covid-19/">growing inequalities prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, skyrocketing housing prices and racial unrest, the process of gentrification and its sociocultural effects on communities of colour is especially pertinent right now.</p>
<h2>Montréal’s Chinatown</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Chinese style red and gold gateway above a road." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515350/original/file-20230314-4703-hx0f7a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the paifangs that mark the entrance to Montréal’s Chinatown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once a refuge where Chinese immigrants could celebrate their culture and enjoy a sense of belonging, Montréal’s Chinatown has faced a number of <a href="http://www.sfu.ca/chinese-canadian-history/montreal_chinatown_en.html">threats from gentrification over the past 50 years</a>. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the neighborhood was downsized to make space for developments like the Complexe Guy Favreau, Complexe Desjardins and the Place du Quartier.</p>
<p>Construction of the Complexe Guy Favreau led to the demolition of several buildings used by the Chinese community including churches and grocery stores. These major urban projects eventually propelled <a href="https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2021/11/the-struggle-to-save-quebecs-last-chinatown/">the displacement of Chinese families</a>. In their stead, whiter and wealthier people and businesses moved in.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.canvasjournal.ca/read/the-aestheticization-of-chinatown-a-sociopolitical-account-of-montreals-paifangs">The construction of four paifangs</a> — a type of traditional Chinese gateway — in 1999 marked the beginning of Chinatown’s estheticization. Signaling a desire to create marketable authenticity, <a href="https://mcgilltribune.com/constructing-chinatown/">the arches grew out of orientalist representations of Chinese culture</a> and a wish to promote the area’s fantasized “Chineseness” to tourists.</p>
<p>In addition, the municipality installed the paifangs following expropriations and redevelopments responsible for <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8590373/montreal-chinatown-future-at-risk/">the erasure of the Parc de la Pagode, three Chinese churches, many local businesses and an entire residential area</a>. Through <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-013-0297-1">the marketization of Chinese exoticized “otherness,”</a> the arches have become symbolic of the redevelopment that has turned Montréal’s Chinatown into a tourist destination where Chinese culture is reduced to a spectacle for Western consumption.</p>
<h2>Brooklyn’s Crown Heights</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The top of a row of buildings in New York." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515351/original/file-20230315-4237-ams0aa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Buildings along Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, New York. The neighbourhood’s gentrification has led to many racialized long-time residents being priced out of their homes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Located in the east of Brooklyn, New York, <a href="https://wp.nyu.edu/crownheights/history-and-geography/crown-heights-from-the-1950s-to-today/">Crown Heights has been historically home to a large West Indian, Caribbean and Hasidic Jewish working-class population</a>. For more than two decades, the neighborhood has witnessed the arrival of high-income, predominantly white renters. Over the last decade, <a href="https://patch.com/new-york/prospectheights/northern-crown-heights-doubled-its-white-population-decade">while the neighborhood’s Black population dropped, its white population has doubled</a>. That has led to many racialized long-time residents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/nyregion/gentrification-in-a-brooklyn-neighborhood-forces-residents-to-move-on.html">being priced out</a> of their homes and businesses.</p>
<p>Particularly noteworthy are the changes that came to Crown Heights’ dining scene, with the establishment of new and sometimes controversial restaurants. One such establishment, Summerhill, opened in 2017. The restaurant, <a href="https://gothamist.com/food/new-crown-heights-restaurant-proudly-advertises-cocktail-next-to-bullet-hole-ridden-wall">branded as a “boozy sandwich shop,”</a> was owned by Becca Brennan, a white newcomer from Canada. Soon after opening, the restaurant faced backlash after <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/brooklyn-bullet-hole-walls-racism-becca-brennan-1.4217971">Brennan advertised her cocktails next to a “bullet hole-ridden wall”</a> — remnants of a rumoured backroom illegal gun shop, Brennan claimed. She was accused by long-term residents of downplaying poverty and racism while fetishizing the area’s violent history.</p>
<p>New restaurants and businesses — owned by and catering to wealthier outsiders who are indifferent to the local history — often act as a renewed form of violence and exclusion for local communities. Following intense resistance, Summerhill eventually closed its doors.</p>
<h2>Gentrification is about more than housing</h2>
<p>Ethnic enclaves, such as Chinatown and Crown Heights, have long served as safe spaces for marginalized immigrants and racialized communities. But many are now disappearing as cities look to maximize their profit and attractiveness. With gentrification, those areas are turned into an environment that caters to upper-middle-class white norms, tastes and sensibilities. </p>
<p>At the same time, what’s perceived as “authentic” or “ethnic” often acts as a gentrification booster. By turning local cultures into commodities for consumers, gentrification manifests a broader effort to rebrand our cities. </p>
<p>It is an effort that denies racialized people cultural ownership over their own spaces. As such, gentrification is about much more than housing or physical displacement: it is also about <a href="https://shelterforce.org/2017/08/23/cultural-ramifications-gentrification-new-orleans/">cultural appropriation</a> and racial exclusion.</p>
<p>Gentrification is a complex, multi-faceted and multi-layered phenomenon. As gentrification expands and intensifies, it is essential that we develop definitions that accurately reflect such complexity and address the ways race and racism inform the process. We need to think about how white privilege and gentrification configure one another.</p>
<p>We also have to consider the role played by corporate and institutional forces in the cultural displacement and social dislocation of racialized communities. Last but not least, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/15356841211054790">we need to place gentrification in a broader and ongoing history of racial violence</a>. In order to stop gentrification from perpetuating racial segregation within cities, its racial dynamics need to be discussed and addressed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mieko Tarrius receives funding from Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQSC). Mieko Tarrius is a Policy Researcher Fellow at the Office of the Manhattan Borough President.</span></em></p>Gentrification is often used to describe the economic impacts of urban development. However, racialized communities in particular disproportionately feel its detrimental impacts.Mieko Tarrius, Ph.D. Candidate in Geography and Urban Studies, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1930062022-10-27T12:27:53Z2022-10-27T12:27:53ZThe first televised World Series spurred America’s television boom, 75 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491965/original/file-20221026-21-k03uax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C59%2C3898%2C2780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An estimated 3.5 million Americans viewed the first televised World Series at bars, restaurants and storefronts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowd-watching-world-series-game-on-tv-set-in-window-of-news-photo/515248870?phrase=crowd gazing in window at television new york&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRi6iZAl-I">desperately waving at his home run to stay in play</a>. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZzGkoXlaTM">pumping his arms</a> as he hobbles around second base after muscling a home run off Dennis Eckersley, the Oakland A’s dominant closer. The ground ball hit by New York Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyJjecJnuI">skipping through the legs</a> of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner. </p>
<p>Some of the most dramatic images in World Series history are ingrained in the minds of baseball fans thanks to television coverage. This year’s World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros will surely bring another timeless highlight to the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/2021-world-series-ratings-braves-astros-game-6-draws-14point3-million.html">12 million or so viewers</a> expected to watch. </p>
<p>Yet the first 43 World Series weren’t televised at all. It wasn’t until the 1947 series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers – 75 years ago – that fans could watch their favorite players duke it out on screen. </p>
<p>As I detail in my book “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-original/9780803248250/">Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television</a>,” which I co-authored with Robert Bellamy, the telecasts became a sensation. They drew millions of Americans to a new medium at a time when there were no national networks, only a handful of stations and somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 TVs in the entire country.</p>
<h2>Negotiations go down to the wire</h2>
<p>In August 1947, the television industry anticipated a possible all-New York World Series: The Yankees had a huge lead in the American League, while the Dodgers also held a substantial one in the National League. </p>
<p>If the two teams met in October, New York’s three television stations – run by NBC ABC, and the now-extinct <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/DuMont-Television-Network">DuMont</a> – decided they wanted to cover the games.</p>
<p>But the rights to televise the games were held by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mutual-Broadcasting-System">Mutual Broadcasting System</a>, a radio network that had no television division. Thus, Mutual would need to farm out the coverage to one or more New York stations. </p>
<p>Although no national television network existed at the time, NBC, DuMont and CBS did have the means to link stations on the Eastern Seaboard through a combination of coaxial cable, microwave and over-the-air broadcast transmissions, expanding the potential audience for the World Series. The Series would air on eight stations in four markets: New York City, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady, New York.</p>
<p>While the Yankees-Dodgers series materialized, the televising of the Series almost didn’t. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boy hawking souvenir programs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Broadcasters got their wish when the New York Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1947 World Series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-ny-yankee-and-dodger-fans-are-jamming-the-yankee-news-photo/515585048?phrase=boy%20selling%20souvenir%20programs&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The predictable stumbling block was money. Baseball commissioner <a href="https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/chandler-happy">Albert B. “Happy” Chandler</a> wanted $100,000 for the television rights to the Series. Gillette, the sponsor of the radio coverage on the Mutual Broadcasting System, balked at the steep price given television’s limited penetration – only 50,000 to 60,000 U.S. households owned TVs at the time. The radio rights to reach the nation’s 29 million homes with radios had cost Mutual only $175,000. </p>
<p>Initial negotiations produced an offer of $60,000 from two sponsors: Gillette and the Ford Motor Company. New York’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liebmann">Liebmann Breweries</a> offered to meet Chandler’s $100,000 demand, but the commissioner refused because he did not want beer ads when youngsters would be prominent members of the audience.</p>
<p>Even before a coverage deal had been finalized, bars, restaurants, television dealers, department stores, automobile dealerships and movie theaters started advertising the event, urging customers to come by to watch the World Series on television. And in the days and weeks leading up to the Fall Classic, the demand for television sets spiked. </p>
<p>The excitement pressured Chandler and the sponsors to reach a compromise. </p>
<p>Finally, on Sept. 26, just four days before Game 1 at Yankee Stadium, Chandler, Gillette and Ford <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1947/1947-10-06-BC.pdf">agreed to $65,000 for the rights to televise the World Series</a>. Production costs added another $35,000 to the sponsors’ bill. Mutual, Gillette and Ford also agreed to allow all three New York TV stations and those connected to them to broadcast the game, providing the widest possible exposure.</p>
<h2>An unexpectedly strong response</h2>
<p>Initial industry estimates had the Series reaching between 600,000 and 700,000 viewers, many of them located in the bars and restaurants where a substantial number of the nation’s first television receivers were located. </p>
<p>But that forecast ended up being conservative. Although home viewing for the seven games was substantial – 450,000 in a <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-18.pdf">Hooper rating survey commissioned by Billboard</a> – the out-of-home viewing numbers were extraordinary: Another 3.5 million were estimated to have viewed the World Series in public locales. </p>
<p>Hooper’s survey found that an average of 82 customers showed up at each of these public locations to watch at least some of the World Series. Variety reported that bar owners saw a 500% increase in patrons during the Series, with some offering reservations to their regulars for a choice location near the TV set.</p>
<p>What viewers from those choice seats saw was primitive by today’s standards. The screen was usually small – 12 diagonal inches or less. The low-definition images were black and white and came from just a few cameras. No extreme close-ups were possible. There was no instant replay, so fans had to pay attention or the moment was lost. </p>
<p>But for the first time, they were seeing the World Series live, and for free.</p>
<h2>The TV industry’s World Series bump</h2>
<p>The audience liked what they saw. <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-11.pdf">Billboard</a>, quoting The Newark Evening News, reported that TV “audiences hung on every turn of the video cameras and the ‘oohs and aahs’ at a slide or strikeout were something radio broadcasters would give their eye teeth to hear.” </p>
<p>It didn’t hurt that <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1947_WS.shtml">the 1947 World Series</a> ended up being so dramatic. The Yankees prevailed in seven games, but Brooklyn owned the two greatest moments.</p>
<p>In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4, Dodgers pitch hitter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjpOAy5zCM">Cookie Lavagetto ended Yankee starter Bill Biven’s no-hit bid</a> with a two-out hit, driving in two runs and sending the Dodgers to a 3-2 win. Then, in Game 6, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SrtxVs8uMI">Al Gionfriddo’s stunning catch of Joe DiMaggio’s deep drive to left field</a> helped preserve an 8-6 Dodgers victory, leading legendary Dodgers broadcaster <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Barber.html?id=lWhgEAAAQBAJ">Red Barber</a> to exclaim, “Oh, Doctor!”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oWjpOAy5zCM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cookie Lavagetto’s double won the game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 4.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Washington broadcasts even reached the White House, where President Harry S. Truman, his staff and the D.C. press corps watched some of the contests. The <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Televiser/Televiser-1947-09-10.pdf">industry magazine Televiser</a> reported an enthusiastic response from the White House viewers: “If TV can do as good a job as that on perhaps the most difficult of all subjects to televise, then it really has arrived.” </p>
<p>The public’s embrace of the World Series on television, along with the generous coverage of the telecasts by the press, provided an important boost to the nascent television industry. The Sporting News reported that the first televised World Series increased sales for new receivers in New York to levels not seen since the early days of radio. Similar reports came from dealers in Washington and Philadelphia.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff">David Sarnoff</a>, chairman of RCA – which owed NBC and was a leading manufacturer of receivers – regarded television’s coverage of baseball and its crowning event, the World Series, as one of the most important factors in triggering the growth of the new medium. </p>
<p>Television makers, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Center_Field_Shot.html?id=6kPQhpS-X8YC">he concluded</a>, “had to have baseball games and if [baseball owners] had demanded millions for the rights, we would have had to give it to them.” </p>
<p>The television industry eventually did pay millions and then billions for those rights. <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2018/11/15/Media/MLB-Fox.aspx">Fox’s latest seven-year contract</a>, including rights to the World Series, pays Major League Baseball $5.1 billion. </p>
<p>Happy Chandler’s 1947 demand for a $100,000 seems like quite a bargain today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just five days before the first pitch of the 1947 World Series, a deal was struck to air the Series on television.James Walker, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1882642022-08-06T12:21:38Z2022-08-06T12:21:38ZHow Vin Scully scored his Dodgers gig at 22 years old<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477903/original/file-20220805-20-qfxk61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C2968%2C2317&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Barber called Scully, pictured in a broadcast booth prior to a Brooklyn Dodgers game, 'the son I never had.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/announcer-vin-scully-of-the-los-angeles-dodgers-poses-for-a-news-photo/482028781?adppopup=true">Sporting News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vin Scully, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/sports/baseball/vin-scully-dead.html">who died on Aug. 2, 2022</a>, is widely viewed as the greatest baseball announcer of all time. But for an earlier generation, his mentor, Red Barber, held that distinction.</p>
<p>In our recent biography “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Red_Barber/lWhgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Legend</a>,” we uncovered moving private letters and public references documenting the rich personal bonds between these two great voices of the game. </p>
<p>In 1939, Barber brought daily radio broadcasts of Dodgers baseball to Brooklyn’s fans for the first time. By the time Scully arrived in 1950, Barber – known as “<a href="https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19921022&slug=1520043">the Old Redhead</a>” – was the toast of Flatbush. </p>
<p>For a combined century – 33 years for Barber and 67 for Scully – the two blessed baseball fans with some of the sharpest word pictures ever painted of the grand old game. Together in the Brooklyn booth for four crucial years, from 1950 to 1953, they forged a relationship that proved to be both demanding and gratifying.</p>
<h2>The chance of a lifetime</h2>
<p>After Scully graduated with a degree in English from Fordham University in 1949, he papered East Coast radio stations with applications. <a href="https://vault.si.com/vault/1964/05/04/the-transistor-kid">He eventually scored an interview with CBS Radio</a>, where Barber was director of sports. Barber came away impressed, but there were no openings at the time.</p>
<p>Barber later phoned Vin Scully when, at the last minute, he needed a reporter to cover a college football contest at Fenway Park in Boston for CBS College Football Roundup. Scully’s mother answered the phone and took the message for Vin that <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Voices_of_the_Game/oNBwQgAACAAJ?hl=en">“Red Skelton” wanted to talk to him about a job</a> – confusing Barber with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Skelton">the popular entertainer</a>.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Scully figured out who was calling. He hustled to the park, only to learn there was no room for him in the press box. With only a light topcoat to defend himself against the cruel New England elements, he had to call the entire game from the roof, braving the winds on a chilly fall day with only a 60-watt light bulb to warm his hands. Barber, initially unaware of Scully’s plight, later wrote that when he learned his announcer had called the game from the roof, he was impressed by the young broadcaster’s stamina and even more impressed that Scully had never complained about the brutal conditions.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ2EG3t3fEI">Ernie Harwell</a>, who would become the legendary voice of the Detroit Tigers, left the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcast booth for the New York Giants, Red Barber needed to find a replacement. He decided to go with the young broadcaster <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00067187/00001/downloads">who had so impressed him</a> – later describing Scully as “a pretty appealing young green pea … a boy who had something on the ball.”</p>
<p>So Vin Scully, just 22 years old, <a href="https://dodgers.mlblogs.com/on-this-date-70-years-ago-today-vin-scully-joins-the-booth-a66648e399e8">was given the chance of a lifetime</a>, to broadcast the games of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the National League’s most successful team. </p>
<p>But this golden opportunity was challenging in ways Scully did not foresee.</p>
<h2>Barber takes Scully under his wing</h2>
<p>Red Barber, who early in life planned to be a college professor, was a tough grader. He demanded a lot of himself, and he held those who worked with him to just as high a standard. </p>
<p>When Vin first entered the Dodgers broadcast booth, Barber told the young man that his job was to do whatever Red and his colleague Connie Desmond didn’t want to do. He also made it clear that any Scully errors would be corrected on air for all to hear. When Barber saw Scully drinking a beer with his pregame sandwich – a common practice at the time – <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00067191/00001/downloads">he told Vin he never wanted to see him do it again</a>.</p>
<p>Barber was no teetotaler – far from it; leisure hours drinks were something he treasured. But he believed a broadcaster should never have a drink, even a beer, on the job. Barber reasoned if Scully made an error, something inevitable for a broadcaster ad-libbing for hours at a time, anyone who saw him sipping the press room brew would conclude that alcohol had clouded his performance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man holding microphone interviews baseball player." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477902/original/file-20220805-7920-unk7jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Barber could be a hard-driving boss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-sports-journalist-red-barber-interviews-american-news-photo/57394862?adppopup=true">Robert Riger/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>One of Red’s broadcasting mantras was <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Broadcasters/bpFZAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">pregame preparation</a>. So before one game, when Scully told his mentor that a Dodgers’ regular would be out of the lineup, Barber demanded to know why. Scully told him he had no idea. To Barber, that was unacceptable.</p>
<p>Scully quickly realized that he needed to know the “whys”; he had to get to the stadium early and spend time talking with managers and players, absorbing compelling facts and stories to keep listeners engaged during slow stretches of each contest.</p>
<p>The delicate bonds that develop between any mentor and mentee, though often fruitful, almost always involve some degree of resentment and frustration, likely because each member of the pair has so much vested in winning the respect and affection of the other. Some of Barber’s barbs must have stung. But throughout his career Scully always credited Red for instilling in him the discipline and values of a professional baseball announcer. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Red_Barber/lWhgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">He claimed</a> that the greatest virtue of Red as a mentor “was the fact that he cared. I wasn’t just another kid in the booth, just another announcer. … He made sure that my work habits were good, and he rode me if I drifted away from his ideal of the right way to work.”</p>
<h2>Scully in the spotlight</h2>
<p>In 1953, Barber left the Brooklyn booth after a dispute over his pay. </p>
<p>Ahead of that season’s World Series between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees, the Series’ sponsor, Gillette, offered Barber only $200 per game, take it or leave it. Barber left it, and when he did not get the support he wanted from Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, he decided to sit out the Series and sign with the Yankees for the following season.</p>
<p>Gillette then turned to Scully, asking him if he’d announce the Series. Scully called Red seeking his permission. Barber was genuinely moved by Scully’s request, given that his permission clearly was not needed. </p>
<p>All of a sudden, Scully, at the age of 25, was thrust onto the national stage. He remains the youngest person to ever call a World Series. Two years later, he announced the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series win, and in 1958 he moved with the club to Los Angeles, where he would call games for the next 59 seasons.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xCS8jmV0WiE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Vin Scully recaps the 1953 World Series in one of the earliest recordings of the legendary broadcaster.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Barber and Scully maintained an affectionate dialogue for the remainder of Red’s life.</p>
<p>When Barber and Mel Allen were honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the first recipients of the <a href="https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/awards/887">Ford C. Frick Award</a>, presented yearly to a broadcaster for “major contributions to baseball,” <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Red_Barber/lWhgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Scully wrote his old teacher</a>, “I know as well as anyone alive what a true artist you were behind the mike. There is a great deal of you in anything I do well in play-by-play, and it will live in me as long as I am working.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/23/obituaries/red-barber-baseball-voice-of-summer-is-dead-at-84.html">When Barber died in 1992</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lWhgEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA421&lpg=PA421&dq=%22radio%27s+first+poet%22+vin+scully+reader%27s+digest&source=bl&ots=eKTwjzRZ9i&sig=ACfU3U20PiKT9ghjq_j_phD7Wi3yq3zg8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwipi_j9srD5AhXvGFkFHaZ5AIQQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=%22radio's%20first%20poet%22%20vin%20scully%20reader's%20digest&f=false">Scully penned a tribute</a> in Reader’s Digest, calling him “radio’s first poet … and the most honorable man I ever met.” </p>
<p>At Barber’s funeral, Scully <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lWhgEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA416&lpg=PA416&dq=%22Now+don%E2%80%99t+you+talk+about+me+during+the+game.+These+people+aren%E2%80%99t+tuning+in+to+hear+about+me.+Talk+about+the+game.%22&source=bl&ots=eKTwjyO0aa&sig=ACfU3U0RPFLsb-840mAH9SYnTQ8e10yLOQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBsqDXg7D5AhWthIkEHSHWAt0Q6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Now%20don%E2%80%99t%20you%20talk%20about%20me%20during%20the%20game.%20These%20people%20aren%E2%80%99t%20tuning%20in%20to%20hear%20about%20me.%20Talk%20about%20the%20game.%22&f=false">told a reporter</a> that he was preparing to announce the fourth game of the World Series when he first learned of Red’s death. After absorbing the sad news, he began hearing his old mentor chiding him: “Now don’t you talk about me during the game. These people aren’t tuning in to hear about me. Talk about the game.”</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the year Scully graduated from Fordham.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Legendary broadcaster Red Barber took a chance on Scully when he asked him to be an announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Three years later, Scully was the voice of the World Series.James Walker, Past Executive Director, International Association for Communication and Sport, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityJudith R. Hiltner, Emeritus Professor of English, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421362020-07-08T12:16:40Z2020-07-08T12:16:40ZCOVID-19 makes clear that bioethics must confront health disparities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346209/original/file-20200707-194418-od1q8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C261%2C6659%2C4094&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Statue of Liberty.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/coronavirus-covid-19-in-usa-statue-of-liberty-in-a-royalty-free-image/1215364790?adppopup=true">Stock Photo/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With some reluctance, I’ve come to the sad realization the COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for bioethics, a field of study that intersects medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences. As both a physician and medical ethicist, I arrived at this conclusion after spending months at what was once the epicenter of the pandemic: New York City. I was overseeing a 24/7 bioethics consultation service. </p>
<p><a href="https://weillcornell.org/jfins">I work</a> in a nationally ranked academic medical center in Manhattan. As it did with all hospitals in New York City, COVID-19 put us under tremendous pressure to respond to the surge of patients who came to us for care. In the early days, we struggled with inadequate provisions. Yet we persevered. We increased our ICU capacity by more than 200%, redeployed our clinical workforce in creative ways, and provided a “<a href="http://nwrhcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Crisis-Standards-of-Care_A-Systems-Framework-for-Catastrophic-Disaster-Response.pdf">crisis standard of care</a>.” Simply put, we did the best we could under extreme conditions. In all my years in medicine, I have seen nothing like it. I imagine the only analogy would be practicing medicine on a battlefield. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346182/original/file-20200707-194427-7n7fk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Outside Elmhurst Hospital’s trauma unit, where ambulances drop off many of the sick during the worst weeks of the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-scene-outside-of-elmhurst-hospitals-trauma-unit-remains-news-photo/1215793277?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As challenging as our situation was, colleagues across New York City had it worse. I was especially struck by what hospitals experienced in the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx. Chronically under-resourced, they were also caring for patients who long suffered from the consequences of inadequate primary care. Those with untreated hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic conditions were especially prone to the ravages of coronavirus. The rows of refrigerator trucks outside a hospital in Elmhurst, Queens, parked there to temporarily hold the dead, was a horrifying symbol of the distress. As a scholar, I try to avoid becoming emotional, but seeing them reminded me, once again, of a battle: specifically, what my Dad had seen as a combat medic in World War II. But this was happening in New York City. </p>
<p>Such images have forced me to question the relevance of bioethics – and ask why my field hasn’t done more to identify these disparities and do something about them. To be sure, my team and I provided ethics consultations in our hospital, and I participated in policy discussions at the institutional and state level. But our focus for the most part was too narrow and ignored a tale of inequity unfolding around us.</p>
<p>One example: Our hospital in Manhattan evacuated patients from hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens to help with their case load. At the state level, there was talk to make things easier by coordinating such transfers. But mostly, the efforts were too little, too late. Inequity was baked into the system long before the pandemic. Nothing could be done to reverse that inequity, once waves of patients flooded the system.</p>
<p>Why hadn’t bioethics done more to anticipate these challenges and mitigate them? The answer is complex, and the history goes back generations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346187/original/file-20200707-38-1xkl830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Because of COVID-19, hospitals had to use refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. Here, medical workers remove a body from one of those trucks outside Brooklyn Hospital in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/medical-workers-remove-a-body-from-a-refrigerated-truck-news-photo/1208727616?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Stephanie Keith</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bioethics 101</h2>
<p>Bioethics, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/475217">a phrase coined in 1973</a>, was a response to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052">Nazi atrocities in medicine</a>, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Tuskegee-Syphilis-Experiment/dp/0029166764">Tuskegee Syphilis Study</a>, and the challenges posed by increasingly sophisticated medical practice. Bioethics called for including the patient’s voice in care decisions, an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rights-Patients-Authoritative-Guide-Handbook/dp/0814705030">affirmation of their rights</a>, and a focus <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Biomedical-Ethics-Beauchamp/dp/0199924589">on four principles</a>: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. </p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>But along the way, one of those principles was prized to the exclusion of the others. A European bioethicist once told me, with irony, that American medicine followed four ethical principles: autonomy and three others he could not recall. </p>
<p>Still, bioethics in the U.S. became something of a rights movement, akin to other civil rights movements of the era. The goal was to minimize hierarchies and give voice to the voiceless. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Silent-World-Doctor-Patient/dp/0801857805">sanctioning of patient enfranchisement</a> in bioethics was a response to entrenched paternalism (doctor knows best). Notably, it led to the right-to-be-left-alone and the right-to-die movement <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-0830-7_3">typified by cases</a> like <a href="https://practicalbioethics.org/case-studies-study-guide-matter-of-quinlan.html">Karen Quinlan</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/27/us/nancy-cruzan-dies-outlived-by-a-debate-over-the-right-to-die.html">Nancy Cruzan</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557072/">Terri Schiavo</a>.</p>
<p>With the elevation of self-determination, the pursuit of the other three principles – the promotion of good, the avoidance of harm, and the passion for social justice – was diminished. These limitations were laid bare by the <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nycs-low-income-minority-communities-still-hardest-hit-antibody-testing-reveals/2425607/">morbidity and mortality data </a>from the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Neighborhoods of color, poverty and poorer educational attainment were hardest hit – those very neighborhoods that had hospitals with an insufficient number of beds and poor access to primary care. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.7197">death rate in the Bronx was double that of Manhattan</a>. This was a consequence of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-bronx-coronavirus-crisis-worse-than-manhattan-2020-5">poverty, population density and the structural racism</a> in medicine and health policy. </p>
<p>Bioethics needs to move beyond narrow questions of patient choice, particularly when the disenfranchised are not in a position to exercise that choice. </p>
<p>In 2009, as we prepared for an avian flu pandemic that never arrived, I posed these questions in an <a href="https://www.thehastingscenter.org/when-endemic-disparities-catch-the-pandemic-flu/">essay for the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum</a>. I was worried about how entrenched and endemic disparities might compound the malign effects of a pandemic.</p>
<p>At that time, the average number of ventilators was 39.2 per 100,000 people in Manhattan, compared to 14.1 per 100,000 people in Queens. Imagining a pandemic flu, I worried that “rationing ventilators would be especially harsh in Queens” and would lead to “disproportionate death.” This is precisely what happened during the COVID-19 crisis a decade later.</p>
<p>While physicians and health care officials focus on the acute consequences of COVID-19, we must also recognize the real pathology existed long before the pandemic struck. The pre-existing condition of health care disparities led to the disproportionate burden on vulnerable communities from COVID-19. </p>
<p>Now is the time for bioethics to broaden its gaze and appreciate that rights without opportunity ring hollow. The Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen rightly observed the <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/sen/publications/commodities-and-capabilities">limited utility of negative rights if they did not yield just results</a>. Bioethics needs to learn from the COVID-19 experience lest its obsession with midcentury catechisms make it an historical artifact of an earlier era.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph J. Fins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A bioethicist argues that the problem of health disparities existed long before COVID-19 struck with a vengeance in marginalized communities.Joseph J. Fins, The E. William Davis Jr, M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174592019-07-10T21:23:23Z2019-07-10T21:23:23ZAt a New York City garden, students grow their community roots and critical consciousness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282946/original/file-20190707-51292-1lk8u1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C24%2C3224%2C2418&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sunflowers and luffa vines — related to cucumber, gourd and squash — are tended by a Community Roots participant and mentor in a Brooklyn school community garden with their instructor (right).
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pieranna Pieroni)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Iris, a high school student in New York City, took a course aimed at preparing public school students for college. As part of the course, she visited the <a href="http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/04/history-of-the-park-slope-food-coop.html">Park Slope Food Coop</a>, among the oldest member-owned businesses in the United States. Members work monthly shifts in return for access to affordable, ethically sourced food and goods. Students enrolled in the course — called Community Roots — investigated the larger <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2017.1336976">social, political and historical issues of food and place</a> while gardening and learning about food-related activities. </p>
<p>When Iris told her family of her experience, “They said, ‘<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/white-people-food_n_5b75c270e4b0df9b093dadbb">That’s white people’s food!</a>’” she recalled. Iris’s family had emigrated from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent and had not yet heard of the food co-op. They also understood, through their lived experiences, <a href="https://foodispower.org/access-health/food-deserts/">that racism and white privilege shape what foods are available to people</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282969/original/file-20190707-51268-1w1zco2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Callaloo, a kind of amaranth used in Caribbean cuisine, is among the greens Community Roots students have grown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Iris joined the co-op, attracted by its alternative consumer model. Through her membership, Iris and her family had access to reasonably priced staples and familiar and healthy foods. Joining the co-op was one of a series of actions Iris took towards becoming an outspoken advocate for women’s and immigrants’ issues. </p>
<p>Iris later completed an undergraduate degree in critical Black feminist studies, and a law degree focused on environmental and immigrant rights.</p>
<h2>A course grows in Brooklyn</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283168/original/file-20190708-51273-i6ptn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Community Roots students planting seeds in a Brooklyn public school garden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pieranna Pieroni)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Iris’s course, Community Roots, is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620120109628">about connecting ecology and justice</a>. The course is part of College Now, a free college transition program that is a partnership between the City University of New York and the New York City Department of Education. Jennifer, one of this story’s authors, mentors Pieranna, the other author and the director of <a href="https://k16.cuny.edu/collegenow/colleges/">College Now at Brooklyn College</a>.</p>
<p>Community Roots uses the entire city as a classroom. It sees <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9041-7_77">place-based learning</a> as essential to teaching and learning. Urban gardening serves as a departure point for learning about land and relationships, as well as food, consumer culture and social activism. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-teach-kids-where-food-comes-from-get-them-gardening-103277">How to teach kids where food comes from – get them gardening</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12165">food justice</a>
emphasis of Community Roots emerged from an actual experience of conflict between a university and a community garden. Pieranna was a member of the thriving community garden that was located on the periphery of the campus where she was working. She invited local high school students who were enrolled in College Now courses during the year to participate in unstructured gardening in the summer. </p>
<p>As student interest grew, Pieranna formalized the activity as a service-learning course, and thus the number of gardening students grew. A turning point in the evolution of the course came when the college’s decision to raze the garden to expand a parking lot was met by resistance from gardeners and community greening advocates. As issues of <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/sustainability/index.page">sustainability were becoming more prominent in public dialogues</a> around the city, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/nyregion/22garden.html">irony of a city college destroying a community garden</a> to expand a parking lot captured attention. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the garden was razed and reinstituted as a smaller college garden on a strip of land bordering the enlarged parking lot. For several years,
Community Roots had no access to the new garden. However, lessons learned about <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739146262/Power-at-the-Roots-Gentrification-Community-Gardens-and-the-Puerto-Ricans-of-the-Lower-East-Side">power and displacement</a> related to histories of colonization and gentrification helped re-direct the course.</p>
<p>Luckily, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/nyregion/food-from-around-the-world-homegrown-in-new-york.html">New York City has a thriving network of community gardens</a> and school gardens. The course accessed other urban gardens and grassroots food-related organizations such as the Park Slope Food Coop, where both Pieranna and Jennifer are members. </p>
<h2>Sowing seeds of change</h2>
<p>Raven, a student who grew up in Coney Island, recalls a reading in Community Roots class from Brazilian educator and theorist <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/freire/">Paulo Freire</a>’s book <em>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</em>. Freire introduced an approach called problem-posing: teachers and students teach and learn together. Their major subjects of inquiry include themselves, each other and the ideas and issues that shape their realities and relationships. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282942/original/file-20190706-51262-xg912a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harvesting tomatoes and chard in one of the gardens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pieranna Pieroni)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Pedgagogy of the Oppressed</em> led Raven to reflect on what she experienced in high school — what Freire calls the banking model of education, a one-way learning style whereby the teacher deposits knowledge in the student’s mind. Raven captioned a cartoon she created about her earlier high school learning: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s like we open our skulls up and the teacher puts something in there…” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Community Roots digs into theorists like Freire and other traditions of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2016.1202982">liberatory pedagogy</a>. Thus the course centres on students’ lived experiences and allows for the development of <a href="http://newarkccb.org/framework/critical-consciousness-theory/">critical consciousness</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/acting-out-theatre-class-where-students-rehearse-for-change-108396">Acting out: theatre class where students rehearse for change</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Raven contrasted her high-school experience to the newer critically engaged style of learning. She returned to Community Roots as an undergraduate program mentor where she adeptly engaged her near-peers in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708">land-based</a> education. </p>
<p>Raven took the class on walking tours of her neighbourhood to explore how it was rebuilt in the Coney Island area in the aftermath of the 2012 Hurricane Sandy: the boardwalk and tourist attractions were renovated and developers who already had their sights on the area redoubled their efforts in a neighbourhood long in need of investment. In contrast, <a href="https://ncrc.org/gentrification/">small businesses, community gardens and other amenities frequented by locals were lost</a>. New luxury towers, higher rents and upscale businesses are pressing out long-term residents like Raven’s family. </p>
<p>Raven is now majoring in sustainability, working as a school hydroponics farm manager and is committed to helping communities like hers build resilience that works for everyone. </p>
<h2>Teaching for transformation</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282948/original/file-20190707-51292-fcu6h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sunflower, one of many flowers grown in Community Roots gardens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Community Roots attracts many students like Iris and Raven: immigrants, children of immigrants and first-generation college students. Each student <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1469731">brings to the class deep, rich experiences of food, of places that are important to them and their own relationships to these things</a>. Learning starts in the garden and branches out into related themes and different parts of the city. When students make connections through critical thinking and relationships, their capacities to lead in their families and communities is strengthened.</p>
<p><em>The names Iris and Raven are pseudonyms chosen by the students for confidentiality.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer D. Adams receives funding from the National Science Foundation. She is a member of the Park Slope Food Coop. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pieranna Pieroni is a member-owner of the Park Slope Food Coop.</span></em></p>Urban gardening is a departure point for learning about land and relationships, as well as food, consumer culture and social activism.Jennifer D. Adams, Canada Research Chair of Creativity and STEM and Associate Professor, University of CalgaryPieranna Pieroni, PhD student. The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1134162019-03-31T13:15:06Z2019-03-31T13:15:06ZRaising children under suspicion and criminalization<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266447/original/file-20190328-139349-u9qsox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jazmine Headley, center, who had her toddler yanked from her arms by police at a social services centre said that she went into 'defence mode.' Here she joins attorney Brian Neary and her mother, Jacqueline Jenkins, outside a courthouse in Trenton, N.J., Dec. 12, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mike Catalini)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many were horrified by the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzOsMM1Ygus">viral video</a> of New York City police officers ripping Jazmine Headley’s one-year-old from her arms as she cried out, “They’re hurting my son!” </p>
<p>On Dec. 7, 2018, Headley was waiting in a Brooklyn, N.Y., social services office when guards asked her to leave because she was sitting on the floor of the overcrowded office. She refused to leave. She was waiting to speak with someone about assistance for childcare for her son, which had just been revoked. Headley needed the childcare to go to work. When she refused to move, the guards called the police. </p>
<p>Headley says she went into “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jazmine-headley-arrest-nypd-video-toddler-interview-new-york-times-interview-today-2018-12-16/">defence mode</a>” holding onto her son as the police continually tried to wrench him from her arms with apparent disregard for any physical or emotional harm this might cause. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hVgLLbciD8U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>After removing her son, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/09/nyregion/nypd-jazmine-headley-baby-video.html?module=inline&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock">police charged Headley with resisting arrest</a>, acting in a manner injurious to a child, obstructing governmental administration and trespassing. Headley was taken in handcuffs from the Brooklyn social services office. She spent five days in jail before being released and all charges were dropped. <a href="https://www.theroot.com/jazmine-headley-whose-child-was-snatched-from-her-arms-1832355247">The New York City Council has since apologized to Headley.</a></p>
<p>News media labelled the video “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/09/nyregion/nypd-jazmine-headley-baby-video.html?module=inline&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock">appalling</a>” and “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/outrage-grows-troubling-video-showing-york-police-ripping/story?id=59723764">disturbing</a>.” Many spoke out about the role of security officers stationed at the benefits office, and the excessive actions of the NYPD. </p>
<p>Most news outlets failed to mention the fact that Headley and her son are Black.</p>
<p>Headley’s race is significant because it links the incident to a broader empirical fact: <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000312240907400304">low-income Black mothers face harsher treatment</a> in their interactions with social services and other authorities relative to low-income white mothers and, to a lesser extent, Latina mothers.</p>
<h2>The criminalization of Black mothering</h2>
<p>In protecting their children, low-income Black mothers like Jazmine Headley risk being viewed as irrationally overprotective and simultaneously neglectful. Headley’s unwillingness to relinquish her son led to the charge of acting in a manner injurious to a child. </p>
<p>And in refusing to unquestioningly comply with police, Black women like Headley can be seen as angry and aggressive, and thus as threatening. The angry Black woman and the neglectful Black mother are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3613152/">two dominant negative stereotypes about Black women</a> that shape how others in positions of authority view and treat them. </p>
<p>Headley was in the social services office that day because she had been informed by her son’s daycare that <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/jazmine-headley-nypd_us_5c17a16be4b009b8aea96397">the city had stopped paying the fee for her son</a>. She needed the child-care benefit so that she could work. Low-income mothers must routinely <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soy093/5113162">interact with institutions, like schools or social services, in their role as mothers</a> but are not treated in the same way as their peers. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122419833386">recently published paper in the <em>American Sociological Review</em></a>, co-authored with <a href="http://meganreidphd.com/">Megan Reid</a>, shows that the attitudes and practices embedded within these interactions can put mothers at risk of being treated as criminals. In other words, they face the possibility of being criminalized as “bad mothers” and even losing their parenting rights. We led two research projects which involved interviewing low-income Black mothers in New York and North Carolina. We learned that what happened to Headley can be seen as commonplace: low-income Black mothers routinely ran the risk of having authorities cast a suspicious eye on them, asking: What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with their mothering? </p>
<p>This was the case for the mothers we spoke to. (We’ve changed their names.)</p>
<h2>Law and order policies</h2>
<p>Tiffany’s teenage son was caught skipping school by truancy officers. Tiffany worried deeply about the effect her son’s absences and potential school expulsion would have on his future. But rather than work collaboratively with Tiffany to support his attendance, school officials blamed her. The school reported Tiffany to Child Protective Services, and she endured a 30-day investigation. In the meantime, she researched a Job Corp, a federal school and job training program and enrolled her son in it. </p>
<p>At the conclusion of the investigation, Tiffany received a form that basically said she was not found to be doing anything wrong. </p>
<p>Charging parents, especially mothers, when their children miss school <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/121186/truancy-laws-unfairly-attack-poor-children-and-parents">became common across the U.S. under the No Child Left Behind Act</a>. In some states, parents are fined or jailed for their children’s truancy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/23/-sp-school-truancy-fines-jail-parents-punishment-children">even though there’s a lack of evidence that these penalties improve attendance rates</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time that mothers described facing a great deal of suspicion about their capabilities as mothers, they also said their children — as Black children — could face heightened suspicion from authority figures. Research finds that teachers, security guards, police officers and others often view Black children <a href="https://psmag.com/education/for-black-students-stereotyping-starts-early">through a lens of negative stereotypes that ascribe violent or criminal natures to them</a>. </p>
<p>Theresa, a mother of two sons, worried about her sons’ safety <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/16797/bad_boys">due to racist biases about Black boys</a>. She explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When a Black male walk into the room, or walk around somewhere, it’s like an instant fear that, ‘Oh my god, he’s going to do something.’ And it’s like they’re followed around. Just because he’s a Black male, you already assume that he’s trouble.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Theresa didn’t have daughters, but said Black girls faced the same type of racial profiling. Research confirms Theresa’s assessment, with studies finding that <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Beyond-Bad-Girls-Gender-Violence-and-Hype-1st-Edition/Chesney-Lind-Irwin/p/book/9780415948289">negative stereotypes of “violent girls” underlie authority figures’ punitive responses to girls of colour and explain rising female incarceration rates</a>. </p>
<p>Black mothers said they must protect their teen children not only from crime and violence but also from being criminalized by police and other authorities. Sonya stressed the serious consequences her teenage daughters could face if they got into a fight with peers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Once you do it, it’s over. It really is. You go to jail, you have a record, it’s going to be hard.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And at the same time that they worried about their children’s criminalization, mothers had to guard against being criminalized themselves. </p>
<p>The risk of being criminalized that Black mothers and their children face stems in part from <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/punishing-the-poor">the vast expansion of “law and order” policies</a> over the past several decades. Under the “war on drugs” and the “war on crime,” increased street surveillance and prison sentences for non-violent crimes became the norm, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/">based on the now debunked idea that punishing minor crimes would prevent more severe crime</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10612-012-9171-2">Schools also became more punitive</a> with “zero-tolerance” disciplinary measures and armed guards patrolling school corridors. And <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo12120768.html">policing and sanctions have come to play a larger role in the provision of social assistance</a>. Taken together and combined with racist biases, these punitive policies have resulted in <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/">the disproportionate targeting and punishment of people of colour</a>, including Black mothers and their children. </p>
<p>Raising children is hard. Doing so under a veil of suspicion directed at your children and your mothering is incredibly hard. This is the day-to-day reality facing low-income Black mothers. Most don’t get an apology like the one Jazmine Headley received. But they and Headley deserve one - and much more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sinikka Elliott received funding for this research from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. </span></em></p>In protecting their children, low-income Black mothers risk being viewed as irrationally overprotective and simultaneously neglectful.Sinikka Elliott, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/887602018-03-15T10:44:16Z2018-03-15T10:44:16ZSustainable cities need more than parks, cafes and a riverwalk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210164/original/file-20180313-30986-omac04.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Small tankers unload along New York's Newtown Creek in 2008.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Small_tankers_unload_Newtown_Creek.JPG">Jim Henderson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-greenest-american-cities/">many indexes</a> that aim to rank how green cities are. But what does it actually mean for a city to be green or sustainable? </p>
<p>We’ve written about what we call the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2012.729569">“parks, cafes and a riverwalk” model of sustainability</a>, which focuses on providing new green spaces, mainly for high-income people. This vision of shiny residential towers and waterfront parks has become a widely-shared conception of <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=green+cities&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPyqGw5NrYAhUnkeAKHYoMCkwQ_AUICygC&biw=1920&bih=949">what green cities should look like</a>. But it can drive up real estate prices and displace low- and middle-income residents.</p>
<p>As scholars who study gentrification and social justice, we prefer a model that recognizes all three aspects of sustainability: <a href="http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourperspectivearticles/2012/03/17/why-equity-and-sustainability-matter-for-human-development-helen-clark.html">environment, economy and equity</a>. The equity piece is often missing from development projects promoted as green or sustainable. We are interested in models of urban greening that produce real environmental improvements and also benefit long-term working-class residents in neighborhoods that are historically underserved. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210165/original/file-20180313-30972-1orr6qd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aerial photo of Newtown Creek, which flows between Brooklyn and Queens into the East River.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Newtown_Creek_Aerial_Photo.png">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over a decade of research in an industrial section of New York City, we have seen an alternative vision take shape. This model, which we call “just green enough,” aims to clean up the environment while also retaining and creating living-wage blue-collar jobs. By doing so, it enables residents who have endured decades of contamination to stay in place and enjoy the benefits of a greener neighborhood.</p>
<h2>‘Parks, cafes and a riverwalk’ can lead to gentrification</h2>
<p>Gentrification has become a catch-all term used to describe neighborhood change, and is often misunderstood as the only path to neighborhood improvement. In fact, its <a href="http://www.urbandisplacement.org/gentrification-explained">defining feature is displacement</a>. Typically, people who move into these changing neighborhoods are whiter, wealthier and more educated than residents who are displaced.</p>
<p>A recent spate of new research has focused on the displacement effects of environmental cleanup and green space initiatives. This phenomenon has variously been called <a href="https://critical-sustainabilities.ucsc.edu/environmental-gentrification/">environmental</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.30.7.694">eco-</a> or <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Green-Gentrification-Urban-sustainability-and-the-struggle-for-environmental/Gould-Lewis/p/book/9781138309135">green gentrification</a>. </p>
<p>Land for new development and resources to fund extensive cleanup of toxic sites are scarce in many cities. This creates pressure to rezone industrial land for condo towers or lucrative commercial space, in exchange for developer-funded cleanup. And in neighborhoods where gentrification has already begun, a new park or <a href="http://journals.openedition.org/metropoles/4970">farmers market can exacerbate the problem</a> by making the area even <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.901657">more attractive to potential gentrifiers</a> and pricing out long-term residents. In some cases, developers even create <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/a-beer-garden-lays-down-roots-for-a-technology-hub.html?_r=4">temporary community gardens or farmers markets</a> or promise more green space than they eventually deliver, in order to market a neighborhood to buyers looking for green amenities.</p>
<p>Environmental gentrification naturalizes the disappearance of manufacturing and the working class. It makes deindustrialization seem both inevitable and desirable, often by quite literally replacing industry with more natural-looking landscapes. When these neighborhoods are finally cleaned up, after years of activism by longtime residents, those advocates often are unable to stay and enjoy the benefits of their efforts.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210167/original/file-20180313-30969-1u0ttt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The River Walk in San Antonio, Texas, is a popular shopping and dining area catering to tourists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/6RKH2">Ken Lund</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tools for greening differently</h2>
<p>Greening and environmental cleanup do not automatically or necessarily lead to gentrification. There are tools that can make cities both greener and more inclusive, if the political will exists.</p>
<p>The work of the <a href="http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/">Newtown Creek Alliance</a> in Brooklyn and Queens provides examples. The alliance is a community-led organization working to improve environmental conditions and revitalize industry in and along Newtown Creek, which separates these two boroughs. It focuses explicitly on social justice and environmental goals, as defined by the people who have been most negatively affected by contamination in the area. </p>
<p>The industrial zone surrounding Newtown Creek is a far cry from the toxic stew that The New York Times described in 1881 as <a href="https://historicgreenpoint.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/1870-smell-map/">“the worst smelling district in the world.”</a> But it is also <a href="http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/newtown-creek-2013-12/">far from clean</a>. For 220 years it has been a dumping ground for oil refineries, chemical plants, sugar refineries, fiber mills, copper smelting works, steel fabricators, tanneries, paint and varnish manufacturers, and lumber, coal and brick yards. </p>
<p>In the late 1970s, an investigation found that <a href="http://nysdecgreenpoint.com/ProjectHistory.aspx">17 million gallons of oil</a> had leaked under the neighborhood and into the creek from a nearby oil storage terminal. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/science/earth/28newtown.html">placed Newtown Creek on the Superfund list</a> of heavily polluted toxic waste sites in 2010.</p>
<p>The Newtown Creek Alliance and other groups are working to make sure that the <a href="https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0206282">Superfund cleanup</a> and <a href="http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/greenpoint-oil-spill/">other remediation efforts</a> are as comprehensive as possible. At the same time, they are creating new <a href="http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/plank-road/">green</a> <a href="http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/north-henry-street/">spaces</a> within an area zoned for manufacturing, rather than pushing to rezone it. </p>
<p>As this approach shows, green cities don’t have to be postindustrial. <a href="https://evergreenexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/050117_Executive-Summary_FINAL_v4-pages.pdf">Some 20,000 people work in the North Brooklyn industrial area</a> that borders Newtown Creek. And a number of industrial businesses in the area have helped make environmental improvements. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BcC1EungjE1/?hl=en\u0026taken-by=newtowncreek","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Just green enough</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2012.729569">“just green enough”</a> strategy uncouples environmental cleanup from high-end residential and commercial development. Our new anthology, “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Just-Green-Enough-Urban-Development-and-Environmental-Gentrification/Curran-Hamilton/p/book/9781138713826">Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification</a>,” provides many other examples of the need to plan for gentrification effects before displacement happens. It also describes efforts to create environmental improvements that explicitly consider equity concerns.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.uprose.org/">UPROSE</a>, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, is combining racial justice activism with climate resilience planning in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. The group <a href="https://www.uprose.org/industrial-retention">advocates for investment and training</a> for existing small businesses that often are Latino-owned. Its goal is not only to expand well-paid manufacturing jobs, but to include these businesses in rethinking what a sustainable economy looks like. Rather than rezoning the waterfront for high-end commercial and residential use, UPROSE is working for an inclusive vision of the neighborhood, built on the experience and expertise of its largely working-class immigrant residents. </p>
<p>This approach illustrates a broader pattern identified by Macalester College geographer <a href="https://www.macalester.edu/geography/facultystaff/danieltrudeau/">Dan Trudeau</a> in his <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Just-Green-Enough-Urban-Development-and-Environmental-Gentrification/Curran-Hamilton/p/book/9781138713826">chapter for our book</a>. His research on residential developments throughout the United States shows that socially and environmentally just neighborhoods have to be planned as such from the beginning, including affordable housing and green amenities for all residents. Trudeau highlights the need to find “patient capital” – investment that does not expect a quick profit – and shows that local governments need to take responsibility for setting out a vision and strategy for housing equity and inclusion. </p>
<p>In our view, it is time to expand the notion of what a green city looks like and who it is for. For cities to be truly sustainable, all residents should have access to affordable housing, living-wage jobs, clean air and water, and green space. Urban residents should not have to accept a false choice between contamination and environmental gentrification.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gentrification is not the only path for improving urban neighborhoods. A cleanup in Brooklyn and Queens offers another, more inclusive model that scholars have dubbed ‘just green enough.’Trina Hamilton, Associate Professor of Geography, University at BuffaloWinifred Curran, Associate Professor of Geography, DePaul UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819772017-09-11T00:40:30Z2017-09-11T00:40:30ZAt the beauty salon, Dominican-American women conflicted over quest for straight hair<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184780/original/file-20170905-13783-vgjfdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Dominican immigrant cuts the hair of a customer at her New York City salon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/NYC-Immigrant-Business/3d166ad35ba64a43a949182983410738/3/0">Seth Wenig/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Chabelly Pacheco – a Dominican-American who moved to Long Island when she was five years old – walks into her favorite Dominican salon on Brooklyn’s Graham Avenue, it’s more like entering a home than a business. </p>
<p>The salon is filled with smoke, hair spray and women of all ages. Everyone in the room greets her: The hairdressers kiss her on both cheeks, while the other customers say hello. Daughters sit alongside their mothers with curlers in their hair, feet dangling from their chairs. </p>
<p>For first-generation Dominican women like Pacheco, these salons can serve as a place to bond with fellow Dominicans. </p>
<p>“I don’t really feel connected to my culture,” said Yoeli Collado, a friend of Pacheco’s who moved to Long Island from the Dominican Republic when she was three years old. “When I speak Spanish, I feel powerful… But other than that I don’t have much I can connect to. So going to a Dominican salon is part of my culture. For me, it’s one of the only ways I can identify.”</p>
<p>Other diasporas have a wide range of cultural public spaces. There are Chinese community centers and Indian music venues, Russian tea rooms and Ghanaian restaurants.</p>
<p>For Dominicans, the salon plays an outsized cultural role. </p>
<p>Fascinated by these spaces – and as a scholar studying women’s issues – I wanted to see how salons and Dominican beauty regimens influence female Dominican-American identity. </p>
<p>I found that although Dominican-American women I interviewed spoke warmly of the salons they frequent, Dominican hair culture is far from glamorous. In many ways, it’s a pricey, burdensome ritual steeped in a colonial beauty standards – a contradiction that young Dominican women are grappling with today. </p>
<h2>‘The hair carries the woman’</h2>
<p>As in many cultures, Dominican female beauty standards can be burdensome. Though most Dominicans tend to have curly, textured hair, the culture favors long, straight hair. Curly, frizzy or kinky hair is called “pelo malo,” which translates to “bad hair,” and many women feel pressured to treat it. </p>
<p>“I hear my mom say it all the time,” Pacheco said. “‘The hair carries the woman’ – that’s the mantra in my family. If your hair is fine, you’re fine.”</p>
<p>Despite the lively atmosphere of the salon, it’s not all fun. It can be costly, painful and time-consuming.</p>
<p>Sociologist Ginetta Candelario <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/black-behind-the-ears">has found</a> that Dominican women visit salons far more frequently than any other female population in the U.S., spending up to 30 percent of their salaries on beauty regimens.</p>
<p>Many Dominican kids don’t have any say over how to style their hair; their parents force them to get it straightened. This was evident in Pacheco’s salon, where young girls tugged at the tight curlers in their hair, complaining that the dryers were burning their scalps. </p>
<p>“You’re taught from a young age that your hair has to be straight to be pretty, to get a job, to get a boyfriend, to be called pretty by your mother,” Pacheco told me. </p>
<p>It all stems from a strict hair culture in the Dominican Republic, where young women can actually <a href="http://www.essence.com/hair/natural/black-student-natural-hair-asked-to-get-hair-done">be sent home from school or work</a> if their hair isn’t worn in the “preferred way.” Women with untreated, natural hair can even be <a href="http://remezcla.com/features/culture/meet-miss-rizos-the-woman-behind-santo-domingos-first-natural-hair-salon/">barred from some public and private spaces</a>. </p>
<p>Though discrimination against curly hair isn’t as pronounced in New York, many Dominican-American women told me that they nevertheless feel the same sort of pressure. </p>
<h2>No such thing as black</h2>
<p>The Dominican tradition of straight hair has it roots in colonial rule under Spain; it eventually became a way to imitate the higher classes and to separate themselves from their Haitian neighbors, who once occupied their country and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3821341?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">championed the négritude movement</a>, which was started by black writers to defend and celebrate a black cultural identity. </p>
<p>Dominicans believe that Haitians are “black,” while Dominicans – even those who clearly descend from African heritage – fall into other nonblack categories. </p>
<p>The process of differentiation is referred to as <a href="http://www.afropedea.org/whitening-bleaching-branqueamento-por-blanqueamiento-sp">“blanqueamiento</a>,” which translates to “whitening,” and hair straightening is simply one of many ways Dominicans try to distinguish themselves from Haitians. In fact, even though the Dominican Republic <a href="http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en_programs_diaspora">ranks fifth</a> in countries outside of Africa that have the largest black populations, many black Dominicans don’t consider themselves black. </p>
<p>“[Blackness] is a taboo in the DR,” Stephanie Lorenzo, a 25-year-old Dominican-American from the Bronx, explained. “You don’t want to be black.”</p>
<p><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/23/curly-centric-hair-salon-teaches-dominican-women-to-love-their-pajon.html">According to Yesilernis Peña</a>, a researcher at the Instituto Tecnologico de Santo Domingo who studies race in the Latin Caribbean, there are six established racial categories in the Dominican Republic, and they tend to correlate with one’s economic class: white, mixed race, olive, Indian, dark and black.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=ASkib7s1QH8C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=white+skinned+elite+dominican+republic&source=bl&ots=S-IS78LmcK&sig=BdbIdxL3IVzCZ-LSdfFEN7OIp_8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikgPzGgpDWAhVIJsAKHY_PAhkQ6AEIgQEwFA#v=onepage&q=white%20skinned%20elite%20dominican%20republic&f=false">a light-skinned elite has consolidated most of the political power</a>, while many of the country’s black people – who make up the majority of the population – live in extreme poverty. So straightening one’s hair can be seen as an attempt to climb the social ladder – or at least imitate those with money and power. </p>
<p>“When people relax their hair or bleach it, they do it because they want to be closer to the people who hold the power,” Dominican salon owner Carolina Contreras told the magazine <a href="http://remezcla.com/features/culture/meet-miss-rizos-the-woman-behind-santo-domingos-first-natural-hair-salon/">Remezcla</a> in 2015. </p>
<h2>‘But I like it straight’</h2>
<p>Given the fraught history of hair, it’s clear that Dominican salons, with the beauty regimens they perpetuate, are complex, contradictory places.</p>
<p>Pacheco – who grew up in America and loves spending time at the salon – is aware that she’s also tacitly succumbing to beauty norms steeped in racism.</p>
<p>“Obviously it’s a construct, and it puts pressure on women and sometimes I feel conflicted about getting my hair straightened,” she said. “That deeply rooted colonial oppression is still there. But then I’m like, ‘I like it straight.’” </p>
<p>In sociologist Ginetta Candelario’s study “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288671633_Hair_Race-ing_Dominican_Beauty_Culture_and_Identity_Production">Hair-Race-ing: Dominican Beauty Culture and Identity Production</a>,” she wonders if beauty can be a source of empowerment, even if it means using time and resources, while suppressing one’s “blackness.” </p>
<p>Through her extensive research in Dominican salons in New York, Candelario did find that women can, in fact, empower themselves through these beauty norms. By physically altering their appearance, they could get better jobs and use their beauty as “symbolic and economic capital.”</p>
<p>But she points out that in order for this beauty regimen to exist in the first place, it requires “ugliness to reside somewhere, and that somewhere is in other women, usually women defined as black.”</p>
<h2>Reimagining beauty, reinventing space</h2>
<p>In 2014, Carolina Contreras opened up Miss Rizos, a natural hair salon located in the colonial city center of Santo Domingo, the nation’s capital. </p>
<p>The 29-year-old Dominican-American wanted her salon to champion “pajón love” (Afro love), and to reimagine what a Dominican salon and a Dominican beauty regimen might look like. The salon, which caters to Dominican-Americans, encourages women to wear their Afro-textured hair with pride.</p>
<p>It was at Contreras’s salon where Stephanie Lorenzo decided to do “the big chop” in 2015: She cut off her chemically altered hair, leaving her with a small Afro. </p>
<p>“Around the same time, I was becoming more in touch with my African roots as an American woman,” she said. “[Cutting my hair] was part of acknowledging that we are also black.”</p>
<p>Back in Brooklyn, Chabelly Pacheco’s hairdresser said that during her 30 years working in salons in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and New York, she’s noticed more women asking for natural hair treatments. In fact, many older Dominican women are now starting to change the way they see their own hair. Carolina Contreras’ mother told me that she decided to go natural to be closer to the way God imagined her. </p>
<p>Contreras, however, is quick to note that the natural hair movement isn’t meant to shame women who do choose to straighten their hair. Instead, it’s simply about making textured hair accepted, appreciated and celebrated. </p>
<p>Perhaps by embracing all different kinds of hair, salons – which bring Dominican women closer to their culture and to each other – can also bring Dominican women closer to their natural selves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Godin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In New York City, hair salons are one of the few cultural spaces for Dominican women to bond. But they also perpetuate legacies of racism and colonialism.Melissa Godin, Rhodes Scholar Studying Development, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/399982015-04-27T10:19:55Z2015-04-27T10:19:55ZIs Newark the next Brooklyn?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79311/original/image-20150424-14581-1hxdfn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Making a comeback </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/8489492244/">Boston Public Library </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In an expansive pair of <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/newark-new-jersey-development-what-works-116234.html">articles</a> about Newark and its mayor as well as an accompanying photo essay, <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/ras-baraka-newark-cory-booker-116239.html">Politico</a> recently asked, “Is Newark the next Brooklyn?” </p>
<p>Much in these pieces is rightly encouraging. Yes, it is the case that <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34/3451000.html">29%</a> of Newark residents are living under the poverty level. But at the same time, it’s true that Newark’s downtown real-estate assets are now just beginning to attract attention from investors after long years of tepid investment, if not broad avoidance.</p>
<p>Additionally, new leadership in City Hall has made it clear that while attracting more residents downtown is a goal, it has to be complemented by other ingredients of city and neighborhood revitalization such as <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/ras-baraka-newark-cory-booker-116239.html">investing </a>in the people who live there. </p>
<p>The fact is, however, that the Newark to Brooklyn comparison is a limiting one. The process through which American industrial-legacy cities struggle on their way back to economic relevancy is complicated and idiosyncratic.</p>
<p>The nature of urban and metropolitan development is our principal concern at the <a href="https://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu">Joseph C. Cornwall Center</a> for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. </p>
<p>While we are broadly interested in national and global trends in urban development, the city of Newark and the region in which it is embedded is a key focus of our applied research and policy development work. </p>
<p>So the question of whether the Newark is the new Brooklyn is one that is of deep interest to our work and mission.</p>
<h2>The ingredients of Brooklyn’s success</h2>
<p>First, let’s take the Brooklyn example off the table. </p>
<p>I grew up in Brooklyn, and like many others I have a deep primordial affinity for the borough. When I left to go to graduate school in the late 1970s, many parts of Brooklyn were on the ropes, including my neighborhood. </p>
<p>The magnificent brownstones on Jefferson Avenue, the place where I spent my formative years, were in disrepair and part of New York City’s inventory of abandoned buildings that were trying to sell cheaply under various homesteading program in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Many of those buildings that the city then wanted to sell for a pittance are now worth upwards of a million dollars. </p>
<p>So what happened? A number of things. </p>
<p>First and foremost, from the 1980s on, New York’s economy adjusted, shook off the vestiges of its manufacturing past, and embraced its future as the financial capital of the world.</p>
<p>Brooklyn’s downtown, specifically, transitioned from being just a retail hub and evolved into a place where financial, technology, and higher educational institutions converge in the <a href="http://downtownbrooklyn.com/about/metrotech-bid">MetroTech Center</a>, the country’s largest urban university-industry science and technology park. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79314/original/image-20150424-14581-jf2phy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A two-day NYU-Poly hackathon at MetroTech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8707115629/">Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Based on the Silicon Valley model, this effort was <a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18671/livable-cities-of-the-future-proceedings-of-a-symposium-honoring">enabled by</a> and supported by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/14/realestate/perspectives-downtown-brooklyn-creating-a-critical-mass-at-metrotech.html?pagewanted=2">public/private partnerships</a>. It was leaders in the public and private sector whose vision brought it into being. </p>
<p>Adjacent neighborhoods also experienced their own resurgence, with a helping hand from the growth of nonprofit <a href="http://www.bsdcorp.org;%20http://www.restorationplaza.org">development corporations</a> which took city-owned residential properties and renovated them, thereby increasing the supply of affordable housing and neighborhood vitality. </p>
<p>They did this with the help of banks, who, through their obligations to the 1977 <a href="https://www.ffiec.gov/cra/">Community Reinvestment Act</a>, learned that there were reliable deals in Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Bedford Stuyvesant, Fort Green, and East Flatbush. </p>
<p>Lastly, these neighborhoods were helped by America’s longstanding ability to draw strivers from different lands who want a new future for themselves and their children. Immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, Korea, and many others (including religious groups such as the Hasidim) took old places and breathed new life into them.</p>
<p>So the Brooklyn story that accentuates the infusion of the “creative class” is not quite appropriate here. </p>
<p>Brooklyn’s revitalization used a tried-and-true (yet unappreciated) recipe of leadership, anchor institutions, a strong regional economy, people power – and time. </p>
<p>And despite all of this, there are still many parts of Brooklyn that struggle with unemployment, poverty, and localized crime. Measures of success, in other words, should be fluid and contextual.</p>
<h2>Newark’s special challenge</h2>
<p>Newark has many of the ingredients that revitalized Brooklyn. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79313/original/image-20150424-14543-13h3p4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newark’s Prudential Plaza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prudential_Plaza_-_Newark_-_Four_Corners.jpg">Hudconja</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are anchors in education (my own institution of Rutgers-Newark), medicine (St. Barnabas Medical Center) and corporations (from the Prudential Corporation to Amazon-owned Audible.com) that care a great deal about Newark. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/files/Assesments/barriers_to_upward_mobility.pdf">growing</a> immigrant community. Neighborhood-based development corporations have done a yeoman’s job in the face of a stiff wind, and now private real-estate developers rightly see <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/25825-the-roles-of-nonprofit-cdcs-in-newark-s-long-awaited-renaissance.html">an opportunity</a> in undervalued assets.</p>
<p>I have lived in and worked in and around Newark for as much time as I lived in Brooklyn, and so I say the following with deep interest and attachment. </p>
<p>Some key ingredients of the revitalization recipe still need to be addressed. </p>
<p>A significant challenge facing Newark is the limited participation of Newark residents not only in regional labor markets but also jobs in downtown Newark. </p>
<p>Newark – as part of the greater New York metropolitan area – is also part of one of the biggest job-generating regions in the world. But it is not able to exploit this potential because of uneven transportation links and, critically, a workforce that is not prepared to take jobs in an information-based economy.</p>
<p>Unleashing Newark’s significant people power is limited by the low post-secondary <a href="https://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/newark-city-learning-collaborative">education attainment rate</a> which hovers at 17%. </p>
<p>And by “post-secondary attainment” I don’t mean getting a BA. I mean getting any sort of post-secondary credential, including a certificate to be a locksmith, a medical technician, or a long-haul truck driver. </p>
<h2>Encouraging collaboration for Newark’s future</h2>
<p>What can be done for legacy cities – or former industrial powerhouses – with the kinds of challenges Newark faces? </p>
<p>While there are no easy answers, many cities have evolved networks of diverse stakeholders who can work together intentionally to analyze problems and use data to devise solutions. </p>
<p>This networked change model – usually referred to as “collective impact” – is yielding important <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/coming-together-to-give-schools-a-boost/?_r=1">results</a> across the country. <a href="http://www.strivetogether.org">Strive Together</a>, for example, is providing broad community support and action for more effective education in 90 different locations. </p>
<p>As an engaged <a href="http://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/anchors/index.html">anchor institution</a>, Rutgers University-Newark is helping to build such a network. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79308/original/image-20150424-14549-xcf4ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rutgers-Newark: in the heart of the city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rutgers_Newark_campus_003.jpg">Arthur Paxton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two years ago, the Cornwall Center was asked by stakeholders in the public, private and non-profit sectors to build on an existing process to boost Newark’s post-secondary achievement rate from 17% to 25% by 2025.</p>
<p>In 2012, a new master plan for the City of Newark was enacted, stating that the city would intentionally focus on increasing the number of residents with college degrees for purposes of economic development. </p>
<p>The existing stakeholders saw this element in the plan as a way to galvanize more stakeholder communities in Newark to engage in the process of enabling their citizens to acquire training and a qualification beyond high school.</p>
<p>Then, in 2013, the City of Newark was invited to apply for
entrance to the <a href="http://www.luminafoundation.org/news-and-events/thirty-five-communities-added-to-lumina-foundation-s-community-based-postsecondary-education-attainment-strategy">Lumina Foundation’s</a> cohort of cities focused on collectively improving our nation’s post-secondary attainment rate. In preparation for the application to Lumina, more partners were invited to the table and formed the Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC). </p>
<p>Last year Newark was chosen as a <a href="http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/newark-city-learning-collaborative-unveils-proposals-increase-college-attainment-rates-17-25">Lumina city</a>. This was an important achievement and not only because of the resources and know-how the Lumina strategy can provide. </p>
<p>Perhaps even more importantly, Newark stakeholders saw that they were capable of designing an organic, deliberative process that resulted in the creation of a powerful and sustainable network of institutions and individuals working on post-secondary attainment. That network, the <a href="https://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/newark-city-learning-collaborative">Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC)</a>, is now based at Rutgers University-Newark. </p>
<p>Similar to what happened in the case of Brooklyn’s MetroTech, Newark’s institutional and community leaders have recognized that they have to invest in a collaborative process over time to build educational opportunity for Newark’s residents. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79366/original/image-20150426-14571-1pamz6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newark students participate in a leadership workshop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://njleep.org/">Courtesy of the New Jersey Law and Education Empowerment Project</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This will not be an easy process, and leaders will come and go, interest and participation will rise and wane. But now both a structure and a process are in place. They hold the promise of growing stronger as the move toward the goal proceeds. </p>
<p>So, to the question: Is Newark the next Brooklyn? To play on Shakespeare: that is not the question. </p>
<p>A better one is: can we collaborate in getting to the next Newark?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roland V Anglin is a director for the City National Bank, headquartered in Newark, New
Jersey, and is on the board of the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation, the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, New Jersey Policy Perspective, the New Jersey Institute for Social
Justice, Sustainable New Jersey, the New Jersey Advisory Committee of the Regional Plan Association and the Local Advisory Board of the Greater Newark Local Initiatives Support Corporation.</span></em></p>The fashionistas aren’t flocking there yet but things are happening in Brick City – especially when it comes to education policy.Roland V. Anglin, Dean, The Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.