Mixed
Reception to Changes in Harlem Is Understandable,
Says Professor Jonathan Rieder
NEW
YORK, N.Y., Feb. 26, 2001 - Because of their historical
exclusion from white neighborhoods, it is understandable
that African-Americans in Harlem would feel a
kind of cultural nervousness about the integration
of the neighborhood, according to Jonathan Rieder,
Professor of Sociology at Barnard.
Rieder
is quoted in Sunday's edition of The New York
Times in an article by Janny Scott titled
White Flight, This Time Toward Harlem.
The article is part of a series on the changing
fortunes of the area.
In the article, Scott noted that "racial integration
is getting a mixed reception in Harlem" and "has
kindled what one scholar called a kind of cultural
nervousness that is somewhat reminiscent of the
mix of class anxiety, cultural discomfort and
racial fear seen in white ethnic communities that
resisted integration in the past."
The
article quotes Rieder as saying: "African-Americans
-- especially economically impoverished and socially
vulnerable African-Americans -- can be motivated
by the same mix of motives when they look at what's
happening with intrusions into their neighborhoods.
And African-Americans, with their long memory
of exclusion from white neighborhoods, have much
invested in a feeling of comfort with their own
kind."
Rieder,
who holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D.
from Yale University, has taught at Barnard since
1989 and is chair of the Department of Sociology.
He is the author of Canarsie: The Jews and
Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism, published
by Harvard University Press in 1985, which was
awarded the Robert Park Prize of the American
Sociological Association and was named a Distinguished
Book on Race Relations by the Society for the
Study of Social Problems. He was also co-editor-in-chief
of CommonQuest: The Magazine of Black-Jewish
Relations.
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