Overwhelmingly, Black teenage girls are negatively represented in national and global popular discourses, either as being at risk for teenage pregnancy, obesity, or sexually transmitted diseases, or ...as helpless victims of inner city poverty and violence. Such popular representations are pervasive and often portray Black adolescents' consumer and leisure culture as corruptive, uncivilized, and pathological. In She's Mad Real, Oneka LaBennett draws on over a decade of researching teenage West Indian girls in the Flatbush and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn to argue that Black youth are in fact strategic consumers of popular culture and through this consumption they assert far more agency in defining race, ethnicity, and gender than academic and popular discourses tend to acknowledge. Importantly, LaBennett also studies West Indian girls' consumer and leisure culture within public spaces in order to analyze how teens like China are marginalized and policed as they attempt to carve out places for themselves within New York's contested terrains.
In The Rise and Fall of Protestant
Brooklyn , Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C.
Altschuler tell the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's
domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in
...Puritan New England. This lively history describes the
unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse
groups moved into the "City of Churches" during the twentieth
century.
Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic
diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious "town across the
river" from Manhattan, celebrated for its churches and upright
suburban living. But challenges to this way of life issued from the
sheer growth of the city, from new secular institutions-department
stores, theaters, professional baseball-and from the licit and
illicit attractions of Coney Island, all of which were at odds with
post-Puritan piety and behavior.
Despite these developments, the Yankee-Protestant hegemony
largely held until the massive influx of Southern and Eastern
European immigrants in the twentieth century. As The Rise and
Fall of Protestant Brooklyn demonstrates, in their churches,
synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their
neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic
mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural
pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.
The World in Brooklyn: Gentrification, Immigration, and Ethnic Politics in a Global City, is a collection of scholarly papers which analyze demographic, social, political, and economic trends that ...are occurring in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, as the context, reflects global forces while also contributing to them. The idea for this volume developed as the editors discovered a group of scholars from different disciplines and various universities studying Brooklyn. Brooklyn has always been legendary and has more recently regained its stature as a much sought after place to live, work and have fun. Popular folklore has it that most U.S. residents trace their family origins to Brooklyn. It is presently referred to as one of the “hippest” places in New York. Thus, this book is a collection of demographic, ethnographic, and comparative studies which focus on urban dynamics in Brooklyn. The chapters investigate issues of social class, urban development, immigration, race, ethnicity and politics within the context of Brooklyn. As a whole, this book considers both theoretical and practical urban issues. In most cases the scholarly perspective is on everyday life. With this in mind there are also social justice concerns. Issues of social segregation and attendant homogenization are brought to light. Moreover, social class and race advantages or disadvantages, as part of urban processes, are underscored through critiques of local policy decisions throughout the chapters. A common thread is the assertion by contributors that planning the future of Brooklyn needs to include multi-ethnic, racial, and economic groups, those very residents who make-up Brooklyn.
Stroll through any public park in Brooklyn on a weekday afternoon and you will see black women with white children at every turn. Many of these women are of Caribbean descent, and they have long been ...a crucial component of New York's economy, providing childcare for white middle- and upper-middleclass families. Raising Brooklyn offers an in-depth look at the daily lives of these childcare providers, examining the important roles they play in the families whose children they help to raise. Tamara Mose Brown spent three years immersed in these Brooklyn communities: in public parks, public libraries, and living as a fellow resident among their employers, and her intimate tour of the public spaces of gentrified Brooklyn deepens our understanding of how these women use their collective lives to combat the isolation felt during the workday as a domestic worker.Though at first glance these childcare providers appear isolated and exploited - and this is the case for many - Mose Brown shows that their daily interactions in the social spaces they create allow their collective lives and cultural identities to flourish. Raising Brooklyn demonstrates how these daily interactions form a continuous expression of cultural preservation as a weapon against difficult working conditions, examining how this process unfolds through the use of cell phones, food sharing, and informal economic systems. Ultimately, Raising Brooklyn places the organization of domestic workers within the framework of a social justice movement, creating a dialogue between workers who don't believe their exploitative work conditions will change and an organization whose members believe change can come about through public displays of solidarity.
Across the United States marginalized communities are organizing to address social, economic, and environmental inequities through building community food systems rooted in the principles of social ...justice. But how exactly are communities doing this work, why are residents tackling these issues through food, what are their successes, and what barriers are they encountering? This book dives into the heart of the food justice movement through an exploration of East New York Farms! (ENYF!), one of the oldest food justice organizations in Brooklyn, and one that emerged from a bottom-up asset-oriented development model. It details the food inequities the community faces and what produced them, how and why residents mobilized to turn vacant land into community gardens, and the struggles the organization has encountered as they worked to feed residents through urban farms and farmers markets. This book also discusses how through the politics of food justice, ENYF! has challenged the growth-oriented development politics of City Hall, opposed the neoliberalization of food politics, navigated the funding constraints of philanthropy and the welfare state, and opposed the entrance of a Walmart into their community. Through telling this story, Growing Gardens, Building Power offers insights into how the food justice movement is challenging the major structures and institutions that seek to curtail the transformative power of the food justice movement and its efforts to build a more just and sustainable world.
Brooklyn Bridge Park has emerged as an internationally recognized attraction. Stretching along a waterfront that faces one of the world's great harbors and a storied skyline, it has utterly ...transformed a strip of moribund structures that formerly served bustling port activity. When the idea was put forward, it did not come from government officials or planners, but from a local community aghast that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey might sell the defunct piers and their upland, situated below the quiet precincts of Brooklyn Heights, for intensive housing development. Neighborhood leaders, looking for less intensive uses of the property, ultimately came to the idea of a park. The Port Authority resisted, seeing a park as a money-losing proposition, as did the once powerful longshoremen's union, which was desperate to hold onto jobs. The battle was waged inconclusively for well over a decade; the Port Authority was prevented from developing the site, but the park did not move forward, either. Then, locally elected officials joined with members of the local communities to form something called a Local Development Corporation (LDC) to explore how the Port Authority might be induced at last to shed its money-losing waterfront piers in favor of a park. The LDC turned to the communities themselves and carried out an open process of public planning, a democratic process that became a model for other public projects but that was unique in its day. That process produced a plan, and that plan ultimately produced a park. In this book, the authors have tried to tell the full story of how Brooklyn Bridge Park came to be, from the inside deliberations as well as the public actions. They have tried to be complete and factual. One of the people interviewed told them that all history is revisionist to some extent, and they do have a point of view on many of the issues discussed, but they have tried to keep each other honest and to reflect all the competing views.
Boss of Black Brooklynpresents a riveting and untold story about the struggles and achievements of the first black person to hold public office in Brooklyn. Bertram L. Baker immigrated to the United ...States from the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1915. Three decades later, he was elected to the New York state legislature, representing the Bedford Stuyvesant section. A pioneer and a giant, Baker has a story that is finally revealed in intimate and honest detail by his grandson Ron Howell.
Boss of Black Brooklynbegins with the tale of one man's rise to prominence in a fascinating era of black American history, a time when thousands of West Indian families began leaving their native islands in the Caribbean and settling in New York City. In 1948, Bert Baker was elected to the New York state assembly, representing the growing central Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant. Baker loved telling his fellow legislators that only one other Nevisian had ever served in the state assembly. That was Alexander Hamilton, the founding father. Making his own mark on modern history, Baker pushed through one of the nation's first bills outlawing discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Also, for thirty years, from 1936 to 1966, he led the all-black American Tennis Association, as its executive secretary. In that capacity he successfully negotiated with white tennis administrators, getting them to accept Althea Gibson into their competitions. Gibson then made history as the first black champion of professional tennis. Yet, after all of Baker's wonderful achievements, little has been written to document his role in black history.
Baker represents a remarkable turning point in the evolution of modern New York City. In the 1940s, when he won his seat in the New York state assembly, blacks made up only 4 percent of the population of Brooklyn. Today they make up a third of the population, and there are scores of black elected officials. Yet Brooklyn, often called the capital of the Black Diaspora, is a capital under siege. Developers and realtors seeking to gentrify the borough are all but conspiring to push blacks out of the city. A very important and long-overdue book,Boss of Black Brooklynnot only explores black politics and black organizations but also penetrates Baker's inner life and reveals themes that resonate today: black fatherhood, relations between black men and black women, faithfulness to place and ancestry. Bertram L. Baker's story has receded into the shadows of time, butBoss of Black Brooklynrecaptures it and inspires us to learn from it.
Remarkable, important, and beautifully written book about a key figure at the forefront of black politics in Brooklyn in the 1940s.
Brooklyn today has three dozen black elected officials, including members of Congress. It has overtaken Harlem as the center of black political power in the city and is synonymous with the blackimmigrant presence in New York City.
In 1948 Bertram L. Baker became the first black person elected to political office in Brooklyn. He took his New York State Assembly seat in January of 1949 and served 22 consecutive years as the political boss of black Brooklyn, which in those days meant Bedford Stuyvesant.
Brooklyn Tides Shepard, Benjamin Heim
2018, 201803
eBook
Brooklyn has all the features of a "global borough": It is a base of immigrant labor and ethnically diverse communities, of social and cultural capital, of global transportation, cultural production, ...and policy innovation. At once a model of sustainable urbanization and overdevelopment, the question is now: What will become of Global Brooklyn?Tracing the emergence of Brooklyn from village outpost to global borough, Brooklyn Tides investigates the nature and consequences of global forces that have crossed the East River and identifies alternative models for urban development in global capitalism. Benjamin Shepard and Mark Noonan provide a unique ethnographic reading of the literature, social activism, and changing tides impacting this ever- transforming space.Cover and interior images of a rapidly transforming global borough by photographer Caroline Shepard.
An original and captivating history of gentrification, this book challenges the conventional wisdom that New York City began a comeback in the 1990s, locating the roots of Brooklyn's revival in the ...social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Osman examines the emergence of a progressive coalition as young, well-educated brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. Deftly mixing architectural, cultural, and political history, this book offers an eye-opening perspective on the post-industrial city.
For more than 150 years, Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal has been called a cesspool, an industrial dumping ground, and a blemish on the face of the populous borough-as well as one of the most important ...waterways in the history of New York harbor. Yet its true origins, man-made character, and importance to the city have been largely forgotten.
Now, New York writer and guide Joseph Alexiou explores how the Gowanus creek-a naturally-occurring tidal estuary that served as a conduit for transport and industry during the colonial era-came to play an outsized role in the story of America's greatest city. From the earliest Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, to nearby Revolutionary War skirmishes, or the opulence of the Gilded Age mansions that sprung up in its wake, historical changes to the Canal and the neighborhood that surround it have functioned as a microcosm of the story of Brooklyn's rapid nineteenth-century growth.
Highlighting the biographies of nineteenth-century real estate moguls like Daniel Richards and Edwin C. Litchfield, Alexiou recalls the forgotten movers and shakers that laid the foundation of modern-day Brooklyn. As he details, the pollution, crime, and industry associated with the Gowanus stretch back far earlier than the twentieth century, and helped define the culture and unique character of this celebrated borough. The story of the Gowanus, like Brooklyn itself, is a tale of ambition and neglect, bursts of creative energy, and an inimitable character that has captured the imaginations of city-lovers around the world.
