8 Million Stories: Gringa in the Heights
| AR Articles on Racial Differences |
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| Race and Psychopathic Personality (Jul. 2002) |
| Race and Teenage Pregnancy (Feb. 2002) |
| The Biological Reality of Race (Oct. 1999) |
| Why Race Matters (Oct. 1997) |
| Race and Health (May 1996) |
| A New Theory of Racial Differences (Dec. 1994) |
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The day I moved to Washington Heights, a kid stood on the sidewalk and stared at me. {snip}
{snip} Then it became clear: I was the white lady moving into this Dominican kid’s home. I made eye contact with him and smiled uncertainly, as if to say: Sorry, kid, it’s true. I live here now. The kid looked away.
Choosing Washington Heights had been easy: It was affordable, and it was in Manhattan. What else did I need to know? As I packed up my old apartment in Boston, I read Washington Heights’ Wikipedia page as if it were scripture. I learned the neighborhood had been a refuge for European Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, who were then displaced by Greeks in the 1960s. By thata time, Washington Heights had become “the Astoria of Manhattan.” In the 1970s, the Greeks, in turn, were displaced by Dominicans, and now Washington Heights has the largest Dominican population outside the Dominican Republic.
The web page failed to mention I’d be welcomed to the neighborhood by a goggle-eyed kid. I felt like all my neighbors were staring at me. Did my neighbors see me, coconut-pale among chocolates and cinnamons, as just another neighbor? Or was I seen as the harbinger of gentrification, ready to wipe away another old neighborhood, bringing nothing but Starbucks and jacked-up rents?
{snip}
One Saturday morning, I stepped out to get a newspaper and a coffee to find the neighborhood completely transformed for the annual Dominican Day Festival. Unable to go anywhere else, I stood and peered over the police barricades, craning to see the parade that was still just a distant din, until at last, the parade swaggered down St. Nicholas Avenue.
Masked red devils ran up and leered at small kids in the crowds. Girls in towering feathered headpieces wore sequined dresses and glinted in the sun like fresh fish. Behind a pair of gigantic fake boobs, a man in a dress and wig hid behind his parasol and shook his equally enormous fake behind at the delighted crowd.
It was like Mardi Gras and Christmas and the Fourth of July all at once, and this feeling of undaunted joy rose up from the sidewalks like the shimmering August heat. I started to cry. Everyone around me cheering, laughing, waving flags . . . and I would never genuinely be a part of that. I knew I would always be on one side of the barricade, my neighbors on the other.
I also began to understand something else: I was a complete idiot. Of course, I was never going to fit in. I accepted, at last, that there would be times where people would look twice and wonder what I was doing in that part of town; but I was in New York City, a city based largely on the premise that no one really gives a damn where you’re from. And whatever made me different from my neighbors, I began to understand there are things we could all agree on.
{snip}
(Posted on July 8, 2008)
Comments
I have recently come to believe is that most White Liberals are more interested in being “Trend-Setters” than in being just about anything else, including self proclaimed Saints. . How they get that label doesn`t really matter. In the last few days I have seen more and more of these articles on line hinting at the coming sea change that Mult-culturalism is a failure etc. I am optimistic enough to believe the worm has turned. I think most reporters will soon see the value in being the “first” to proclaim the present world view as no longer acheivable rather than being the “last” to cling to an outmoded idea. Even though the lady in this article trumpets the same tired ideals, the real meat of this treatise is what is said before the perfuntory end of article bow to the Gods of Diversity.
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 6:15 PM on July 8
“… I WAS a complete idiot.” ?? How about “…I still am a complete idiot.”?
Posted by underdog at 6:29 PM on July 8
Nice link. Please keep us updated as to when the white women in this story writes about her inevitable rape.
You can’t argue with statistics.
Posted by Tony S at 6:49 PM on July 8
Diversity for caucasian liberals is only a pretext to indulge in narcissism.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 6:57 PM on July 8
It seems like there is a piece like this by a silly white woman on Amren about once a month. Why don’t we do her a favor and send her links to the older articles by other silly white women who tried to single-handedly bring diversity to a neighborhood?
Posted by at 7:19 PM on July 8
The silly white woman would never fit into a Dominican neighborhood, nor will third-world primitives EVER really fit into a White society. Seriously, now. What is so hard to understand about that? Why do our liberals insist on trying the impossibility of mixing oil and water?
Posted by Fed Up at 7:53 PM on July 8
This one isn’t bad. It’s so understated, however, like she’s spent a lifetime not really being able to say, what she really wants to say. Like she’s sat on our side (the conservative) side of the fence for awhile. Who knows? It takes all kinds to achieve ‘diversity’.
Posted by at 8:09 PM on July 8
Don’t go out at night by yourself honey. There just might be a “welcoming committee” ready to give you a taste of New York and it will be real tears this time, not imagined.
Posted by at 8:18 PM on July 8
Not one mention of the real reason you stay out of Washington Heights….it’s a “crime” infested hell hole. Crime, of course, is a euphemism for racially directed violence against whites. If she stays there, eventually she will be raped, robbed, murdered or beaten.
Posted by at 8:38 PM on July 8
That’s easily one of the most forgetable articles I’ve ever read.
Where’s the story? Another honky not accepted by non-whites. She has to write a silly little ditty to tell what any aware person with half a brain knows without having to go through the distasteful experience.
Hey, lady. Diversity is a WEAKNESS. Get it? A WEAKNESS.
Posted by at 8:58 PM on July 8
I agree with 7:19 PM on July 8th.
These silly White women’s experiences trying to make “Diversity” a joy for all our boring, always the same. These silly White women bring no joy to anyone, not to non WHite Dominicans, certainly not to any White males, maybe they can get a cat to tolerate them if they are well fed.
Instead let’s have articles about the great White women who are all around if you know where to look.
I found one such great White woman at Communist/Lefty/Hippy run Organic farmers market in my Norther inner city/Commi University community surrounded by Zimbabwe neighborhoods and politics.
The White woman was an Amish mother of 10 children making a great go of their family business supplying grass fed lifestock meats to urban areas. The farms are all AMish farms Indiana.
This White mom had ten White children, doubt any will waste their time trying to enjoy diversity with Dominicans in Washington Heights NYC.
Posted by JR at 9:04 PM on July 8
“It was like Mardi Gras and Christmas and the Fourth of July all at once, and this feeling of undaunted joy rose up from the sidewalks like the shimmering August heat. I started to cry. Everyone around me cheering, laughing, waving flags … and I would never genuinely be a part of that. I knew I would always be on one side of the barricade, my neighbors on the other.”
WHY WHY WHY do these people agonize over the real world?
EVERYONE has to live somewhere and EVERYONE likes being around people like themselves. WHY WHY WHY do these people see this as a problem or a source of pain and shame???
I’ve said it a million times and I stand by it: Liberalism is a kind of mental illness characterized by an inability to see and accept reality.
THIS IS THE REAL WOLRD. This is how God made it or this is how millions of years of evolution made it. Either way, it’s the way things are.
I wish these people would get so sick of the injustice and unfairness of the world that they would take themselves out of it.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 9:38 PM on July 8
I am a white female who lives in Washington Heights.
This area was 75% Hispanic years ago (yes most are Dominican), and now is probably worse. I am Greek, and all the Greeks I remember in my building years ago have gotten older and passed away. Now I don’t really see any. My mother tells me how hard it was to live in various other buildings around this area with my grandmother. Hispanic kids would throw rocks and blocks of ice to break their windows constantly, and they had to replace them all the time. Muggings and robberies are common, and a body was found in the park behind my building when I was younger.
These people really have no respect even for their own community. The streets are a dump, garbage everywhere, and no one cleans up after dogs. I usually see Hispanic or black men urinating on other people’s cars or on buildings outside. It’s often hard to sleep at night hearing rap or Spanish music blasting outside, or 5 car alarms go off at once. No one cares about this area at all. I hope I can get away from it soon.
I’m usually surprised if I walk somewhere and see another young white person. Most of the whites I see are elderly people who have lived here a while. I always am cautious walking around here alone, and I always feel nervous.
I should be glad it isn’t Harlem, but I still feel like I shouldn’t have to live like this. I know I’ll never come back here once I move.
Posted by at 10:44 PM on July 8
“Or was I seen as the harbinger of gentrification, ready to wipe away another old neighborhood”
Wipe away another old neighborhood?
She herself writes the neighborhood was all white until the 70s. Yet she feels they have a right to not let ONE white person back into the community. How many Mexicans feel guilt about invading once small white towns by the tens thousands, transforming them into unrecognizable, third world, meth infested barrios, from North Carolina to Oregon. Imagine how elderly,displaced whites must feel, seeing their old neighborhood of Washington Heights turned into a crime ridden, third world hell-hole. Whites are labelled racist when they protest the violence, intimidation, drugs, and mayhem that non-whites bring into their neighborhoods, but it is okay for non-whites to complain about the ‘Starbucks’ and ‘high rents’ whites bring in.
Posted by at 12:12 AM on July 9
“It was like Mardi Gras and Christmas and the Fourth of July all at once, and this feeling of undaunted joy rose up from the sidewalks like the shimmering August heat. I started to cry. Everyone around me cheering, laughing, waving flags …
I’ll bet they weren’t American flags, either!
Listen, I live in Wash. Heights (not all of it has gone Dominican) and I can tell you that there is a Dominican festival, or parade, or street fair, or protest, or something or other going on CONSTANTLY. She’ll get over her ecstasy soon enough.
(PS. Didn’t she have enough Diversity in Boston?)
Posted by at 12:45 AM on July 9
“Or was I seen as the harbinger of gentrification, ready to wipe away another old neighborhood?”
Wipe away another old neighborhood?
She herself writes the neighborhood was all white until the 70s. Yet she feels they have a right to not let ONE white person back into the community!
Posted by at 12:12 AM
——————————-
You’re right. My parents were married there and lived there back in the 1930s. It was all white then. And it was considered at that time to be a very desirable neighborhood. It started “changing” in the late 50s and 60s when Puerto Ricans and then Cubans started coming in. have cousins who lived there until the ’70s when it began to “tilt” and became no longer livable for whites. The Dominicans (illegal aliens) began sneaking in in the 70s, passing for Puerto Ricans, as most Americans couldn’t tell the difference.
I once did some genealogical research using the l930 census. The neighborhood was ALL white then. There were a very few professional class Latin Americans. There were quite a few Greeks, then listed officially as “Turks” (as they had been born in Turkey). These were the former inhabitants of Smyrna [now Izmir] and the (formerly) Greek coast of Turkey who were expelled in the war of 1923.
Up until the 1970s, no one knew what a Dominican was. What a change! For this woman to imply that she is trespassing in THEIR neighborhood is ridiculous and shows her lack of historical perspective. The fact is that everything that is there was built by whites and these Dominicans are the ones who have recently come in (sneaked in) and have taken it all over. Although many of them are American-born now, their parents were virtually all illegals. If our immigration laws had been enforced over the last 30 years, they wouldn’t be there, holding their parades and waving their Dominican flags.
Btw, in such a short time they have been changing the names of the streets and even the public schools to those of Dominican heros, not Americans. Of course, they do it only because our authorities let them and because most whites have fled.
Posted by at 1:18 AM on July 9
I am not saying this story doesn’t have merit, but I would like to add another perspective. I live in New York City and have been to Washington Heights many many times. When I was in high school,I often hung out on 191 Street and Wadsworth Avenue which is one block west of the St Nicholas Avenue mentioned in the article. I knew a few white families who lived in my friend’s building (circa early to mid-90s). They were there for years and they were fine. The College I went to (The City College of New York) is located in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem. I knew countless white students who lived near the school, in Hamilton Heights, Morning Side Heights,Washington Heights, etc. Many of them were from the West Coast and Mid-West. They lived there for years and many of them are still there today and seem to be prospering. It would be naive of me to suggest that some of the people in these neighborhoods are completely devoid of resentment towards their white neighbors, however, I have seen time and time again that residency in these neighborhoods does not always lead to the imminent rape and murder of whites as some people on this message board seem to think.
I know you guys will reply. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Amren, just keep it constructive.
Jason Everich
New York City
Posted by Jason Everich at 3:58 AM on July 9
“I began to understand there are things we can all agree on”,,,
Yeah, like what? Funny how she does not mention anywhere in her article one single example of this. Isn’t it odd that a White American would feel out of place in a city founded, built and populated by Whites for 300+ years? As late as 1960 New York was about 90% White. What is WRONG with these crazy White liberal women?
Posted by at 9:09 AM on July 9
There is this new musical on “The Heights” on broadway, glorifying the wonderful culture of the dominican people in the Heights.
My parents went to it, and informed me in a highly contemptuous tone that a very old woman sitting next to them had the temerity to tell them that she used to remember when the area was all German immigrants and “so much nicer”.
I just rolled my eyes and sighed….
On a side note I do go there a lot to visit my white jewish friend who lives in Washington Heights who inherited a very large apartment. It is a trashy dirty neighborhood like most Hispanic neighborhoods, but it isn’t half as uncomfortable as the city’s black neighborhoods particularly in Brooklyn, where you are bound to be called “White Boy” and scowled at.
Posted by AJ at 9:16 AM on July 9
My great aunt, my mother’s aunt was beaten around the face and head as she entered her apartment building with her grocery packages in hand. She suffered a ” stroke ” and died in the hopital a few days later; she was 84 years old. The perps ? Dominicans, the victim, American of Irish ancestry,3 rd generation for her. Hate Crime, racism by the perps, captured for their murderous mugging ? No , for all the above questions.
Posted by Michigan Patriot at 12:55 PM on July 9
>>>informed me in a highly contemptuous tone that a very old woman sitting next to them had the temerity to tell them that she used to remember when the area was all German immigrants and “so much nicer”
ANY area could have been viewed as being “so much nicer”, before BLACKS or other non-White minorities moved in. Regardless of what the ethnic makeup of its inhabitants were prior to its decline with the arrival of non-Whites.
Oops! Sorry, MY mistake. I forgot that such inconvenient truths are not palatable to liberals and other fools.
I grew up in the “E” and Clearfield section of Kensington (in Philadelphia). Lock your door? What for? The neighbors will keep an eye out…
Returning to the “City of Brotherly Love” some years ago, I intended to photograph the old row house and street. Fortunately I mentioned it to a police officer friend. Who advised me not to try it, UNARMED, or at least, certainly not alone!
Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics have turned the area rife with crime, I was informed.
Just what is it, that makes non-Whites like that? You sure can’t blame it on purported “White racism.” Certainly not on lack of opportunity. Then again, WHY are our liberals so utterly blind to what is going on in the REAL WORLD? Do liberals really believe the squallor and crime in our larger cities happen spontaneously, perpetrated by Whites wanting the minorities to “look bad?”
A pity, in a way, the writer didn’t stay long in the Heights area featured in her tale. The reality check for her might have been rather brutal, and possibly quite bloody. Based on some of the stories one hears about minority crime.
But no matter. The liberal sheeple are so brainwashed by the politically correct dogma shoved into them during their school years, they’ve lost all reasoning ability. They simply can’t bring themselves to believe the negative stories about minority perpetrated crimes really are verifiably true.
Gives you something to think about… If there weren’t such a concerted effort by both the MEDIA and our worthless politicial leaders to downplay the true picture of minority-perpetrated crime, there wouldn’t be as many misguided fools as this silly writer trying her stunt.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:06 PM on July 9
The views of those who live in W.H. are very interesting.The Greek woman who wants to get out,particularly poignant. Thats what I would expect froma white resident in a non-white hood. Jason Everich—-what a strange name!—seems to say that its all good hangin’ with the Dominicans. I wonder if he is talking about people who are clustered in certain areas,or are they dispersed among the Doms? I asume they,as students,are concentrated mightily. Rape inevitable? Mayne not inevitable—but highly likely!!This OP was an idiot. Breaking down and crying at a Dom parade because she cant be a DOM??? What a complete airhead fool! She may have a future in politics!
Posted by joshrandall at 1:16 PM on July 9
Part two - Her solution; Marry a Dominican and have children so that she can join in the party!
Or - find out about your own heritage and culture. Then seek out celebrations - even if you have to travel to Wisconsin to a Polka featival! Go to a Medeival or Renaissance Faire - better than nothing.
Posted by Whiteplight at 2:29 PM on July 9
“Please keep us updated as to when the white women in this story writes about her inevitable rape”
We had that very thing out of a Cleveland paper, I do believe, a liberal staffer at the paper writing about how a rape changed her life and how she learned to forgive. . something like that.
Posted by at 2:38 PM on July 9
This childless harridan is trying to sublimate her otherwise stifled maternal instincts by embracing these foreign colonizers of American soil, as if it were just another workable and viable lifestyle choice. I detect some hurt feelings and a sense of unrequited affection here. Did she honestly expect that her desire to embrace these primitives would be reciprocated?
Rather than contemplating her emotional conundrum, those of us who still live in the real world should be asking: Now that we’ve got all the “benefits” of diversity, what are we going to do about it?
Posted by Bill Cutting at 3:05 PM on July 9
My sister, a moderately successful actress, moved into a nice apartment on the edge of Washington Heights. She left behind her cramped SoHo unit for more space, lower rent, and big windows overlooking a northern section of Broadway. Her daughter would even be a little closer to her private school. Several of us were concerned because of the Dominicans edging southward into the area, but she thought we were all “racists” to suggest her brown neighbors would be a problem. She welcomed the diversity, the food, and the big ethnic parades and events in her new part of the city. What happened within one year was a potential learning experience that she somehow refused to fully appreciate.
Her building was defaced repeatedly, once in broad daylight. Her new mini-van was dented several times by baseballs, as the boys would rather play catch, or even bat the balls, in the street, rather than walk a few blocks to a park with ball fields. Boomboxes blared long after midnight, but the police did nothing. Crime kept her indoors after dusk. Her neighbor’s unit was buglarized and trashed for a few dollars and some stolen medications. The neighbors had no expensive jewelry or electronics becaused they had been buglarized a few months earlier. One night the sirens blared outside, followed by a knock on her door. A drive by shooting had occurred on the street and her car was hit by several bullets, explained the Hispanic officer. A teenager was killed and his blood and guts were splattered on her Caravan, along with four or five bullet holes. She cried and complained, but hasn’t changed her opinions much.
My sister moved with her family to a shady and quiet street in West Orange, New Jersey. No Dominicans. No gunfire.
Dr of Many Things
Posted by Dr of Many Things at 5:37 PM on July 9
I’ve posted this before and I’ll post it again.
The Roman Catholic church had the solution for women like this. Instead of incarcerating them in a burkha and harem as the muslims do, or allow them to destroy a society and culture as the modern westerners do, the church established convents where they fulfilled their grandiose fantasies, did much needed medical and social work, provided cheap housing for single women and most of all were kept prevented from destroying white civilization.
It worked. The women were happy in their convents and society was safe from them.
Give this lady 150 cats to take care of. Or a life long supply of prozac.
Posted by margaret at 8:11 PM on July 9
I think the culminating vignette about the staring kid who said “don’t be such a f88===g racist” was supposed to be sweet and indicative of the accepting, tolerant nature of youth, which portends a positive change toward a non-racist future.
However, I find the image of a little kid sucking his teeth and using gutter language appalling.
Cultural differences, indeed.
Posted by at 8:15 PM on July 9
For those of you outside of NYC you should know that the island of Manhattan is mostly white except for Chinatown and “Uptown” which consists of Inwood, Washington Heights and Harlem. All 3 Uptown neighborhoods are slowly but surely turning white again much to the chagrin of the local minority militants.
Posted by Madison Grant at 9:31 PM on July 9
The article creates the impression that all of Washington Heights has gone over to the Dominicans. Much of it has, that is true, but there are still ethnic and racial enclaves. While the Eastern side has gone Dominican, the Western side is still mostly white.
The area where I live remains ALL white. The streets are clean and the crime rate, for New York, is negligible. A number of prominent people choose to live here. It is considered choice Manhattan real estate. Guess why! (Hint: no, the buildings aren’t any nicer; the water doesn’t taste any better; the grass isn’t greener and the air isn’t purer. Try again. There’s a reason.)
Posted by none at 2:38 AM on July 10
“Jason Everich—-what a strange name”
It’s Ukrainian. Some in my family have speculated that it may have been shortened from whatever it was originally.
Posted by Jason Everich at 3:37 AM on July 10
“The article creates the impression that all of Washington Heights has gone over to the Dominicans. Much of it has, that is true, but there are still ethnic and racial enclaves. While the Eastern side has gone Dominican, the Western side is still mostly white.”
Posted by none at 2:38 AM on July 10
Yes, there’s a section of Washington Heights that has remained almost entirely white through the years. Its northern boundary is Fort Tryon Park, its southern boundary is 181st Street, its western boundary is the Hudson River, and its eastern boundary is Broadway. It’s the section that used to be German Jewish, but as the older residents get older and expire, they’re replaced by whites who have difficulty finding apartments in the more centrally located areas of Manhattan. It has become something of an outpost of the Upper West Side. The area is a hidden gem, with the nearby Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park, which is the annex for the medieval collection from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The western part of this neighborhood faces the Hudson River and has apartment buildings that are quite luxurious with fantastic views. Of course, the western side of the Heights is more expensive to live in than the eastern side.
Many people posting here are interpreting this woman as just another white-liberal lunatic trying to attach herself to a minority community she doesn’t belong to. But she did state quite clearly “Chosing Washington Heights had been easy: It was affordable, and it was in Manhattan.” Manhattan has truly become an island of the rich to a great degree, and if you don’t have AT LEAST a substantial upper middle class income or better (rich and super-rich is better), then a lot of Manhattan will be unaffordable for you.
She mentioned she lived on or near St. Nicholas Avenue. That’s right in the heart of the eastern Heights, the Dominican section. Although it’s not as bad as Harlem, it’s not so great either. I hope for her own safety that she finds another apartment at least on the border of, or preferably in, the white section, in what Tom Wolfe in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities called “White Manhattan.”
Manhattan unfortunately has no place for whites of modest income. It’s all affluent or super-rich whites vs. poor working class / underclass minorities. The white of modest income doesn’t have the means to shelter themselves from typically dangerous minority behavior. They are often prey for black and hispanic criminality, and the police and politicians in New York City don’t give a damn.
Posted by White in the Heights at 7:54 PM on July 10
Yes, there’s a section of Washington Heights that has remained almost entirely white through the years. Its northern boundary is ….
Ssssh! Don’t let the secret out!
I must say that White in the Heights has descibed the demographics and the general situation here extremely well. I could not have done it better.
Manhattan unfortunately has no place for whites of modest income. [Such whites] don’t have the means to shelter themselves from typically dangerous minority behavior. They are often prey for black and hispanic criminality, and the police and politicians in New York City don’t give a damn.
Again, quite true. There are, however, occasional white stragglers (in the areas that have “gone over”) who remain behind, either through poverty or age or for other reasons, and they must somehow deal with or suffer the antisocial and often criminal behavior of their new neighbors.
And as for those policemen, it is highly ironic to consider that many of their own parents fled this very area (once heavily Irish and Italian) thirty or forty years ago in order to raise their children in the suburban tranquillity of Rockland County or Long Island. Now, Rockland and L. I. are beginning to be transformed too, with the minorities following hot on their heels, always just one generation behind. Once again we see that, for those without real money, there is nowhere to run.
Posted by none at 4:22 AM on July 11