I fetched another batch of surplus books from the University Library. "The Making of the Harlem Ghetto" by Gilbert Osofsky contains some interesting information; for example, New York's African community was founded by West Africans and not by native American Blacks. They were much sought after as household servants, replacing the less valued Irish and German. The gender imbalance was large: more females who had steady, relatively well paid jobs. There started the degradation of the Black male, who could not adapt to city life, and the disintegration of the family structure.The massive immigration from the South was slow. Southern economy was based on African farmers - owners, shareholders, salaried laborers. Blacks grown up in slavery were appreciated, with their dignified humility and habits of steady work. All Southern States enacted laws against Blacks moving North and part of "racism" was, simply, resentment of their peasants leaving them behind. They tried to replace them with Italians, Portuguese, with total failure.
Harlem served for long time as New York's source of docile labor, but from 1930 the violence started with the introduction of drugs and political power (sale of votes). According to the book, till then Blacks worked very hard and earned their keep. One concludes that the current situation of the Afro-American population, where many live off the Government and enjoy special privileges, is something temporary and results from Blacks getting more organized than the general population (I think American Jews had a part in it) and exercising focused political power. But already Plato in "The Republic" said that total democracy cannot last and tends to evolve into an authoritarian regime. Maybe it is happening?
(Another question is what do I care? I am an old-old Jew in the Middle East, wasting time while lying to my desperate clients that I am working on their projects.)
7 comments:
This sounds like a work of fiction. There were never any large # of African immigrants after slavery and before the 1960s. After the Civil War, there were never any laws to prevent blacks from moving to the North - such laws would have been unconstitutional, as well as impossible to enforce - there are no border controls between American states. In many cases there is not even a river or other natural boundary, but merely a line on a map that is invisible on the ground.
K
Along the same lines of your Harlem reading.....Addiction in NYC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arnade/
OT: Semitic solidarity!
Too late for solidarity - they should have thought of this before they sent suicide bombers to blow themselves up on Israeli buses, etc.
K
K, Not that I care too much, but the fact is that the majority of the Blacks choose to remain in the South.
About Southern States fighting the emigration of Blacks: It seems true.
About the low percentage of Southern Blacks in New York (and other Northern cities) before 1930: it is true. May be today it seems imagination, but there was a time and not long ago when you hardly met an African in the streets of Detroit.
The message of the book is that in the past, Africans were steady and productive and appreciated members of American society. They were poor, but not degraded.
Africans are productive when within a White framework. Every colonial said so.
Once slavery was over and colonial employers actually had to pay their labor force, they preferred to import Indians and Chinese. A lot of the Caribbean islands ended up with substantial Asian minorities for that reason. Blacks were only attractive as slave labor - their productivity was low, but the pay was even lower.
K
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