Talk:Five Points (Manhattan)

At Five Points' height only certain areas of London's East End vied with it in sheer population density, disease, infant and child mortality, unemployment, violent crime and other classic ills of the destitute. Of course one may not mention any of the places east of Suez that outclassed both London and New York in these categories. I suppose we don't hold those cultures to Western standards. Wetman 06:35, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

That's not what's going on here. It's surprising but true-- no urban area, west or east of Suez, came close to Five Points and the East End for these conditions in the mid 1800s. The key statistic is population density. The worst slums of Cairo, Calcutta and Beijing were far greater in land area than the Points, but density in the Points was much higher, thanks mostly to the invention of the Tenement. It was four and five stories of misery compared to one or two. Yes, it's a bit deceiving if you're comparing entire cities with each other. But if you are talking about individual slums (as the article is), it's just a matter of fact that the Points and the East End (particularly Whitechapel/Bethnal Green) embodied a concentrated poverty not previously seen, anywhere. JDG 04:55, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

"Racial" integration

As "race" is a cultural phenomenon, it does not make much sense to speak universally of the history of racial integration. One might as well say that the Roman assimilation of the Etrurians fits in the "history of racial integration". As to the "aloofness" of Spanish conquerors, that is certainly arguable, but it cannot be disputed that the great majority of them took native wives, certainly well before the mid-19th century, so even in the context of "modern Western racial integration in the Americas" the Five Points was not unique or pioneering. The only way the Five Points could be said to be historically distinctive in terms of racial integration is in the context of the history of the United States.--Pharos 22:16, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I disagree on these and many other points. But I'll sit tight and live with your change until I can get my ducks in a row. In the meantime, plz step back and look at the question in the round. Something unprecedented *did* take place vis a vis black folk and the Irish in Five Points. Our challenge is to characterize it correctly. If you're one of those who really swallows the current academic fad that considers notions of "race" to be 100% "socially constructed", it's going to be difficult. We're not talking about Latins and Etruscans or somesuch involving mere ethnic or tribal differences. We're talking Black and White, genetic lines with very objectively different allelic signatures, mixing it up on a sustained scale (one of the big draws for fashionable slummers from upscale Manhattan neighborhoods was to take in the 'miscegenation' going on in the Points... plz understand I do not call it "miscegenation", just using the word then used)... Five Points *was* unique and pioneering. I'm afraid you're collapsing some of the dates involved. Twenty or so years down the line you can find some of the same thing in other NYC enclaves, Boston, Jersey City, Philly and even Chicago and Cincy. But circa 1830 it was the Points and the Points alone... Plz watch this page and see you soon, most likely. JDG 23:35, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pharos, I've been considering how to change the sentence we discussed above but I can't come up with a good way to approach it (that is, a way that would not be reverted by you), given your extreme position on "race". You really believe "race" is purely a "cultural phenomenon"? There are no quantifiable biological group differences which would make the sexual activity between these previously physically separate groups an occurrence of note? JDG 07:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, the first thing that I'm saying is that the mixing of white and blacks or different races did not start in the Five Points; in other words that the Five Points was not some epochal event in the biological history of the human species. By any standard, persons who would today mark "white" or "black" on the U.S. Census have mixed throughout history, including having children with one another. It is fair to say that the social situation in the Five Points as regards race was a harbinger of an important development in American history.--Pharos 08:42, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I must descend to a trite analogy, I'm afraid. Let's say it's the year 2020. A new public works project in New Jersey is about to result in the first ever confluence of the Passaic and Hackensack rivers. A new canal will result in their waters flowing together for about 200 meters. A local reporter submits an article he's written on the project to his editor, containing the sentence "And so, the Hackensack and the Passaic, after ages, will mingle.". The editor says, "Touching sentence, rookie, but it so happens I myself mingled the Hackensack and the Passaic twelve years ago on a lark. I filled a beer bottle with Passaic water, drove four minutes to the Hackensack and poured it in. Why? Just because I could. Now scratch that sentence."

Is the editor being a tad literal? If you study Five Points in the context of world population movement you'll see the Points was indeed the first place anywhere on the planet in which a sizable, sustained "as peers" milieu between "whites" and "blacks" came to be. I lack the time now to fetch references for you, but I assure you it is the case. These are the sorts of facts that make history come alive. "[P]ersons who would today mark "white" or "black" on the U.S. Census have mixed throughout history", you say. One can well imagine other stray individuals splashing together small, isolated quantities of the Passaic and the Hackensack in the story above prior to 2020. But the sentence you rewrote was talking about sizable and sustained integration. For this, the Points was first ever, anywhere. JDG 09:16, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It should probably be noted that there were tensions among many of these groups such as between Irish and Italian (as well as Jewish immigrants) within the Five Points which was not at all limited to Irish and African Americans. 152.163.100.204 07:10, 23 May 2005 (UTC)