Saturday, January 7, 2017

Milton Rakove on politics - 3

Recently I found this wonderful book from 1975: Don't make no waves ... don't back no losers by Milton Rakove. It was mentioned in another wonderful book from 2012: The Wrong Answer Faster: The Inside Story of Making the Machine that Trades Trillions by Michael Goodkin.
The author, professor and politician Milton Rakove.
His pragmatic sense of humour is also evident in his book.

The book does not give answers about our current situation, but it puts some things in perspective. I like its musings on political philosophy. Something resonates with our times. See the quotes below. The earlier parts of this series are here-1 and here-2.

Chicago diversity on a McDonalds mural - photo by Daniel X. O'Neil.

Early immigration and minor divisions
By 1920, Chicago had more Poles than any city in Poland except Warsaw, more Bohemians than any city in Czechoslovakia except Prague, and more Lithuanians than any city in Lithuania except Vilna.

New immigrants almost always moved into old neighborhoods, usually close to the terminus of whatever form of transportation they used to get to the city, the bus or train station. Since those terminal points were usually located in or near the central core of the city, those were the areas in which the new immigrants settled.

The reasons for the tendency of new immigrants to settle near the terminals were quite simple. A new immigrant arriving in a strange environment was not likely to take a taxi or even public transportation with which he was unfamiliar into the distant reaches of the city. His natural inclination was to take his suitcase (if he had one) or his bag or box of belongings, walk around the corner from the terminal, and find a room. His next step was to find a job, preferably as close as possible to where he lived.

Once firmly rooted economically, he sent for his family (if he had one) and looked for a larger flat, possibly two or three rooms. Then the brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents began to arrive. They almost automatically went to the area where the enterprising pioneer immigrants were living and moved in with the relatives until they could afford a room or a couple of rooms of their own. Within a short period of time, shops stocking native foods appeared, restaurants serving native delicacies opened, taverns or wine houses dispensing native alcoholic spirits blossomed, recreational facilities endemic to the native culture were built, and churches or temples serving the religious needs of the local population were established. Thus, island oases of native culture were created in the heart of the city.

The process repeated itself with each ethnic group moving into the city. Chicago became a city of ethnic neighborhoods with almost fixed boundary lines dividing the various nationality groups.

Later immigration and more significant divisions
The more than 1,000,000 blacks from the South who have emigrated to Chicago, and approximately 350,000-500,000 Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, are the last of the great wave of immigrants, and are following the traditional patterns of movement which characterize the behavior of immigrant groups moving into a new environment. Like the ethnic immigrants before them, southern blacks and Spanish-speaking Latins moving into Chicago settled in the old neighborhoods. As is traditional in such situations, the ethnic old settlers in these communities began to flee from the new immigrants.

The influx of 1,000,000 blacks and 350,000 Latins into the city has fragmented the population even more deeply than the ethnic divisions. The division between ethnic whites, and the Latins and blacks has added another dimension to the ethnically separated city.

In one sense, it has unified the ethnic whites on a single issue-blocking the movement of the blacks and Latins into white neighborhoods. But, at another level, the rapid growth of the black and Latin populations and the steady spread of the black and Latin ghettos have opened a wide chasm within the city's body politic between the black and Latin, and the white populations of the city.

Sources:
http://mediaburn.org/video/bernard-epton-interview/
www.goodreads.com/ Don_t_Make_No_Waves_Don_t_Back_No_Losers

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