podcast project'24

Bianca is a nursing student from Queens who attends Adelphi University in Long Island. She initially found the transition from the diverse Queens to the less diverse Long Island challenging, but has grown to love her new surroundings. She discusses the cultural diversity of New York City and how it is reflected in the different neighborhoods. She also explores the history of racism and segregation in the city, particularly focusing on the Harlem Renaissance and its impact on African American culture. She visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art to further understand the influence of the Harlem Renaissance on New York City. Hi everyone, my name is Bianca. I'm a current sophomore at Adelphi University and I am studying nursing, which is pretty fun. Although, Adelphi is located in Garden City, Long Island, which is pretty far from where I'm from. I'm from Queens, New York City. I basically grew up here my whole life and I've been living here since I was born. I love Queens and it's definitely a commute to get to Long Island, but it's something that I've honestly gotten used to at this point. What I will say is that growing up, I've always noticed that Queens is always more on the diverse side compared to Long Island and starting school at Adelphi was definitely culture shock to me. It was something I wasn't really used to, but I've honestly grown to love Long Island and love Garden City and just Nassau County in general. However, I will say that at the end of the day, there is nothing like New York City and Queens because eventually it is just home for me. I do think that there are a bunch of things about the city that definitely stands out to people, especially like tourists. I know a lot of people know the movie Coming to America, which stars Eddie Murphy in it. That movie is basically just about an African king coming to New York City and just his experiences here and how he adjusts to the culture and the lifestyle here. A lot of people will comment about the subway stations in that film. Since that film is from the early 80's, 1980's, 1990's, late 1990's, it does show a bunch of how New York City used to look like. One of the biggest things that they highlight is the subway carts. A lot of people tend to comment on how old and rusty it looks. It's definitely become more updated now. If someone is going to go on the subway, there are some carts that still look like how they used to look then, although it's pretty rare. Now it's definitely more updated, but that's definitely a highlight of the city. Taking the subway. Subway, just in general, is really important because that's how most people here commute from borough to borough. New York City is actually separated into five boroughs. There's Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. I'm a Queens girlie, which I've been saying a lot, so I never really travel elsewhere, but I have been to the city a lot. A lot of people, when they think of the city, they think about the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, One World Center, which used to be the Twin Towers, but after 9-11, that basically just went away and now it's One World Center. A lot of people go there. It's a huge building and it attracts a bunch of tourists, but as I was saying, I do think that there's just so much to do here and there's just so much people here. A huge factor or something that just makes New York City stand out, once again, is its diversity, especially Queens. It's definitely a melting pot with ideas, beliefs, and there's so much culture that goes into it. I've always wondered, growing up here, what exactly led to its culture, New York City's culture, and what exactly contributed to its great diversity that it is now. After conducting a lot of research and reading a bunch of articles, I ended up realizing that a huge factor into making New York what it currently is today is the Harlem Renaissance. As a young Asian American woman, to be more specific, I'm Filipino. In our culture, it's very heavily based on music and dancing, so it's because of this that I've always just been extremely interested in music and dancing. In my house, there's always different types of music playing. Growing up, I would not just listen to American music, but I would listen to a bunch of Filipino songs. That, in general, and just the shows that my parents would watch, since they were based in the Philippines, all these shows were recorded in the Philippines and we would just stream it here, if that makes sense. It honestly just opened my eyes up into being more embedded in our culture and just having great appreciation for music and art. Something I noticed about New York City in general is you're going to see a bunch of different art from all these different countries. If I go to Astoria, I see something a little bit more like Greek. If I go towards Roosevelt or Woodside, that's a little bit more Latin American or Hispanic. If you go towards Elmhurst, there's more Asian art and stuff like that, so it definitely just opens up your eyes to all these different countries coming together in New York. One thing I did notice is that's definitely just what sparked my interest, the fact that there's just so much around me, it made me want to learn more. Because of this project and because of the class, I decided to go to the Met Museum and see how African American culture was embedded into New York City today. And once again, all of this traced back to the Harlem Renaissance. So before I get into what exactly is the Harlem Renaissance and how it contributed to New York's current diversity, the first thing I want to talk about is racism and the topic of stereotyping and all that stuff. According to the American Psychological Association, racism can be defined as a form of prejudice that generally includes negative emotional reaction to members of a group, acceptance of negative stereotypes, and radical discrimination against individuals. In some cases, it can lead to violence. I do believe that in some point of everyone's life, we've all experienced a sense of racism against one of us, or we've heard someone experience it, and this is something that goes on for ages. It's been going on since the beginning, and unfortunately, it continues to be prevalent in our current society. However, I will say this really upsetting behavior definitely did contribute to the beginning of New York City and the Harlem Renaissance. So if we go back to the New York City streets, it was first referred to as New Amsterdam, and it was under Dutch rule. And it was during this time that enslaved African Americans were brought and just forced to work in households and farm settings until in 1664 when the British gained control over this territory, and then unfortunately, slavery still did exist. African Americans endured so much hardship. They went through physical, mental, emotional abuse, and they just had no rights in general. And unfortunately, this just kept going on for years. And then in 1863, if we go forward a little bit in 1863 during the draft riots, this is one around the Civil War era, and it was still during this time that because of their race, African Americans were still refused public accommodations, employment, housing, education, and there was just so much bias because of their skin color. Like they were just limited to all these opportunities, which I think a lot of people know about. And it was because of this that segregation just continued to be so prevalent. In Ibram X. Kendi's book titled Stamps from the Beginning, he talks about evolution and how the impact of racism is what made America, America. And he specifically refers to the colonial era. And he talks about how Puritan ministers would have African enslavement somehow like mixed into what they believed in to justify the fact that slavery was okay, even though like based on their religion, it wasn't okay. So it was because of ideas and beliefs such as so, that's what honestly caused a lot of like black individuals to just face this sort of like oppression. But I do personally think that it's also because of the amount of oppression and discrimination that they face. It's what caused them to be united and it caused them to just get together and find strength in each other while they went through such difficult times. So it's because of actions such as so, I do think that's what caused the Harlem Renaissance to begin and that's how it was born. So for those of you who don't know, Harlem is actually located in the northern part of Manhattan. So it is a part of New York City. And the Harlem Renaissance is known as a cultural, social and artistic movement that emerged in the 1920s. It was during this time that there was a huge cultural and intellectual growth for black individuals in academic, social, political, and artistic aspects. It was because of this time that I do think that African Americans were able to find themselves and express what they felt deep down through being creative and it was just a way for them to really like identify themselves in a free space because they had each other. And they all were basically going through the same thing. And it was during these times that so many like important things were born. There's a huge profound effect on theater, music, visual arts, literature, social activity. Many African American writers, poets, and thinkers that really just delve into like important ideas that tackled like racism and prejudice and stereotyping that they faced was born during this time. Unlike famous African American literature, people who rose to fame would be Countee, Cullen, John, Toomer, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hudderson, and a name that a lot of people have heard, which is Langston Hughes. In terms of musicians, you have Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith. In regards to artists, we have Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Augusta Savage. To further just examine this topic that I wanted to just explore what, well, just how the Harlem Renaissance impacted New York City, I went to the Met Museum, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is located in the city. And it's actually crazy because some of the people that I read about in my article, such as Aaron Douglas, I was able to see some of his art and also in the Harlem Renaissance exhibition located at the Met, I was also able to hear some of Langston Hughes' music because they actually had like a video playing while I was walking there. They had it playing and the music was like cranked up loud, so I was able to hear his music while also looking at some of the art. So first off, I just want to say I was honestly so taken aback by how empty it was. I was able to see like a wide variety of people just visiting from all over the world. I heard some people not even speaking English, and all of them just wanted to know what the Harlem Renaissance was. And it was just such an informative exhibition that the Met offered, and I'm honestly so thankful that I was able to catch it. I walked in immediately, I was so taken aback by how each painting was so colorful. Like there were so many vivid colors, and when these artists combined all of it, I just felt like all these pictures came to life. For example, Archibald J. Motley Jr. recreates what seems to be nightclub during the 1940s, and he titled this painting called Blues, and it was actually made in 1949. And what he does is he recreates like dancers swaying to the rhythms of a band, and you could see like dark suits and bright dresses, there's a ton of musical instruments and white table tops and smiles all over. And also in the description it says that there were creations of French, Caribbean, and West African heritage dance, but it was all just like African Americans being together, which I thought was awesome. And another painting that definitely struck my attention was created also by him, but this one was titled The Liar, and it was created in 1936. In this one you could see that there's African American men sitting around a white table and chatting. Some of them have cigars in their mouth, while others have liquor in their hand. And there's one person that seems to be gloating, but the others around the table are just like looking at each other in disbelief. And then in the back you see that there are two people playing pool, and they also seem to have the attention of whoever was speaking in that photo. And honestly, this just made me think that the people were listening to the guy who seemed to be gloating elevate himself, and the others were just not buying whatever it was that he was saying. This struck me because I saw that there was still a sense of division within them, but it also just showed a sense of normalcy that was occurring and how they were able to just bond together. It also showed me by the fact that they were drinking and having cigars together that they still led a pretty normal life at this time, and they were living lives like other people. Just because they were different in appearance, it didn't make them less of a human being, and it didn't make them any different from anyone else. They still had the same activities and beliefs, especially when they were together. What I noticed about both of these pieces of art is that there was not one white person shown. It was all just each other, which I thought was interesting because that just shows how during this time they really did stick together and back again. There was that sense of unity. This overall just strengthened my original belief that the community that they built through the Harlem Renaissance, it just brought together these strong individuals that all were facing oppression. It just brought them to come together and just create an era that they were able to find themselves and just emerge in their own artistic and intellectual ways. So yeah, thank you so much for listening, and I hope you were able to see what I thought and gain a better understanding of why I thought the Harlem Renaissance did transform the African American culture, which essentially is through bringing together people who faced oppression and just create an opportunity for them to find themselves and unite during such a difficult time. Once again, it was during this time that art and just a bunch of different things in general transformed what is New York City today and acted as a foundation of our wide variety of art and diversity. Hopefully I'll be able to go back and see it again and just gain another perspective and hopefully record another podcast. Again, thank you so, so much for listening.