A Child's View Of Prejudice

The New York Times Book Review recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of the publication of Laura Z. Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement, a bestselling novel about anti-Semitism.

Tina Jordan ("Inside the List," August 28, 2022) reported that Hobson (1900-1986) told the Book Review back then in 1947 that when she was completing work on her novel, she asked her 9-year-old son, "What's prejudice, Mike?" His answer is probably the best definition I've read, putting this social problem in a nutshell. "Well," he said, "I guess it's when you decide some fellow's a stinker before you ever met him."

I couldn't have said it better.

Influential People In The LGBTQ+ Community

The free daily newspaper, amNew York Metro, published in its June 29, 2022 issue an alphabetically arranged guide called "LGBTQ+ Power Players." The guide gives a thumbnail sketch of several outstanding members of the LGBTQ+ community in the New York metropolitan area. For me, as a journalist and blogger, it serves as a useful resource.

Among those included are Greg Newton and Donnie Jochum, the co-founders of the Bureau of General Services--Queer Division, the bookstore and cultural center located inside the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan; Rob Byrnes, a Lammy Award-winning author and the president of the East Midtown Partnership; Dwight McBride, president of The New School as well as the co-editor of The James Baldwin Review; and Justin T. Brown, executive director of the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York.

Rod Serling's Rejected Teleplay

Rod Serling's daughter, Anne, wrote a foreword to Mark Dawidziak's Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press). It's a fascinating self-help book that reveals the life lessons to be learned in various episodes of The Twilight Zone, Serling's iconic science-fiction/fantasy television series that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964.

Ms. Serling writes that the 1955 murder of  the Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi "profoundly affected my father." So much so that he wrote a television script called Noon on Doomsday, "his first attempt," she further writes, "to tell the story and it was turned down by the sponsors who were afraid it might offend their southern customers."

Lately there have been live telecasts on network TV of musicals such as Peter Pan and Hairspray. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one of the networks decided to air a live telecast of Rod Serling's rejected teleplay? It's probably as relevant today as it was back then.

Federal Troops In Chicago Won't Solve Social Problems

President Donald Trump said that he would send federal troops to Chicago if the murder rate there kept increasing. The truth is the National Guard can only do so much to quell urban violence. The social ills in the black community of Chicago are so deep-seated and have existed for so long that a law-and-order approach can only have limited results. The presence of federal troops might even exacerbate the situation. It will take a slew of people--social workers, religious and civic leaders, psychologists, educators, corporate leaders, and others--to deal with the underlying causes of violence in Chicago and anywhere else. These problems did not occur overnight and they won't be eradicated overnight. To expect a law-and-order solution to be a quick fix is to be living in a fantasy world.

Photographing Poverty In America

Lining the stone wall outside the grounds of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in Morningside Heights, on the 110th Street side, is a gallery of a dozen photos, all of them in black and white, that were taken by photographer Matt Black. Between each group of three photos is a plaque with a quotation from an impoverished person from one of the towns visited by Black, like this quote from a worker in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, California, in Santa Barbara County: "I had no shoes when I worked in the fields. I used to sleep by a tree. I barely made money for food." (Ten thousand people work in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, earning $1.25 per box picked.)

These photos are reminiscent of those taken by famed photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression.

Called "Geography of Poverty," Black, a native Californian, allows passersby to "see not only what America looks like to the 45 million living in poverty," notes the mission statement  posted on  the wall at the beginning and end of the photo exhibition,"but also that poverty is inextricable from issues of migration, land use, industry, and the environment."

"Geography of Poverty" is a project that Black and the cable news channel MSNBC have collaborated on. Most of the photos on display outside the church were taken in California, while the rest document poverty in such places as Hosmer, South Dakota;York, Pennsylvania; and El Paso, Texas.

One photo that was striking is of a long black arm wrinkled by age. Attached to it is a hand clutching the top of what looks like a sawed off telephone pole or tree. What really intrigued me is where the caption said the photo was taken--Allensworth, California, in Tulare County. I first learned of this town in a Washington Post article published more than twenty years ago.The article revealed that Allensworth was founded in the early twentieth century by African Americans, some of whom were teachers, doctors, and other professionals.(This is a part of California history I was never told about when I attended school in Los Angeles and its suburb Compton.) Today, according to the caption, the population is 451 and 54 percent of its inhabitants are living below the poverty level.

It is very fitting that these photos are on display where they are. Just a few feet away are a group of mostly homeless Hispanic men, who have formed a camp along the side of the church.

Also worth noting is the church's construction of two 15-story residential towers on its 113th Street side.The new buildings will have 320 luxury apartments and only 80 affordable ones; the church's first residential building was built about six years ago and faces Morningside Park, at 110th Street and Morningside Drive.

In 2012, plans to construct the two buildings sparked a neighborhood controversy and a petition drive* was started by area residents who feared that the buildings would block their view of the cathedral. Apparently the church administrators took heed. The buildings are now situated so that the cathedral, which is a tourist attraction, on the 113th Street side, can be viewed between them. Not a perfect solution, but better than not being able to see that side of the cathedral at all.

Could it be that the church administrators have self-consciously mounted this photo exhibition to remind their critics of their awareness of and concern for the poor, especially those who are literally at the church's doorstep each night?

*Disclosure: I live near the cathedral and signed a petition opposing the new construction.

Note: This is the full text of the previously abbreviated version.
Matt Black's photos can be viewed at www.geographyofpoverty.com.