June 9, 2010
Touring the lower east side of Manhattan, in New York City, I was struck by anomaly. 
Pizza joints with Chinese writing on the signs. Chinatown services and restaurants set in buildings topped by a Star of David carved in relief. As Ed O’Donnell stated, “It doesn’t remain the old neighborhood for long.” Conditions are so poor and crowded, people can not wait to get out. They struggle, scrimp and save until the have enough to move out to a nicer neighborhood.
Evidence of various ethnic groups movement through the neighborhood was strewn on every block. Irish blocks became Eastern European Jewish , then Italian, and Puerto Rican, then Chinese. New York does recycle- it’s neighborhoods! 
A company that made signs had many different languages on the signs on their door. Imagine an Italian sign maker having to provide people with characters in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, as well as maybe still some in Italian! And everyone would need the sign to be accurate. 
The ironically named Transfiguration Catholic Church has transfigured itself through several different ethnic groups. This melting pot seems to warm things very quickly.
The tenement museum revealed two families from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The Levines lived in the tenement, he was a tailor, and employed several people who worked in his miniscule three room flat. The presser probably had to work around the wife in the kitchen, and she had to feed the workers as well as her family. Family meals had to be finished and cleaned up by the time the workers arrived. I couldn’t imagine how the tiny space was occupied by all those people. I guess that’s why a lot of photographs from the era show so many people sitting on the steps o the tenements or standing on the corner. You needed to get outside for youd sanity!
The Rosenthals arrived in a later immigration wave, he didn’t have to work in the apartment, but though the furnishings were slightly more comfortable, the conditions were still crowded and cramped. Mrs. Rosenthal lived there until she died, and was the last resident of the building.
The first desire of these people seemed to be to get out of the neighborhood and the situation as quickly as possible, yet there seemed to always exist a sense of pride in being from the area. The film we viewed showed a Puerto-Rican woman never left the area, and still had family gatherings at her home. She never wanted to leave the old neighborhood. This was contrary to all we discovered about the lower east side, yet people seem proud of growing up in a difficult situation.
When you work hard at something, you wear it as a badge of honor. You are proud of the effort you expended, and you want the world to know it. That difficult situation never leaves you, and becomes a part of the person you stare at in the mirror, it becomes part of your identity. That is probably also why Mrs. Rosental never moved out.
In our classrooms, we all see the beaming faces of the students who never thought they could accomplish something, but when they work hard, and listen to us help them through, they discover their self-concept growing because they worked through a difficult situation. When people are pushed, and they work through it, it cannot help but to build their pride.
