Word: borough
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...years, peace and prosperity reigned over the vast borough. Middle class values pursued in middle class ways provided a standard ethos uniting people of different ethnic origins, income levels and political persuasions. Brooklyn has absorbed masses of immigrants through the years, starting with the Russian and Polish Jews who fled the poverty and anti-Semitism of their homelands. This group in turn absorbed the immigrants who followed them from Europe and Asia with nary an intolerant word. But to this group--by tradition overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic, tolerant--the most recent population influx is a horse of a different color...
...borough's complexion is clearly changing. As poorer people, mostly black and hispanic, move in, the middle class retreats southward or leaves entirely. Racial tensions, long dormant or mild, rise to the surface. To the Jews, this influx of 'schvartzes' (Yiddish for dark-skinned people) represents a clear threat to their middle class lives. Worse still, this "invasion" threatens their basic values. People who played by the rules of the game are apt to react defensively when the rules are changed in midgame. The Jewish middle class sees itself under attack for succeeding, and becoming wealthy, by the economic rules...
...poorer, darker people move in to a neighborhood the middle class moves out. If they can afford it, they go to Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, Florida or California. Those who stay in Brooklyn move southward towards the Atlantic Ocean, yielding more and more of the borough's north and center to poorer blacks. As a few black families move onto a block, the remaining whites fear they will be 'overrun' and the value of their property will decline. Seeing the downhill slide of the neighborhood in the first black face that moves in, they are apt to sell their...
...PROBLEMS of Brooklyn are the problems of all the older cities in this nation, all the northeastern industrial cities. Brooklyn's problems have come to a head sooner, and involve more people than those of other cities, so they're harder to cope with. Even if the borough, and New York City itself, had the most capable, honest and dedicated leaders, it would probably founder helpless before such massive social forces. And Brooklyn doesn't have such selfless and creative leadership: it is a machine city, and the Democratic organization hands out political plums for services rendered...
Howard Golden, President Borough of Brooklyn New York City