New York is beautifully multicultural (um, right?)

Sparked by angry letters about our white-heavy Top 40 New Yorkers list (a few issues back), we asked well-known locals of all colors to talk about what diversity really means in 2008. Pissed-off readers, take note:Some of your ex post facto nominees for our 40th Anniversary issue make appearances in this panel. See if they agree with you.

What does multiculturalism mean in New York? Are we a melting pot or a mosaic?
Parker: New York has always been a melting pot that didn’t melt. Take, for example, the Korean fruit markets: We buy fruit and vegetables from these markets. It would make sense that we should know something about the history and culture of Korea. The people working at these stores can do much more than sell fruit.
Brown: A mosaic or melting pot implies that there is an integration that I don’t think is true in the city.
McBride: We’re neither. We’re a waystation for people who want to make money and a whipping post for people like Rudy Giuliani, who cut their teeth on the pain of poor people and still get to run for President.
Kweli: New York City is not a true melting pot, but the outer boroughs are, especially Brooklyn. As the largest borough, we have Russians, Trinis, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Israelis, Palestinians, Jamaicans and everyone else living side by side.
Iyer: Demographically, New York is more of a mosaic, without question. All over New York you see many different immigrant communities that are large enough that they can maintain a semblance of their cultures. On the other hand, Queens is a truly multicultural borough, one of the most diverse places on the planet, and you see more people interacting across these boundaries of nation and culture.
Yamamoto: I don’t think we are a melting pot. Nothing is melted to me.
Yosef: The possibility for an immigrant to have the freedom to be himself and to implement his own identity and culture makes it a melting pot.
Willis: But the pot has not been stirred.
Q-Tip: It’s more of a mosaic. Slowly but surely, the neighborhoods are starting to mix. For example, in Harlem, a lot of white people are moving in, but they don’t interact with the locals too much. It creates a neighborhood within a separate neighborhood. So now there’s Harlem and there’s white Harlem.
Santogold: Depends on who you are. The people at my shows are a mixed crowd, so from where I stand I’d definitely say a melting pot.

If it’s a melting pot, then why is it that so many bars, clubs and cultural events are often populated by people with similar cultural backgrounds?
Yosef: Well, that’s not 100 percent true. I know from my experience of being onstage and looking at the people, or going to a bar and sitting around a table with eight people from eight different countries from all over the world, the pot is melting in NYC. There’s no doubt that people still have a long way to go with this issue, but NYC is ahead of a lot of places.
Santogold: Someone who works at Bergdorf Goodman and lives on the Upper West Side might argue that it’s a mosaic. But that’s not New York’s problem, that’s them not taking advantage of the multiculturalism of their environment.
Shipp: The types of people who are in bars and clubs nowadays do seem like a few different variations of the same type of person. This is deadly for the real life-force of any of the arts or any related human activity that depends on ideas or talent for its impetus.
Hoch: Because the white Americans that have come here are largely unaware which cultural events and establishments were put here for them, and which ones are indigenous to the city and its diverse culture. Virtually none of my native New Yorker friends would be caught dead in any of the new restaurants, clubs, lounges or theaters that are only here for the “new people.” We are open-minded, but we also want to celebrate our own traditions and culture, and the venues for that are quickly being erased. We don’t take very kindly to feeling like tourists in our own city, and we have been made to feel like tourists, not coincidentally, since TONY began 13 years ago.
Kweli: The idea that you come to America to shed your culture for an American one is a myth. In any melting pot, you can still taste the flavor in the broth. It is not the loss of cultural identity that makes a melting pot, it is the addition.

Can we truly call ourselves diverse if we stay separated?
Q-Tip: No, we can’t. The only way diversity is achieved is through the intermingling of people.
Iyer: As far as I’m concerned, separate coexistence is not a huge problem as long as we have some semblance of equality. However, if you look at statistics about the city’s public schools, poverty, crime, employment, and racial profiling, it’s obvious that we still have a long way to go.
Willis: We are not separated. We have chosen to live in a diverse city. The separation comes only out of each of our desires to be singular.
Naison: We’re constantly borrowing one another’s food, music, language, and ways of walking, talking and dressing. The creation of hybrid cultural forms and styles is a constant feature of New York life.
Hoch: Let's be truthful, TONY's outlook is diverse—with white American consumers at the center. The real diversity of NYC's African-Americans and immigrants does not pay TONY's bills, is not TONY's core advertising base and is not TONY's core subscribership. As long as that is the case, then this conversation only serves to make white Americans in NYC feel better about their own entitlement, and affirms the idea of white American cultural supremacy. Only entitled white people who are in charge possess the cluelessness to ask these benign questions in 2008, in a city that you are clearly not the center of, yet wish to feel like you are the center of. Only entitled white people who are in charge possess the cluelessness to ask these benign questions in 2008.

NEXT: We all ride the train together, but do you find that we basically get off at different stops?»