Institutionalization of the Chinese Tongs in Chicago's Chinatownby Andrew Sekeres III |
| Page 10 Plus, the tong became institutionalized in their communities by allowing the community and its leader to help resolve the issues between the tongs. The Chinatown had its problems but resolved its own problems. Lait and Mortimer explain how this process actually worked in Chicago.
The community kept to themselves by maintaining their own law and order.
Street violence, vandalism, and petty crimes are not visible on the
streets of Chinatown due to the fact the community runs the show. They
wanted to show Chinatown as a model neighborhood in which you can do
your shopping and eat some good Chinese in. This was and continues to
be the vision of Chinatown.
Why did the city of Chicago put a neighborhood like Chinatown into its own natural area? Why did they go forth with many of these expansions like the Dan Ryan and Stevenson Expressways? Once again in the history and expansion of Chicago, another neighborhood is victim to racial discrimination. The Chicago Chinese Chamber Commerce reports that expansion problems that Chinatown faced and even now faces are due to racism.
The real estate people feared the Chinese because simply
they did not know enough about them. The city of Chicago, also, had this
fear of the Chinese because the Chinese dealt with their own problems
in their own way. They did not use the city services for help. The city
of Chicago feared the unexpected when it came to Chinese. Plus, the city
of Chicago did not want the Chinese to acquire any land that actually
had some land value to it so that they can profit from it. This is simply
the process of segregation in Chicago. This is what Chicago was known
for over a long period of time: segregation. See the Appendix to see pictures
taken by the author that illustrates the space constraints faced by modern
Chinatown. |
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