He took his interest in the bad living conditions of the poor and used that to become one of the newspapers leading crime-reporters. He would take daring trips into the slums alongside local police officers and detectives. What made him different from the many reporters before him who wrote about the poor was his use of flash photography. His photographs of the cities poorest people and the conditons of thier housing structures, which consited mostly of tenements, were reproduced in newspaper print and his own books.
The New York City slums had never recieved this kind of attention. People from all walks of life had access to these pictures. Whether or not they would sympathize with the poor or subjectify them would ultimately come into question.
Jacob Riis who is deep down a Social Activist with good aims only uses the facade of a racist to appeal the middle and upper-class people. By this means, Riis reduced the risk of making the middle and upper-class feel alienated and disinterested.
As the richer part of New York had a biased image of the immigrants living there, he needed to be extremely careful with his textual part. Therefore, the structure of the chapters with racist statements is interesting. Even though Riis words are initially harsh, his photographs compensate the biased part of this book.
These images are used to evoke emotions. But not only do the photographs compensate the prejudices of certain ethnicities, so do the following phrases. At first, the Italian people are accused of having an addiction to gambling as strong as the Chinese people. A middle or upper-class reader might feel understood and acknowledged. His or her attention is gained and thus, the book makes the reader continue reading.
Now, Riis begins to list the good character traits of the Italian dwellers. In addition to that, there are repeatedly shocking photographs of immigrants living and working in miserable surroundings. Adding photographs of terrible situations is consequently Riis' main means to change the audience's negative view of immigrants which can enhance tenement housing in New York. In all, the prejudices in this work of photojournalism do not reflect the author's real view of immigrants since his racism is only a facade to attract the reader's attention.
Although Riis explains why he made use of racist remarks, there is another odd contradiction. He says that he wants to eliminate the social injustice in New York by making the middle and upper-class Americans aware of the horrible conditions of the slums. On the other hand, his religious commitment is more than visible throughout How the Other Half Lives. Not only do the racist statements which I already mentioned in 2. His belief in God and his religion appears to be important to the extent that he tries to convince people of different faith of the Christian religion.
This could be also the reason why Riis is antipathetic to immigrants who completely differ from the Christian religion, such as the Jewish people. Their religions disagree with the ones of Riis. While reading one chapter after another, one wonders why the author frequently refers to religion.
He probably claims that Christianity is one solution to the poverty and the misery of the immigrants who sin. For example, they are addicted to gambling and they smoke opium Riis People who are strictly religious do not gamble or take drugs.
For that reason, the author perhaps tries to Christianize immigrants. However, this use of religious aspects eliminates Riis' authenticity somehow. He states that his only aim is to objectively record and enhance the lives of the tenants. As he is, in fact, subjective, one asks oneself if he is authentic or a lying Muckraker in general. It probably makes the reader question whether or not Riis' real aim is to enhance the New York slums. In brief, the large number of Christian references in How the Other Half Lives cover his aim of being objective and only exposing the conditions of the tenements.
It seems like Riis is trying to Christianize people of other minds instead of making any helpful social changes. Therefore, this argument weakens Riis' position as a Social Activist.
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