Essay #2. Claims-Evidences-Analysis.Fifth Avenue, Uptown by J. Baldwin

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Course: Composition I
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ESSAY #2-“Fifth Avenue, Uptown” by James Baldwin
In James Baldwin’s “Fifth Avenue, Uptown”, the writer focuses on the projects of Harlem mainly populated by the African American community. Cities are separated from nature, and they reflect how people have created them, and in the case of Harlem, hopelessness and racial division is all too common in a place that is soulless. Baldwin’s experiences growing and staying in Harlem provide insights on how many blacks like him viewed Harlem and by extension the treatment of black people throughout the US. “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” focused on the lives of poor blacks in Harlem, New York living in blighted neighborhoods and separated from whites and the white world. Baldwin uses vivid description of the Harlem streets and imagery to portray Harlem and the people in the Fifth Avenue.
To Baldwin, the problems of urban decay were common everyone he looked in Harlem just like in other racially segregated enclaves in the inner cities of New York. The projects were first conceived as a solution to public housing, but they came to symbolize the plight of poor blacks living in low income neighborhoods and segregated from the whites “Harlem got its first private project, Riverton---which is now, naturally, a slum---about twelve years ago because at that time Negroes were not allowed to live in Stuyvesant Town” (Baldwin 4). However, the public housing units increased in New York these neighborhoods were less desirable for the middle-class people and even working class, that the neighborhoods there almost homogenously poor. For the non white people living in such neighborhoods the houses were dilapidated as was the case with the Fifth Avenue Uptown location, while the residents paid more for poor quality products in downtown Harlem, and services like car insurance (Baldwin 3).
Places convey moral meaning and in Harlem, there is desolation, but even as there is physical griminess it is still a home to those who came before Baldwin and even those he left behind. Harlem plays an important role in the American landscape, and Baldwin motioned the Fifth Avenue as being “wide, filthy, hostile (Baldwin 1). In the writer’s old neighborhood, there is anonymity, alienation and invisibility was common among the African Americans, which represents the struggles of different forces like equality, justice, and honor. The psychological significance of geographical space and the environment is apparent in the way he describes Harlem and the people living there.
The environment is closely linked to cultural spaces and the Blacks in Harlem are depicted as people who a mainly lived on the margins. The projects of Harlem are hideous and ...