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If New York City has a reputation for being one of the most diverse places on the planet, then one could make a strong argument that its borough of Queens is a significant contributing factor.

Just take a look at this list below with a percentage breakdown by ethnicity of Queens relative to the other boroughs of New York City based on my findings within the State & County QuickFacts site of the U.S. Census Bureau. You’ll note that Queens has a more even distribution of major ethnic groups (the Census Bureau uses the term “race”) in the comparison among counties, i.e., boroughs).

New York City Data Set from US Census Bureau (2005)

Queens County (Queens Borough)

• White : 55.1%
• Black : 21.1%
• American Indian and Alaska Native : 0.7%
• Asian : 20.9%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander : 0.1%
• Persons reporting two or more races : 2.1%
• Persons of Hispanic or Latino : 26.1%
• White persons not Hispanic : 31.7%

New York County (Manhattan Borough)

• White : 66.5%
• Black : 19.8%
• American Indian and Alaska Native : 0.7%
• Asian : 10.7%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander : 0.1%
• Persons reporting two or more races : 2.2%
• Persons of Hispanic or Latino : 25.9%
• White persons not Hispanic : 47.7%

Bronx County (Bronx Borough)

• White : 49.6%
• Black : 42.5%
• American Indian and Alaska Native : 1.2%
• Asian : 3.4%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander : 0.5%
• Persons reporting two or more races : 2.8%
• Persons of Hispanic or Latino : 51.3%
• White persons not Hispanic : 13.1%

Kings County (Brooklyn Borough)

• White : 50.6%
• Black : 38.3%
• American Indian and Alaska Native : 0.5%
• Asian : 8.9%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander : 0.1%
• Persons reporting two or more races :1.5%
• Persons of Hispanic or Latino : 9.9%
• White persons not Hispanic : 35.6%

Richmond County (Staten Island Borough)

• White : 80.3%
• Black : 10.8%
• American Indian and Alaska Native : 0.3%
• Asian : 7.2%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander : 0.1%
• Persons reporting two or more races : 1.3%
• Persons of Hispanic or Latino : 14.6%
• White persons not Hispanic : 67.9%

If you’re wondering why the numbers don’t add up to a 100%, the Census Bureau considers the designation of “Hispanic” to potentially belong to any race, so it is included in applicable race categories. Also, certain respondents reported to more than one race category.

Why do I bring all of this up, and single out Queens in particular? Well, I sometimes come across the perception, either overt or unconscious, from residents and visitors alike, that Manhattan is synonymous with the name New York City. It obscures the fact that Manhattan is just one of five boroughs that make up New York City.

Granted, Manhattan is a rather impressive chunk of island real estate. It is a juggernaut engine for the arts, culture, finance, cuisine, and real estate, but its energy derives not just from within but from the surrounding denizens of the tri-state area that commute in and out every day like a million pistons (not to mention people from all over the world). To extend upon the venerable poet and preacher John Donne’s phrasing “no man is an island,” I would further compound that no island is truly an island…figuratively speaking.

And yet still, some ostensibly worldly Manhattanites have been known to refer to those residents who must commute into “the city” (in pursuit of diversion or duty ) with the pejorative term “the bridge and tunnel crowd” (bridge and tunnels being the primary means of access to the island of Manhattan from the surrounding area).

It smacks of specious elitism at best, ugly bigotry at worst. Those who use the phrase might claim it is a distinction of class rather than ethnicity; but in our social reality, they often sadly become one and the same—and really, are such prejudices on either ground a remotely palatable humanistic outlook?

At the other extreme, I’ve had young students from more socioeconomically challenged neighborhoods throughout NYC take pride in a certain “street cred” that derives from claiming to hail from certain neighborhoods in the boroughs of Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. I was amused though slightly chagrined to learn that no such cool factor was afforded to any resident of either Queens or Staten Island, although I would wager there were very different reasons for these two boroughs.

Part of the identity of Queens owes itself to a substantial immigrant culture, and State Island is just very very white (refer back to the statistics above). But in my students’ delineation of what’s cool and what’s not by localized boundaries, they draw a curious parallel to the perceptions of those Manhattan elite who deride those from the “outer” boroughs (and New Jersey). They have bought into the myth of their own locality, not considering that other neighborhoods may offer something of unique cultural value.

New York City is a glorious manifestation of people from a dizzying array of socioeconomic, professional, and cultural backgrounds. What would you have if you cut off the boroughs from one another and the surrounding tri-state area? Well, eventually, on a literal level, you would get starving populations slowly becoming mired in their own accumulated squalor, excepting the Bronx which is the only borough contiguous with the U.S. mainland.

But the states of hunger and squalor operate figuratively in terms of a dearth in cultural diversity and in terms of moral obsolescence respectively. Every community has something to offer, which is why I will do my best to write an ongoing segment devoted to my own neighborhood, Jackson Heights, Queens, arguably one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States, if not the world.

Jackson Heights fascinates me as a paradigm for those marginalized in their multiculturalism, just as Manhattan to me often represents a high order of status and power that sometimes forget the little guys that work so hard make it look so good.

In Jackson Heights, you will find in the span of roughly .8 square miles a panoply of ethnic cultures. From the Asian demographic comes immigrants from Bangladesh, China, Korea, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines; from the European demographic comes multigenerational descendents of Irish, Jewish, Italian, Polish, and Russian heritage; and from the Latino demographic comes immigrants from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay. There is also a distinctive pocket in the way of a gay community amidst this huddle of immigrants.

Given the wealth of material stemming from this paradigm for the United States, a country built on immigration, I’m sure I’ll find plenty to relay in the future in keeping my eye on Jackson Heights.