New Jersey seen overcoming its stereotypes

Despite the state’s problems, professor sees it as the wave of the future for the nation

By: Alice Lloyd George
   Despite the negative stereotypes propagated over the past few decades, New Jersey is demonstrating a positive direction for the nation as a whole, argued Professor Kenneth Jackson of Columbia University in a lecture at Princeton University on Thursday evening.
   "New Jersey in many ways either is America or is where we are going," he said.
   The former president of the New York Historical Society argued that although the Garden State has made significant progress, it continues to face problems.
   Crime is an area he saw as key to the discussion. "Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but the nation’s most popular criminal, Tony Soprano, is based in New Jersey," he observed.
   Professor Jackson affirmed that the stereotype has enough truth to it to make sense to viewers. "After all, New Jersey was the scene of the famous Lindbergh kidnapping," he noted. "It was widely regarded as the crime of the century."
   Professor Jackson also cited the effects of the 1967 riots in Newark. "Ultimately, after 27 people had been killed, after thousands of State Police and National Guardsmen had been ordered into the city, and after dozens of fires had been extinguished, middle-class whites decided Newark was a place to avoid and escape," he said.
   The professor suggested that Newark has still not recovered entirely.
   "Even now, despite the efforts of the new leader, Cory Booker, Newark has yet to transform itself into a place of even moderate safety," he said, noting that drive-by shootings and fear of going out after dark remain commonplace. "Without safety, nothing else happens. But once people begin to believe that it’s safer to go outside, it becomes like an epidemic in reverse."
   Professor Jackson also suggested that community efforts could help in this regard. "The building of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark is an example of what an urban cultural amenity can do to turn around a city," he said.
   He contended that many of New Jersey’s longstanding issues are partly due to poor local government. "If politics is a business in the U.S., it has long been a corrupt business in New Jersey," he said. He cited Frank Hague, one-time mayor of Jersey City, as a prime example, noting that although his salary was never more than $8,000 a year, when he died his estate was valued between $4 million and $5 million.
   Professor Jackson maintained that such misconduct has yet to be resolved.
   "In more recent years, the examples of political corruption are so numerous it’s hard to know where to begin," he said. He mentioned Newark’s mayor in the 1960s, Hugh Addonizio, who was convicted of extortion and income tax evasion.
   While Professor Jackson noted that New Jersey boasts the highest per capita income in the nation, he also emphasized the accompanying fact of economic inequality. "In this one state, the gap between rich and poor is phenomenal," he said, offering a quote from former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen: "The great divide between black and white yawns wide with the distance of ignorance, and the silence of shame." Professoir Jackson added, "New Jersey represents this pattern as well as any place in the nation."
   The professor highlighted the fact that in 2000, 44 percent of the residents of Camden lived below the poverty line, the highest rate in the nation, and that four of the 15 wealthiest counties in the nation are also in New Jersey.
   Pollution was another focus of concern. "Newark allowed obnoxious enterprises to co-exist with private residences," he said. "As a consequence of this industrial orientation, Newark did not even enforce the minimal environmental ordinances that were on its books."
   Professor Jackson underscored the detrimental activities of the Diamond Alkali Company in the 1950s and 1960s. The company had a pesticides-manufacturing plant on the Passaic River, which caused extensive damage and pollution. "The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New Jersey," joked Professor Jackson, referencing Woody Allen’s celebrated line.
   But the professor also emphasized New Jersey’s positive steps in recent years.
   "New Jersey has been at the forefront of transit construction and transit-oriented development," he said. "It has something that no other place really has: a perfect coming together of trains, planes, ships and cars, all within a few hundred yards of each other, all in one place — all in New Jersey."
   Professor Jackson noted New Jersey’s successes in education and the promotion of public space. "Maybe it’s because New Jersey is small and all of its land is precious, but this state has been concerning itself with protecting what’s left of its open spaces for over a generation," he said, citing Llewellyn Park in Essex County as a prime example.
   Professor Jackson’s overall message expressed optimism and a desire for progress.
   "So many Americans experience New Jersey through the window of a speeding automobile, and their impressions are not often positive," he said. "But if residents of New Jersey plan for the future, work together and build on a solid foundation, while the Garden State may not be a Garden of Eden, it can serve as model for the nation, and not just a road to New York or Philadelphia."