At the Evergreen Presbyterian Church on 33rd Avenue, worshippers attend their service in Korean language. Next door, the Afghans and Pakistanis pray at Masjid Hazrat-i-Abu Bakr led by an imam from Bangladesh.
“There is also a temple just over there,” said pastor Stephen S. Kim, pointing to his left.
Despite the proximity of the different worship places, “none of us have had problems with each other so far.”
A sign near the entrance of the mosque reminds budding mischief-makers that New York law forbids people from creating disturbances in religious places.
The church was built in 1988 and Kim has served there for 15 years. The mosque has been around even longer.
Religious plurality is the nature of Flushing, a mainly Asian neighbourhood in Queens, the most diverse New York City county where 140 languages are spoken.
A Harvard University project estimated that places of worship such as mosques, churches, synagogues, gurdwaras, Buddhist and Hindu temples numbered almost 400 in a neighbourhood of 2.5 square miles.
According to the US Census Bureau, at least 46% of Queens’ 2.2 million population is foreign-born; English is second language to 54% of them.
“This is America!” one middle-aged Korean churchgoer said, looking incredulous that he should be asked whether he had had problems with his foreign neighbour.
In limited English, he said his adopted country was all about peace and tolerance in a diverse society.
The bustling Korean community in Flushing has a great variety of churches available for them, which range from huge chapels to little churches operating from the basement of shop houses.
But, as they say, the mirror has two faces. Beneath the shiny veneer, communities sometimes co-exist like some strange bedfellows.
One neighbourhood in Brooklyn was simmering in April when an orthodox Jew attacked a black man. This was followed by reports of a Jewish teenager assaulted and robbed by two black youths.
Scores of policemen were sent there to keep a lid on the tension, as it was not the first time such a clash erupted there.
Pastor Kim, a former diplomat, has his own theory on the uneasiness there. The blacks and the Jews, he said, each had a long, troubled past. Their history of being a persecuted people cannot be easily overcome.
Kim, who spent four years in Ghana during the 1980s as a diplomat, said he understood the black community quite well.
“I have also worked with them when I was a store manager in Philadelphia previously,” said Kim, who has lived in the United States for 25 years.
He found them to be good and kind, striking firm friendships with many of them.
“But they are sensitive, easily hurt,” said Kim, who felt that the black community still held deep-rooted emotions that went back a long way.
“Who can forget that they were forced to come to the country as slaves?” he asked. “This is unlike the Korean and Chinese immigrants who came here willingly, wanting to make a better life for themselves,” he said.
Besides, they suffered no self-esteem whatsoever, according to Kim. “There is still great pride in their motherland. They hold their heads up high, thrilled with the economic progress in China and Korea.”
The blacks, however, are still carrying their scars and the healing process takes a much longer time.
“It wasn’t till 1965 that all blacks were given voting rights,” he said, citing as an example of the plight of the people.
In states such as Oregon, blacks were not allowed to live there until a law that prevented them from becoming residents was finally abolished in 1919.
Kim believed that a better education was the key for the black community. “Right now, their dropout rate is too high,” he said.
One survey cited about half of those male African-Africans who quit school would have spent time in jail by the time they are in their 30s.
Other statistics show that the United States has about two million people behind bars, out of which about half are blacks.
Kim and his 200-strong congregation face no such emotional baggage. This is their home now and to them, they are a step closer to their American Dream.
