Editing Jacob Riis (section)

==Criticism==
While the impact of Riis's work on social reform is undeniable, Riis's own biases, especially against Jewish immigrants, are also present in his work. His audience included middle-class reformers, and critics say that he had no love for the traditional lifestyles of the people he portrayed. Stange (1989) argues that Riis "recoiled from workers and [[working-class culture]]" and appealed primarily to the anxieties and fears of his middle-class audience.<ref>Maren Stange, "Jacob Riis and Urban Visual Culture", ''Journal of Urban History'', May 1989, Vol. 15, Issue 3, pp. 274–303, quote on p. 278</ref> Riis portrayed a widespread fear among Anglo-Saxons that America was quickly changing as a result of the influx of immigrants, and that “American family values” were fading.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Fried |first=Lewis |date=March 1, 1979 |title=Jacob Riis and the Jews: The Ambivalent quest for community |url=https://journals.ku.edu/amsj/article/view/2253 |journal=American Studies |language=en |pages=5–24 |issn=0026-3079}}</ref> Riis has also been criticized for allowing his Christian beliefs to affect his work. Riis's work often utilized elements of the [[Social Gospel|social gospel]], which at the time didn't draw criticism, but current critics note that this framework led to some of his biases against immigrant populations.<ref name=":2" /> Swienty (2008) says, "Riis was quite impatient with most of his fellow immigrants; he was quick to judge and condemn those who failed to assimilate, and he did not refrain from expressing his contempt."<ref>Tom Swienty, ''The other half: the life of Jacob Riis and the world of immigrant'' (2008) p. 157</ref> Riis's photography is also criticized for representing immigrant groups as monochromatic.<ref name=":2" />

Some critics have questioned his right to interfere with the lives and choices of others.  Libertarian economist [[Thomas Sowell]] (2001) argues that immigrants during Riis's time were typically willing to live in cramped, unpleasant circumstances as a deliberate short-term strategy that allowed them to save more than half their earnings to help family members come to America, with every intention of relocating to more comfortable lodgings eventually. Many tenement renters physically resisted the well-intentioned relocation efforts of reformers like Riis, states Sowell, because other lodgings were too costly to allow for the high rate of savings possible in the tenements. There were other reform attempts to relocate immigrants further outside the city, such as Williamsburg or Brownsville, however these also failed as living conditions weren't much better and those living there still had to travel into the city for work.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Goldblatt |first=Roy |date=1991 |title=From Ghetto to Ghetto...and Maybe a Farm Too |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230380084.pdf |journal=American Studies in Scandinavia |volume=23 |pages=1–14|doi=10.22439/asca.v23i1.1158 }}</ref> Moreover, according to Sowell, Riis's own personal experiences were the rule rather than the exception during his era: like most immigrants and low-income persons, he lived in the tenements only temporarily before gradually earning more income and relocating to different lodgings.<ref>Thomas Sowell, ''The Quest for Cosmic Justice'' (Simon and Schuster, 2001), {{ISBN|0-7432-1507-9}}, pp. 128–29.</ref>

The harshest criticisms that Riis faced was for his depictions of Eastern European Jews.<ref name="mirror" /><ref name=":3">Jeffrey S. Gurock, "Jacob A. Riis: Christian Friend or Missionary Foe? Two Jewish Views", ''American Jewish History'', Sept 1981, Vol. 71 Issue 1, pp. 29–47</ref> Gurock (1981) says Riis was insensitive to the needs and fears of East European Jewish immigrants who flooded into New York at this time.<ref name=":3" /> Fried (1997) criticizes what he calls Riis's “image of Jews as alien, exotic, unassimilable race, and a people resistant to the promises of Christian universalism."<ref name=":2" /> Riis's written work about the Jews invoked anti-semitic tropes such as saying “money is their god”.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Riis |first=Jacob |title=How the Other Half Lives |publisher=Hill and Wang |year=1957}}</ref> Additionally, Riis saw the Jews as antiquated and mysterious. He called the area of the Lower East Side with the most Jewish immigrants, Jewtown, with a “omnipresent and unfathomable peddler”<ref name=":4" /> harking back to the trope of the Jewish usurer, and that entering a Jewish house of mourning meant “going back 2000 years”.<ref name=":4" /> Fried notes that as Riis gained popularity he moderated his comments about Jews<ref name=":2" /> however critics still point to his earlier works as influencing his biases later on in life.

The Jews weren't the only immigrant group he stereotyped in his work in an effort to explain why these groups “hindered the growth of a uniform culture”.<ref name=":2" /> In Riis's books, according to some historians, "The Jews are nervous and inquisitive, the Orientals are sinister, the Italians are unsanitary."<ref>Dowling, p. 111, quoting Ronald Sanders.</ref>{{Explain|reason=This is written in a non-committal way.|date=February 2023}} For example, early on in his career he stated that “the Chinese must go”<ref name=":2" /> and then 20 years later “only as regards to the Asiatic we have made a flat verdict of exclusion”.<ref name=":2" /> Riis also criticized Italian immigrants stating that they “reproduce conditions of destitution and disorder”.<ref name=":4" />