This week I decided to explore the Digital Harlem map. This map aims to present information about the everyday life conditions in the New York City Harlem neighborhood during the time period 1915-1930. The researchers aimed to focus on “ordinary” African New Yorkers, and not black artists and the black middle class which was unlike most other projects depicting Harlem at the time.
The Digital Harlem map reinforces David Turnbull’s argument that all maps are perspectival and subjective because “the mapmaker determines what is, and equally importantly, what is not included in the representation” (Turnbull, Exhibit 2 , Page 1). The collaborators on this project pulled their information and sources from mainly institutionalized records such as the district attorney’s closed case files, probation department case files, newspapers, committee of fourteen papers, and the writers program collection. These sources give bias towards the government and police point of view. The data uses their standards, language, categorization, and therefore the map shows their perspective. Also, newspapers often do not include information about daily life, but newsworthy info such as crime. The map cannot claim to represent ordinary lives of African New Yorkers if the data comes from sources like newspapers and legal records.
The map allows the users to filter events based on categories, and it shows that the majority of the listed categories are related to crime. Sure, there are a few categories that depict “everyday life” such as baseball games, church services, and party, but the majority of categories depict crime such as abduction, assault, burglary, drugs, and the list goes on. If I were to just look at the list of events I could choose from, I would assume that this map aims to present information on crime in the neighborhood of Harlem.
If the collaborators of this project did indeed aim to present everyday life, an alternate map could focus on more everyday events and less crime. This map makes the audience believe that crime was a large part of the everyday life in Harlem. To make the map include more everyday events, it could include more information on everyday events like work, school, transportation, family, food, etc. This map could also be enhanced with photos and descriptions, instead of just points on a map. With these additions, users would be able to have a more holistic idea of what everyday life in Harlem was like, instead of being led to believe that Harlem was simply a crime-ridden neighborhood.