NYC Immigration Museum Re-Trains Tour Guides Amid Anti-Immigrant Climate

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — The Tenement Museum at Orchard and Delancey streets is being forced to develop a new training program for its tour guides, in response to heated and inflammatory comments from museum visitors on the topic of immigration.

President-elect Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric, as well as the Syrian refugee crisis abroad, has made for more contentious conversations during museum tours, according to museum management.

The museum, which focuses on the experiences of late-19th- and early-20th-century immigration to New York, tries to emphasize similarities between immigrants past and present. But during tours, people have now been saying things like, "There is a big different between refugees trying to come from Syria and refugees coming after World War II as Holocaust survivors," Miriam Bader, the museum's Director of Education, told WNYC.

The museum's stated mission — to enhance "appreciation for the profound role immigration has played and continues to play in shaping America's evolving national identity" — has remained the same, the museum's communications manager, Jon Pace, told Patch. "But now, the mission is more important than ever."

To deal with this rise in politically fraught moments, the museum instituted a new mandatory training for tour guides in September. It reportedly involves role-playing potential conversations and practicing "generous listening."

“The Education Department realized that for all the time we spend talking about sharing stories with visitors, we should spend more time on what we do when visitors share stories with us,” Education Manager Kathryn Lloyd told the Forward.

"We've always been a dialogue-oriented museum that invites visitors into the conversation and engages them in co-constructing the story," Bader said in an interview Reuters. But "the political climate has created a need for new skills — or superpowers — to facilitate the conversation."

Bader added: "People will now share stronger opinions about whether or not they think immigrants are sort of bleeding [the country], they're taking too much that other people should have, or they're taking our jobs."

Lead photo via Wikimedia