This might help explain a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Suicide Rate Climbing for Black Teens: Move to Middle Class May Cause Identity Crisis,” which details a federal study that shows the suicide rate for Black teens has been rising dramatically. Unlike white and Latino teens, the Black teens who commit suicide tend to come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds than the general African-American population. Many social psychologists speculate that this increase is due to identity crises perpetuated by the mass media.
In bell hooks’s provocative analysis on Black masculinity, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, she furthers the discussion, stating:
While we often hear about privileged black men assuming a ghetto gangsta-boy style, we rarely hear about the pressure they get from white people to prove they are “really black.”… This pressure is part of the psychological racial arsenal for it constantly lets educated black people, especially black males, know that no amount of education will allow them to escape the imposition of racist stereotypes. Often in predominantly white educational settings, black males put on their ghetto minstrel show as a way of protecting themselves from a white racialized rage. They want to appear harmless, not a threat, and to do so they have to entertain unenlightened folks by letting them know “I don’t think I’m equal to you. I know my place. Even though I am educated I know you think I am still an animal at heart.”
Writer Kheven Lee LaGrone believes that middle-class “Black teens are stuck between the plantation and the ghetto.” In the article “The 90s Minstrels,” he asks,
Do they feel they are treated like minstrels, the black American “other,” or as a “nigger/nigga” defined by white suburbia? This is important, since for many black suburban youth, gangsta rap may represent their only connection to the inner city and to what they consider “true” blackness.
The real Blackness hooks and LaGrone write about, and that my brother spent his life chasing, isn’t real at all. It’s reel: from the ignorant, womanizing, hypermasculine thug to the oversexed, loud, quick-to-get-an-attitude-over-nothing bitch. It’s all reel.
In the case of my brother, who is a few years north of thirty, I hold on to grains of hope that someday he might turn things around, redefine himself and climb out of the prefabricated box he’s in. For some though, it’s too late.
The late Russell Tyrone Jones—also known as Joe Bananas, Dirt McGirt, Dirt Dog, Ason Unique, Big Baby Jesus, Osirus, and most commonly Ol’ Dirty Bastard—died frontin’. Much like my brother, ODB spent his adult life dancing between jail, welfare, and stints with rap success. And also like my brother, ODB vehemently denied his middle-class upbringing, and instead promoted a poverty-stricken, dangerous one (as if being Black wasn’t enough). In “Caught Up,” he raps:
I’m a ghetto nigga dog so I get it how I live
Got money, lock ’em off, fuckers still I got drama
Got two strike dog and five baby mamas.
“I was furious,” said William Jones, ODB’s father. “You know, that story about him being raised in the Fort Greene [Brooklyn] projects on welfare until he was a child of thirteen was a total lie,” he added. When Jones talked to his wife about their son’s bogus claims of ghettoship, her response was simple: “He did it for publicity.” Of course he did. ODB understood that boasting racist and classist stereotypes about Blacks would reaffirm them in the minds of a largely white consumer market. This would explain the correlation between ODB’s run-ins with the law and simultaneous spikes in record sales.
ODB’s story reminds us that most artists feel that in order to “make it,” they need to portray a stereotypical image that is marketable to white America. As a result, artists like ODB downplay their middleclass origins and artists who are from the ghetto avoid portraying and calling out the savage injustices that created their condition. When Time magazine covered gangsta rapper Ice-T’s upbringing, they noted that “Although he lived in Windsor Hill, a middle-class section of L.A., he claims he began hanging with a rough crowd. He plays up these tough-guy roots to legitimize his hard raps.”
It is this type of rhetoric and these decisions by culture makers that has caused “Black” to become synonymous with the “reel ghetto.” It is like a person who is seeking to become something that he is not because he is so worried that he will not be accepted by the masses as real. But real is as real believes and lives. You can find it anywhere. Julie Dash, the filmmaker responsible for such works as Daughters of the Dust and The Rosa Parks Story, reminds me that, “Our lives, our history, our present reality is no more limited to ‘ghetto’ stories than Italian Americans are to the Mafia, or Jewish Americans are to the Holocaust.”
In an article by social commentator Harold Clemens entitled “‘Ghetto’—The New N-Word,” he describes this usurpation of the Black experience. He writes that the word “ ‘ghetto,’ when used colloquially as an adjective, is the most racist, derogatory word in the common lexicon, given its so subtle insinuations and layers. Employed to mean ‘uncouth,’ ‘unruly,’ or ‘parvenu,’ ‘ghetto’ is the most popular new code word to stigmatize blacks.” He goes on:
Evidence of this relationship is the commonality of statements like, “You can be black and not be ghetto,” which sounds a hell of a lot like the formerly popular, “You can be black and not be a nigger.” People even make comments like “ghetto-ass, white boy.” The first remark obviously insinuates black people are usually “ghetto,” or at least that people that are “ghetto” are usually black. The latter obviously insinuates that white boys, and white people in general, usually aren’t “ghetto,” since the identification, “white boy,” is necessary to complete the description.
The ghetto experience in our history in America is an important one, mainly because it represents our historic and contemporary socioeconomic struggles for liberation. Because the reel ghetto experience has been highly profitable, it has left all Blacks—in the ghetto or outside of it—feeling inauthentic. The reality is that young, nonviolent Black men are born into a world that has already pegged them as violent criminals. Further, they treat and mistreat them based on this falsehood. It’s no surprise then that many youths explained their decision to act out as a giving-in of sorts to a reality that is fixed. The mentality becomes, “If you’re going to treat me like a criminal, I may as well get what I can get,” because ultimately both fates are the same. My brother and ODB became what society viewed them as, which is always unfortunate.
When I see young people like Alyce Bush, the founder of Roots to Freedom, a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an alternative to the negative images that sabotage our reality, I’m hopeful that we will find a rhythm that helps those of us who have sought authenticity through combing through the most inauthentic places.
In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Bigger Thomas remarks, “Having been thrust out of the world because of my race, I had accepted my destiny by not being curious about what shaped it.” My brother, ODB, and countless others felt that they could not challenge the perceptions. One does not have to go along with any image imposed upon them by the outside. We are not simply to be acted upon; in some real senses we are actors ourselves, making the world go ’round, and choosing to be what we choose to be. Poet Saul Williams reminds us that “Right now, we are unable to imagine world peace. Why? Because our imaginations have been stolen from us. We can imagine World War III because we’ve seen it in every movie, every TV show, etc. We cannot imagine world peace because we’ve never seen it before.” If it’s not up to the post-hip-hop generation to create alternatives that will reveal their infinite possibilities, then who will produce these images?
Tupac once told us, “Stop being cowards and let’s have a revolution, but we don’t wanna do that. Dudes just wanna live a caricature, they wanna be cartoons, but if they really wanted to do something, if they was that tough, all right, let’s start a revolution.” That revolution may not be televised, but with the advent of digital and Web technology
, the post-hip-hop generation is utilizing forms of new media to challenge, discover, and influence how we think about our world.
A ghetto can be improved in only one way:
out of existence.
— JAMES BALDWIN
First off, thanks for granting me this interview.
No problem. It’s time for me to set the record straight.
About…?
About me. Who I am. And actually, more importantly, why I am who I am.
See, people who live in me know me on an intimate and visceral level, while people who live elsewhere probably know what I look like. However, most of these folks, residents and nonresidents alike, don’t understand who I really am.
Is it important that they know who you really are?
Is it important? It’s essential. Imperative. Especially for the post-hip-hop generation. They are going to be the ones whose decisions will affect me the most. They’ve been fed a hyperrealistic, inadequate portrait of who I am and if not dealt with it will cause confusion and vital opportunities will be lost. Basically, they need to understand me in order to fully understand themselves.
All right then, so, who are you? Who is the African-American ghetto?
I’m a place where people are and have historically been forced to live.
Which people?
All types of people: brilliant, courageous, beautiful, crazy, funny, talented, strong, injured, soulful. All types. Geeks. Shoemakers. Scholars. Comedians. Athletes. Scientists. Lovers. The whole spectrum.
The common denominator is that they’re economically poor and African-American.
I’m curious about your name, “Ghetto.” What does it mean? Where does it come from?
Linguists trace it back to the Italian words “getto” (to cast off) and “borghetto” (small neighborhood), the Venetian slang “gheto,” the Griko “ghetonia” (neighborhood), and the Hebrew word “get” (bill of divorce).
The first time my name was written was when English traveler and writer Thomas Coryat, on a foot journey through Europe, described “the place where the whole fraternity of the Jews dwelleth together, which is called the Ghetto.”
And what year was that?
1611.
Early in its usage it meant a walled-off and gated section in cities where Jews were confined. The word was mostly used in Italy, near port cities like Venice where a lot of Jews lived and worked. Jews were placed under strict regulations, forced to live together, and put on curfews that prevented them from being out at certain times. As if that wasn’t enough, sumptuary laws forced Jews to wear special starshaped yellow badges and yellow berets, identifying themselves as Jews and opening themselves up to taunts and attacks by Christians who were the majority.
Damn. Did other writers back in the day write about your name?
Yeah, lots. In 1879, British writer Dean Farrar writes about the ghetto in Life of St. Paul. Edward Dowden, a nineteenth-century literary critic, makes many references to ghettos in his analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley. British author Israel Zangwill wrote the books Children of the Ghetto and Dreamers of the Ghetto, both biographical studies. In 1908, Jack London in Martin Eden explains that his characters “plunged off right into the heart of the working-class ghetto.” Despite its usage by these writers, it wasn’t widely discussed or popular.
When did it become widely known?
The word blew up in the mid-1930s when the Nazis took power and set up ghettos that, just like in previous times, confined Jews into cramped, tightly packed areas of the inner cities of Eastern Europe. However, unlike previous ghettos in Europe, these ghettos were impoverished, overcrowded, and disease-plagued areas enclosed by stone or brick walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire. And, if Jews tried to leave, the penalty was death.
So it was death either way?
Adolf Eichmann, a top Nazi official, came up with what he called the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” a program of systematic genocide that attempted to eradicate the entire Jewish population in Europe. In preparation, Eichmann began to move all Jews into ghettos. The Nazis, between 1939 and 1945, set up more than three hundred Jewish ghettos in the Soviet Union, the Baltic states, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary. During the Holocaust, nearly all the Jews in the ghettos were killed—so yes, death either way.
Do you see yourself as being related to those Jewish ghettos of Europe?
Of course. Take the Warsaw ghetto, as an example of institutional overcrowding, where Jews, who were 30 percent of the population, were forced to live in 2.4 percent of the city’s area—about ten people per room. Most apartments had no sanitation, piped water, or sewers. Starvation was rife.
So, similarly, during my birth in America, Urban Renewal (which, behind closed doors, was called “nigger removal”) was all about systematically uprooting Blacks from sections of the city deemed “valuable,” then forcing them into projects. For every ten homes that they destroyed, they only built one new unit in the projects—institutional overcrowding.
Many things are the same: the social isolation; the normalized terror by authorities; and state-sponsored racism, to name a few.
And what about other ghettos around the world—do you see yourself as related to them?
Of course. Every ghetto—from Soweto to L’île-Saint-Denis, from Brixton to Chiapas, from favelas to shantytowns—I am one with.
Why?
’Cause oppression is oppression is oppression, man.
Some people say that you’re a “state of mind”?
Which people?
Um —
I say survival is a state of mind. That’s where soul comes from.
And what’s soul?
Soul is graceful survival against impossible circumstances.
That’s heavy. All right now, can you talk about your roots as the Black American ghetto?
Definitely.
All right, so, 40 Acres & A Mule is not just the name of Spike Lee’s film company, it’s also the colloquial term for the reparations that were supposed to be issued to enslaved Africans after the Civil War—forty acres of farmland and a mule to cultivate that land. The official name was Special Field Orders, No. 15, and it was issued on January 16, 1865, by Maj. Gen. William Sherman.
So what happened?
Well, when President Abraham Lincoln was killed, Andrew Johnson, his replacement, revoked Sherman’s orders. The very few Blacks who had already received land had it quickly taken away.
Abolishing slavery with no restitution is like opening the door to a prison cell, while leaving all other exits bolted, chained, and locked, and telling an inmate that “they are free.” The cell door, although perhaps the most confining, is but a multitude of forces that keeps the prisoner imprisoned.
Anyway, without any restitution, Blacks were forced into a vicious cycle of sharecropping, also known as Slavery II, where they paid rent to white landowners from their yearly yield. This form of neoslavery also occurred later in South Africa and Zimbabwe where it was illegal for Blacks to own their own land. Sharecropping is a vicious cycle because, by the end of the year without fail, the sharecropper is always in debt, meaning he can never free himself from the land. This, coupled with de-citizenizing Jim Crow laws, made it impossible for Blacks to own land in the South, binding them—through the law—in the shallow pits of poverty.
That was in the South. What about in the North?
Around the times I just mentioned, 1865–1876, Blacks comprised less than 5 percent of industrial northern cities like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, et cetera. Blacks in the North, because of racism and discrimination, weren’t allowed to work in factories or join unions, which reduced them to the lowest, dirtiest, grimiest, nastiest jobs—jobs no one else would do.
Beginning around 1914, though, large numbers of Blacks started moving to industrial hubs like New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Maryland, Detroit, Chicago, et cetera.
Because things were so bad in the South?
It was “so b
ad” everywhere. But mainly because World War I, which began in 1914, called for a lot of unskilled factory workers. And you know when America needs weapons, they don’t care who makes ’em.
Blacks kept coming North, looking for work, even after the war was over. During the twenties alone, over two million Blacks came North in hopes of a better life. You had a lot of Blacks looking for work in an already impossible job market, then the Depression hits.
But that affected pretty much everybody, right?
Yeah, everybody was affected. But while everybody was affected, you must remember: Blacks were the first to get fired when things got bad and the last ones to get hired once things finally picked up. But that wasn’t the worst of it by any stretch of the imagination. What happened next was unconscionable:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt cut Black people out of his plan to alleviate the poverty of the national Depression.
How?
It was clear that Social Security—which provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, and a lump-sum benefit at death—and Mandatory Minimum Insurance were proven methods of reducing and alleviating poverty.
Roosevelt drafted these programs under his Committee on Economic Security, and they were passed by Congress under his New Deal. One of the major problems was that both of these acts excluded domestics and agricultural workers, who made up more than two-thirds of the Black workforce. Then with all of—
Can you—
Can you let me finish?
My bad.
I haven’t even got to the worst part yet.
All right, please continue.
Where was I?
FDR was cutting Black people out of all his programs.
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation Page 4
