The American "ghetto" culture?

[Robocommie]

So, in another forum, way on a distant corner of the net, I got into a bit of a debate over violence and the "ghetto" subculture that is supposedly fueling this violent crime and accounts for why so many criminals are black.

I countered this saying that there's plenty of white criminals as well, and that it's poverty that does this shit to people, not some kind of nebulous "ghetto lifestyle" that makes people criminals.

This was my opponent's response.


Hey, I'm poor. Tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and no way to pay it off, since my paycheck doesn't even cover for my living expenses. Some days I don't even eat.

But you don't see me out there mugging and sexually assaulting people.

Just for the record, I am not white. I'm Latino, born and raised in the barrio, the Mission district in San Francisco. Before all the hipsters moved in and gentrified it. Back when it was still the Mexican ghetto, and as a little kid, you didn't play in the sandbox because you'll get poked by a hypodermic needle.

But I do equate the lower class urban culture (not specifically the black urban culture) with crime and violence. It may not directly cause it, but it certainly feeds it...

The ghetto isn't like Good Times where people are "trying to keep their head above water", but it's more like crabs in a basket where if left up to their own devices, any individual crab could escape the basket, but all the other crabs are pulling him down to the bottom. It's dog eat dog. It's not a community, but more of "I have to tear by brother/sister down in order to raise myself up."

However, the culture in the ghetto EMBRACES this instead of rejecting it. It's glorified and celebrated instead of shunned. A young black man reads a book or uses grammar, and people go "What? Choo tryin' to be white?" They seem to be content with this.

I won't blame music or video games for what goes on, but sometimes, they do exploit it, glorify it, and it's fed back into the culture. And honestly, all it really does is further the stereotype, gets fed back into the culture, in a never ending cycle. Personally, I do beleive that rap and hip hop have done more to promote racism towards the black urban culture than to curb it (How so? Whites are the ones that buy the most hip hop records, the record labels are white, in order to sell the records and "be authentic and the voice of the streets" the image of The Angry Scary Negro is put into perpetual motion, inner city kids see this, and along with other elements of their enviroment, they think that it's OK to act like that or that that's how it should act, lather, rinse, repeat.

Too many examples; too little time.

So, comrades, is this some classist and/or racist bullshit or what? And if it is, what can I say to this, both now and in the future when I encounter this attitude, as I already have many times already?

[The Douche]

They are, largely, correct. But that dog eat dog attitude is a product of capitalism.

People do fucked up things all the time. How can we not? We're surrounded by shit all day, every day, its crammed down our throats. Our lives are shit, how can we be expected not to act shitty?

[FreeFocus]

It is what it is. I live in the "hood" and yeah, there is a "ghetto culture" that glorifies senseless violence and the like. But it didn't develop in a vacuum, nor is it intrinsic to Latino or African-American culture as racists would try to argue.

The best thing to argue for in this debate is not that people condone or excuse such behavior, but that they understand it. When they understand it, people won't be so ignorant and stereotype ethnic groups and condemn entire cities or regions.

[9]

I definitely perceive a racist undertone in his comment. He begins by saying that he is a poor Latino raised in the barrio, but then offers the stereotypically-racist anecdote: "but you don't see me out there mugging and sexually assaulting people." Furthermore, in spite of his adamant insistence that he speaks with authority because he was raised in the barrio, he offers no critique of the barrio. His critique, in fact, is leveled entirely against the black ghetto and the basic implication seems, to me, to be that there is something inherent and unique to "black culture" and the black community - removed from such monumental factors as exploitation, poverty, racism, and capitalism in general - which bears responsibility for the rate of crime among blacks and what the poster considers the ghetto mentality. This is a typical racist sentiment.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I can't see how "hip hop" or "ghetto" culture glorifies violence any more than Pro-wrestling, video games, cowboy movies, Shakespeare plays, opera, the bible, or what have you.

But "violence" according to the US establishment and ruling class is never when the cops shove someone against a wall or a police car; a family being thrown out of their home; people being denied health care; mass layoffs; not to mention countless bombings and raids by the US in various places across the globe at any given time.

This is not to say that there isn't senseless violence when you live in a poor neighborhood - it's just that this whole blaming "culture" for violence argument is idealism at best and racism at worst.

In the US, the "intellectual" right-wing has been pushing (at least since the 90s) a variation on racism that identifies "culture" as the reason for the observable racial inequalities in US society. Basically where older generations of racists and apologists for the status-quo attributed racial inequalities to (social-darwinist) biological inferiority the new generation attributes lower pay and higher incarceration and poverty for some groups to "inferior culture".

According to people like Denesh DeSoza (SP?) blacks and latinos are systemically poorer than other groups not because of systemic racism (things like risky home loans, racial profiling, cuts to public services in poor neighborhoods) but because their culture is not as good as the culture that rich and sucsessful groups have.

Even Obama makes these arguments when he goes to black churches and schools and blames a "culture" where studious black students are made fun of for "acting white". Hmm, well if you ask me, making fun of studious people is "acting white": NERD NERD NERD NERD! I mean come the fuck on, teasing nerds is the reason for inequality and opression for blacks in the US?!

So at best this culture argument is just idealism: culture creates material reality, not the other way around according to this view. As radicals and materialists I think we can easily argue that angry violent hip-hop/metal/punk is a product of a society where people are belitted and have violence acted on them on a daily basis. If you said that the popularity of war movies created wars, most people would laugh at you - but this is essentially the argument made by people blaming "violent culture" for violence.

[RHIZOMES]

I don't think I've ever heard someone being accused of trying to be white because they're into reading.

[9]

I don't think I've ever heard someone being accused of trying to be white because they're into reading.

It definitely does happen. But I think analyzing it as an isolated phenomenon removed from poverty, racism, capitalism etc. is a senseless endeavor.

[Holden Caulfield]

nor is it intrinsic to Latino or African-American culture as racists would try to argue.



On the subject of this, up in Carlisle in Englands extreme North, where I was brought up we lack the multi-culturalism of the rest of the UK. This puts me in a good position to say that the people causing trouble, nicking your bike, putting your windows through, dealing drugs to kids, raping, starting fights for no reason, carrying knives, etc etc has nothing to do with skin colour.

Because up here its about 99.99% white kids, poor white kids.

[Revy]

There is no "ghetto culture". Hip hop culture, gangsta culture but in the end all that is, is fashion and music. In many American "ghettos" (poor urban neighborhoods) there is poverty, gangs, hard drugs, prostitution. Only the racists connect this to race, when it has more do with both the capitalist system and the racism in society. Many rappers talk about living in a mansion, having nice cars, wearing bling, and just having money. Life in the poor urban areas is full of much more misery by far.

[Luís Henrique]

Only the racists connect this to race, when it has more do with both the capitalist system and the racism in society.
Perhaps it has to do with the existence of ghettos in itself? I mean, this strange idea that there are parts of the city that are inhabited by Blacks/Latinos/Italians/Japanese/Jews/whatever?

Luís Henrique

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I don't think I've ever heard someone being accused of trying to be white because they're into reading.

A friend of mine who graduated from high school in the top 20 was often labeled white by his black peers for being academically astute, so I can testify that it does indeed happen.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

There is no "ghetto culture". Hip hop culture, gangsta culture but in the end all that is, is fashion and music. In many American "ghettos" (poor urban neighborhoods) there is poverty, gangs, hard drugs, prostitution. Only the racists connect this to race, when it has more do with both the capitalist system and the racism in society. Many rappers talk about living in a mansion, having nice cars, wearing bling, and just having money. Life in the poor urban areas is full of much more misery by far.

Racists claim race precedes poverty; however, as a result of this poverty, there certainly does exist a cultural backlash against what most would perceive as a reasonably well-educated, well-mannered lifestyle. Ignoring the issue or blowing it off as the product of racist conspiracies does nothing. Particular blacks and Hispanics are victims to poverty in more ways than just lacking access to resources - these populations react in a way the impoverished whites may not, due to the whites having more opportunity.

Rap brings this issue to the forefront of discussion by having artists (now) popularize vile, sexist attributes like "pimpin." . (And I like rap...)

[Jimmie Higgins]

Racists claim race precedes poverty; however, as a result of this poverty, there certainly does exist a cultural backlash against what most would perceive as a reasonably well-educated, well-mannered lifestyle. Ignoring the issue or blowing it off as the product of racist conspiracies does nothing. Particular blacks and Hispanics are victims to poverty in more ways than just lacking access to resources - these populations react in a way the impoverished whites may not, due to the whites having more opportunity.

Rap brings this issue to the forefront of discussion by having artists (now) popularize vile, sexist attributes like "pimpin." . (And I like rap...)


In a country where the Republican party regularly drums up "anti-intellectualism" and promotes creationsism and faith-healing, to single-out black or latino culture for being anti-intellectual is 100% absurd or simply racism.

How are these cultural examples above unique to blacks or latinos? Asian kids get beat up and made fun of for being too studious in California despite the US stereotype of Asians being "culturally compelled to excel in school" - which is BS. I grew up in a semi-rural semi-urban "ghetto" area where most people were white or latino and trust me, white "redneck" culture can make fun of studious people as much as hip-hop culture. They even make fun of people for talking too proper - just as some blacks may get teased for "sounding white". In fact some of the most nerdy and studious kids were immigrant kids from central america.

Sure hip-hop songs spin tales about being a rich pimp or coke-dealer but really how is that different than "I want to rock and roll (fuck) all night and party every day (drugs)". How is the "pimp" fantasy much different from dreaming about being in a metal band and doing coke and having groupies throw thsemselves at you? How is east-coast hip-hop about coke-dealing and standing up to the cops any differnet than southern rebel culture and outrunning the cops and selling moonshine?

White american pop culture is built on outlaw cowboys, bank robbers, alcohol dealing gangsters, and so on - so why is hip-hp singles out for glorifying the exact same archetypes!?

[Luís Henrique]

White american pop culture is built on outlaw cowboys, bank robbers, alcohol dealing gangsters, and so on - so why is hip-hp singles out for glorifying the exact same archetypes!?
Because there is a basic, "pre-cultural" assymetry between the North American "races", the effects of anti-intellectualism are different on Whites than on Blacks.

Luís Henrique

[Jimmie Higgins]

Because there is a basic, "pre-cultural" assymetry between the North American "races", the effects of anti-intellectualism are different on Whites than on Blacks.

Luís Henrique

Interesting - how do you mean. Are you are saying that although the US ruling class might promote anti-intellectualism across the board, it is ideological - like cutting school funding in black and poor areas and increase university tuition on the one hand while still setting up private universities and elite private schools for rich white Christians.

I guess I was more arguing against the idea that anti-intellectualism is a result of "ghetto culture" or that hip-hop culture's promotion of "get-rich fast" ideas is the reason for inequality in the US. These are the arguments I hear from right-wingers all the time, so I guess I may have been arguing a straw-man. I'm interested in your ideas about anti-intellectualism and the way it plays out among racial groups in the US.

[Luís Henrique]

Interesting - how do you mean. Are you are saying that although the US ruling class might promote anti-intellectualism across the board, it is ideological - like cutting school funding in black and poor areas and increase university tuition on the one hand while still setting up private universities and elite private schools for rich white Christians.

I guess I was more arguing against the idea that anti-intellectualism is a result of "ghetto culture" or that hip-hop culture's promotion of "get-rich fast" ideas is the reason for inequality in the US. These are the arguments I hear from right-wingers all the time, so I guess I may have been arguing a straw-man. I'm interested in your ideas about anti-intellectualism and the way it plays out among racial groups in the US.
Notice, I am not North American, and I have never been to the United States, so my knowledge of North American culture and society are at best second hand.

My impression is that most White anti-intellectualism is smalltown culture; in such environment, anti-intellectualism doesn't hinder Whites from establishing a local elite. Mayor, councilours, Sheriff, heads of the twin State-parties, Rotary and Lyons, church pastors, etc, are all anti-intellectual and this does not prevent them from effectively dominating local politics and society - perhaps it is even a tool of such domination.

Also in my impression, Black anti-intellectualism is an inner city phenomenon, and is an actual tool of the informal apartheid in place in the United States, hindering individual Black efforts to 'win' within the system.

I could, of course, be wrong; my impressions are not based on solid empyrical research. But I am quite certain that there is a race-based discriminatory system in the US, and that given, it is impossible that the effects of anti-intellectualism among the people above the racial divide line are similar to its effects among the people below that line. Exactly how this plays in each segment of the population only actual research could establish.

Luís Henrique

[PossiblyLeft]

MTV tells the kids to either play BBall, rap, or if that doesn't work sell drugs. Very sad that many low income families are broken homes that don't have strong parents to say otherwise.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Luís Henrique (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../member.php?u=10711),

I think you are onto something here with the way anti-intellectualism plays out differently because of racism in the US.

Just to give you a US perspective on a few things though: Most major urban industrial cities have a strong black elite political machine based out of the Democratic Party. Most industrial cities have had various black mayors since the 70s, so I don't think it's accurate to say that the US ruling class wants to keep all members of oppressed groups out of the system - they actually want a small percentage of oppressed groups to have a small elite that has an interest in keeping the system going.

Like Obama, members of the small black elite tend to be more liberal than the rest of the Democratic party, but they are also able to get away with more violence and cutbacks against all people in urban areas than their white predecessors a generation ago were able to get away with. Most of the black mayors of the 80s in places like Oakland or Washington DC or Detroit were fully behind all the repressive stuff that cities were doing as part of the "war on crime/drugs" like creating semi-militarized groups within the police and increasing mandatory-minimum sentancing and all the rest.

I think how racism works into anti-intellectualism may be how white suburban and rural anti-intellectualism is like back-door segregation: white christians set up home-schooling to keep their kids from having to go to intergrated schools, then policians pull more money out of the public school system and so underfunded public schools are filled with working class whites, latinos and native americans in rural areas.

In the cities, anti-intellectualism is basically given as an excuse not to look at the real material problems with education and life in the poorer working class neighborhoods. So people say: "Oh they don't want to learn, so why should we raise more funds to update a school or fund music or art classes (that might make school a little more interesting than the purgatory full of detention and scantron tests that it is for working class kids now)"

[Schrödinger's Cat]

In a country where the Republican party regularly drums up "anti-intellectualism" and promotes creationsism and faith-healing, to single-out black or latino culture for being anti-intellectual is 100% absurd or simply racism.However, as I was saying, the impact is completely different. These creationist nutters are getting college educations. There is not an active subculture peeking into music which teaches that participation in the black market is ideal. I know the issue is very controversial, but I'm not singling out blacks and "latinos;" I'm drawing a very real distinction between disenfranchised whites (at large) and disenfranchised people of color. To think that these groups react to their states in the same way when whites have an advantage - that is absurd. I'm not a sociologist, but it seems within the mode of reason that since whites control the "best stuff," poor whites will not look at these institutions with the same level as disdain as say, a poor African-American. When good colleges, executive positions, and excellent grades are dominated by white participants, they are perceived (by some) as "white."

Yes, stupid people exist in every race, but I was directing my attention to the subculture's relationship with the means of production.


White american pop culture is built on outlaw cowboys, bank robbers, alcohol dealing gangsters,Not sure what music you're listening to, because the only cowboy archetypes I hear about are "good guys" - and I live in Texas, so I think I have some relevant opinion on the matter. While we're on the subject, white American pop culture is built on teenage angst.



"I want to rock and roll (fuck) all night and party every day (drugs)". How is the "pimp" fantasy much different from dreaming about being in a metal band and doing coke and having groupies throw thsemselves at you? How is east-coast hip-hop about coke-dealing and standing up to the cops any differnet than southern rebel culture and outrunning the cops and selling moonshine?Moonshine? Again, I think you're grasping for straws, because most country (and even blue grass) music revolves around family life and love, not moonshining and confederate rebels.

[revolt4thewin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUS6nKpddec
Hmmmmm :laugh::laugh::laugh:

[which doctor]

I think a lot of aspects regarding "ghetto culture" in the US have arisen because of the lack of a strong, legal market economy. However, there is a widespread black/grey market economy that operates in the ghetto, precisely because they've been neglected by more respectable market economies. As a result, illegal and unregulated trade thrive in the ghetto. A significant portion of the residents in a ghetto are employed in this underground economy, some of them are involved in providing illegal services (drug dealing), while most are just unregulated (braiding hair without a license or working as a mechanic without a garage). Many aspects of this economic resourcefulness are described as "ghetto" by people who look at ghetto society with the same frame of mind they would looking at an economically regulated, suburban society.

[Raúl Duke]

On the subject of this, up in Carlisle in Englands extreme North, where I was brought up we lack the multi-culturalism of the rest of the UK. This puts me in a good position to say that the people causing trouble, nicking your bike, putting your windows through, dealing drugs to kids, raping, starting fights for no reason, carrying knives, etc etc has nothing to do with skin colour.

Because up here its about 99.99% white kids, poor white kids.

In a sociology class we were discussing crime and 2 major factors or correlation was a neighborhood's heterogenity (of races and ethnic groups) and population turnover (people moving in and out all the time)...

However, the first part (although even the second part) seems a bit too much based on only the U.S. experience. In Puerto Rico crime comes from poor neighborhoods/public housing (or near that) which are usually made up by virtually all Puerto Ricans and also, although not sure, do not have much population turnover.

The most universal factor seems to be poverty in my opinion.

Although Puerto Rico does have a "ghetto or street culture" in a way but it's never viewed exactly in racial terms (classist, yes; however the feeling in Puerto Rico is more of pity then spite of the poor that seems more prelavent in the U.S. However, there's spite but it's mostly towards non-laboring welfare recipients which is a bit absurd since no one on the island pays for that...the Americans do ).

[makesi]

My experience in debating people in similar arguments to the one described by the OP is that it's better to try and have a set of rhetorical points you can use than to try and pick apart their argument logically or with appeals to studies.

Debating points on how poor people behave, why poor people behave the way they do, why poverty is more prevalent in the black population of the US, etc. are, in my experience, no more than anecdotes and poorly thought-out generalizations. Many of these arguments can be parsed through and shown to be illogical or non sequitir or inconsistent, although doing this is easier said than done and the contradictions aren't always realized by us during the heat of a debate--think treppenwitz.

The guy's--who the OP was debating with--comparison of ghetto culture with crabs in a bucket, all backbiting and pulling each other down is not something that would have impressed me at all. In actual fact, it can be countered with rhetorical (and true) points that poor communities often have many informal social networks of support, that, moreover, the black community in particular is one of the most religiously involved communities in the United States and that their churches are involved in community activities. The need to critique religion is a very secondary thing here, in my opinion, and we have to remember who we are debating with: quite often with individuals espousing more or less reactionary or conservative opinions. The popularity and widespread nature of Christian social thinking in black communities is a nice debating point, I would argue. It's a fact that can be wielded as a rhetorical device in debate to turn the tables on the assertions of there being a supposedly dominant self-destructive ideology within those communities.

Depending on the way the debate is moving and the setting it's in--it can be easier to write out a long and tedious point on the internet than to try and wedge one in to a conversation/shouting match--you can try and make more substantive arguments. The answer to that guy's crab comparison that I would try and give is an exposition--without necessarily using the Marxist jargon--of Marxist class theory and a critique of individual-centered and/or culturalist understandings of class mobility and class behavior.

Or....I might just scream at the person and tell them they're a waste of humanity and that they deserve to be put in front of a firing squad.

[Il Medico]

As for "ghetto culture" it is the same everywhere. It is capitalist culture. While the upper class has access to the traditional means of capitalist success, the lower classes don't have that luxury. There is little difference between a thug who kills another thug to protect his turf and a capitalist who undermines another capitalist to gain more profit. The means are different, but the motivation and ends are the same.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Moonshine? Again, I think you're grasping for straws, because most country (and even blue grass) music revolves around family life and love, not moonshining and confederate rebels. Outlaw culture is big - hell I can site the Dukes of Hazard if you want. Smokey and the Bandit. NASCAR comes out of running alcohol across state lines.

Of course, now moonshine isn't big - but meth and growing pot are and I wouldn't be surprised if that starts making it into the culture in the near future.

But my point is that singling out hip-hop for features of rock and folk and yes even country is simply racism from politicians and the media.

[Jimmie Higgins]

As for "ghetto culture" it is the same everywhere. It is capitalist culture. While the upper class has access to the traditional means of capitalist success, the lower classes don't have that luxury. There is little difference between a thug who kills another thug to protect his turf and a capitalist who undermines another capitalist to gain more profit. The means are different, but the motivation and ends are the same.

In a way there is no difference, but really there is a difference: the thug who kills to protect or expand his drug-dealing turf gets demonized by the media and politicians; gets beat up and harrassed by cops and the courts; is made into a scapegoat for crumbling city infrastructure and lack of jobs; and becomes the ideological excuse for expanding the repressive capabilities of the state.

Whereas the imperialist who kills thousands to protect or expand his markets gets to rule the world and make his thuggery "legal" and might even call it "humanitarian" or "expanding democracy" just as one last "fuck you".

Right now there is a big to-do on CNN because there was a big beating in Chicago caught on tape and the media and politicians and cops are furious with the black people in that neigborhood because no one will give them information because of a "no snitching" culture. First of all, most people in poor neighborhoods know you can't trust the cops or courts and most people know that sending someone to jail doesn't do anything for that person or for the safety of the neighborhood. Second, what fucking assholes politicians are to complain about "no snitching" when it's nearly impossible to convince corporate and government wistleblowers to come out against things they've seen that lead to millions of deaths!

No snitching.

[un_person]

They are, largely, correct. But that dog eat dog attitude is a product of capitalism.

People do fucked up things all the time. How can we not? We're surrounded by shit all day, every day, its crammed down our throats. Our lives are shit, how can we be expected not to act shitty?

I think that really hit the nail on the head. I mean living in a capitalist society means that practically from birth on, you're forced fed this shit that to live you have to screw people over before they screw you. I think a large part of it is education. If schools taught real history we would have real role models to look up to, people like Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Bobby Seale. All of who are much better role models than the fat cats that we are taught about like Rockefeller and Morgan.

[RotStern]

Ghetto culture is so stupid along with this stupid "Skater" type thing .
Fucking wannabes!

[makesi]

I'm glad revolt4thewin was banned.

I was thinking about starting a thread about Gramsci and his theory (as I read him) of ideology and its relation to revolutionary activism.

That guy--in my opinion--revealed himself very quickly as a confused individual who thought he could spout his shit out here. I don't think he was a troll, although he may have been, and by that I mean that I think the ideas articulated by people like him are not simply meant as rightwing provocations but they are, unfortunately, a sort of plague that effects the more radical sides of the US political spectrum.

The guy was quite possibly a real POS; with his crude and implicit rightwing bullshit.

[Le Libérer]

I'm glad revolt4thewin was banned.

Posts in this thread made by this user trashed.

[counterblast]

However, the culture in the ghetto EMBRACES this instead of rejecting it. It's glorified and celebrated instead of shunned. A young black man reads a book or uses grammar, and people go "What? Choo tryin' to be white?" They seem to be content with this.

I won't blame music or video games for what goes on, but sometimes, they do exploit it, glorify it, and it's fed back into the culture. And honestly, all it really does is further the stereotype, gets fed back into the culture, in a never ending cycle. Personally, I do beleive that rap and hip hop have done more to promote racism towards the black urban culture than to curb it (How so? Whites are the ones that buy the most hip hop records, the record labels are white, in order to sell the records and "be authentic and the voice of the streets" the image of The Angry Scary Negro is put into perpetual motion, inner city kids see this, and along with other elements of their enviroment, they think that it's OK to act like that or that that's how it should act, lather, rinse, repeat.


There is some truth to what this person is saying. They do the serve the purpose of a alternate culture within (or possibly separate from) the broader culture. They can be immobilizing and alter the reality and perceptions of many of those who exist in their sphere. So can stereotypes.

But this is where the truth to what this person is saying ends.

The truth is; this is not a phenomenon that can be solved by simply working hard & coming out on top. Quite the opposite.

You see the ghetto isn't unique at all. Really, it has a lot in common with the suburbs, in the sense that the suburbs too alter the perceptions those who exist within their sphere.

I don't think this person is racist; I simply think he is unable to realize some of the places where his frustrations arise from; capitalism, racism, social organization, competition.