[photo by Heather Charles/The Star]
Tag: ghetto culture
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The failure of Section 8 housing
Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting post about the Failure of Section 8 Housing. I wrote a comment as well.
[Here’s a linkto the Atlanticarticle that started this discussion.]
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The Beautiful Struggle
Two nights ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates The Beautiful Struggle: A father, two sons, and an unlikely road to manhood (Spiegel and Grau). It’s about a man, a black man, growing up in Baltimore. Despite the horribly sappy title, it’s neither horrible nor sappy. In fact, it’s quite good and is written with a very strong 1st-person voice.
If you think “The Wire” is hard to understand at times, you’ll have to read parts of Coates’s book very slowly. He uses Baltimore slang like it’s straight from Noah Webster’s mouth. But the style of speech adds a lot to the book. And overall it’s a good quick read.
I’m not a huge fan of memoirs because they often lack a point. So I tried to figure out a point to this book. It seems to me that the main problem that leads to so much bad in places like West Baltimore begins with young kids getting jumped by other kids while walking to and from school.
This made me think of Geoffrey Canada’s Fist Stick Knife Gun. I read Canada’s book over 10 years ago and don’t remember it that well. But I think he talks about and identifies the same problem.
At first, these aren’t fights, or muggings, or even beefs. They’re just kids banking other kids because they can. It’s about dominance, power, respect, and just for the hell of it because it’s fun.
I’m sure this in oversimplifying things somewhat. But maybe not. You get jumped. You start hanging around others for protection. Things escalate.
So my question is this: In neighborhoods like East and West Baltimore, how can we stop little gangs of little (and not so little) kids from jumping and terrorizing other little kids?
Here’s an excerpt from Coates’s book:
…Painfully I’d come to know that face must be held against everything, that flagrant dishonor follows you, haunting every handshake with all your niggers, disputing every advance on a jenny. Shawn was, at first, true to his better nature, and backed down and held up open hands. But I’d come too far to be gracious. I stuck my finger in his grill—
That’s right. ’Cause you a bitch-ass nigger.
—and walked out.
Nowadays, I cut on the tube and see the dumbfounded looks, when over some minor violation of name and respect, a black boy is found leaking on the street. The anchors shake their heads. The activists give their stupid speeches, praising mythical days when all disputes were handled down at Ray’s Gym. Politicians step up to the mic, claim the young have gone mad, their brains infected, and turned superpredator. Fuck you all who’ve ever spoken foolishly, who’ve opened your mouths like we don’t know what this is. We have read the books you own, the scorecards you keep—done the math and emerged prophetic. We know how we will die—with cousins in double murder suicides, in wars that are mere theory to you, convalescing in hospitals, slowly choked out by angina and cholesterol. We are the walking lowest rung, and all the stands between us and beast, between us and the local zoo, is respect, the respect you take as natural as sugar and shit. We know what we are, that we walk like we are not long for this world, that this world has never longed for us.
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Humanizing the Corner
I just stumbled across “Murder I Wrote” (from a link related to Bradford Pulmer’s blog).
In 1997, David Simon, producer of The Wire (the best TV show ever), wrote in The New Republic how corner boys were recruited for a day to be slinging extras for the TV show Homicide(not the best show ever). The boys complained about how unrealistic it was.
“Damn,” said Manny Man, walking back to his position. “This ain’t gonna look right. People in other cities gonna see this show and think the crews in Baltimore don’t know how to carry it.”
Most of the boys are now dead.
Simon understands that yo-boys may not but model citizens, but they’re living breathing people. I was strangely moved by Simon’s article.
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But that’s my car!
A witness at the trial of the officers who shot Sean Bell testified today. She was a topless dancer at the club. Leaving aside all the real issues, I noticed something most people probably missed from her testimony: this woman is no stranger to crime scenes.
Put yourself in her shoes: You’ve just had a long night dancing, you’re leaving, you’re walking to your car when suddenly you see a man jump out of car and start shooting at another car. You dive behind some bushes, hear 50 shots in total, cars running into things, and no doubt there’s some screaming and yelling.
What would you do? Probably not what Ms. Payne did. According to the Times:
After two or three minutes, she ran back to her car so she could move it before the police arrived, but she was too late, arriving to see paramedics pulling bodies from Mr. Bell’s car.
She’s right, too. If your car is on the wrong side when the crime-scene tape goes up, it’s going to be a long time before you get to move those wheels. If your car happens to have a bullet in it, it’s even worse.
Such is one of the many petty frustrations of living in a high-crime neighborhood.
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Cops 1 – Robber 0
For all the press police-involved shootings get in New York City, there are a lot more shootings in Baltimore if you take the difference in population into account (almost an equal number if you don’t). Baltimore shootings don’t get much press because the city isn’t a media center and Al Sharpton doesn’t live there.
Instead, the local chapter of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (who?) is protesting the latest shooting. I think they should pick their battles a little better.
A man robbed a Burger King (not too far from where I lived) and, while making his getaway, pulled a loaded handgun out at police officers. He got killed. Damn right police shot. But perhaps only in Baltimore do family members of the dead robber wonder why morepolice didn’t shoot.
The full story is here.
Family demands answers in police shootingBy Stephen Kiehl
Baltimore Sun reporter
December 15, 2007The family of a man killed by police last week asked yesterday why it still hasn’t received a written report on the shooting and said it is in the “beginning stages” of filing a complaint with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Relatives of Coby Brown, 23, said they have not received any response from police despite multiple requests for a full accounting of the Dec. 4 shooting in Upper Fells Point. They also question the use of such lethal force.
“We are left wondering what happened, how it happened and if it needed to happen,” said Thomas K. Smith, Brown’s stepfather, during a small rally at the shooting scene. “We want the truth.”
Brown was shot by police after he robbed a Burger King in the 2000 block of Eastern Ave. in Fells Point, police said. Officers on foot patrol gave chase. Another officer pursued in a vehicle. Brown shot at the officers and then stopped in front of a house on Gough Street, police said.
When Brown pointed his gun at Officer Modesto A. Olivio Jr., police said, Olivio shot Brown in the stomach. Brown died the next day at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
“This suspect made a choice when he pointed a loaded handgun at a police officer, and when he makes that choice, the officer is left with no choice,” said police spokesman Sterling Clifford. -
Dog fight
So Michael Vic apologized for dog fighting. I don’t believe him. He likes dog fighting. He’s not the only one. There’s lots of dog fighting in the Eastern District. That’s just the way it is.
Many cops I worked with were very upset at animal mistreatment. One time I answered a call for a pit bull on somebody’s stoop. The dog wasn’t causing any trouble but was quite large and in no mood to leave. He just sat there and took in the scene. One family couldn’t leave their home. From behind the screen door, they had no idea where the dog came from and why it was on their stoop. We stayed very near our car for our protection.
The dog had clear scars on his face from fighting. My partner said, “It’s sad that I feel more for the dog than the people here. . . What did the dog do to deserve this?… I mean, I can rationalize and say that the people choose to live this way. But the dog?”
I don’t feel more for dogs than people. Seeing a lot of human suffering makes me less concerned about animals. In poor neighborhoods and countries, when faced with mistreated people, it bothers me less to see mistreated animals. That’s just the way it is. It would be great if no human or animal had to suffer but in the meantime it’s all about priorities. People matter more.
It shouldn’t be a zero-sum world. It’s not that one tortured dog means one person living better. You should care about all living things. But a lot of things bother me when people are “shocked” about dog fighting. Why aren’t more people shocked about the misery peoplesuffer? I wish that people would take some of the sympathy they have for a suffering dog and transfer it to a suffering person. If you already care about suffering people, than by all means worry about dogs, too.
And why are people so shocked that there is a dog fighting culture? All they would have to do is ask anybody with any connection to the ghetto. But the people who are *shocked* have no connection with the ghetto. And that’s why it bothers me that they pass judgment so quickly and so passionately. They have no clue.
I don’t like dogfighting. But what if I did? I’ve had an urge to breed fighting game cocks (I will resist) ever since I read Alex Haley’s beautiful description of Chicken George in Roots. I mean, that man loved his chickens. And he fought them. That’s why he loved them. It was beautiful. At least in the book.
I’ve been in countries (and states) where chicken fighting is legal. I haven’t seen a cock fight yet. But who am I to judge? I feel like it’s none of my business. Cock fighting, dog fighting, is there a big difference? Yeah they’re both bad. To you and me.
As a cop, I wish there were fewer laws, not more. It’s not right to want to outlaw something just because you don’t like it. A lot of people don’t like that I eat meat. I don’t want them outlawing animal slaughter. The whole point of live and let live is to let people do what they want, even when you don’t like it. Just like free speech only matters when somebody says something offensive.
Some people want to fight dogs. And some dogs want to fight. That’s what they’re raised for. Is it worse than dog racing? Is it worse that factory farming and slaughter? Is it worse than eating meat? The answer to all those is probably yes, but what if I’m wrong? How can I feel smug saying dogfighting is horrible while waving a hamburger for emphasis?
I’m always skeptical of judgmental middle-class America outlawing the recreational choices of poor America. There’s a long history of that. Nine times out of ten, when poor people start getting into something, we make it illegal. Everything from drinking to drugs to gambling to prostitution to kids playing stickball in the street. We love telling poor people what they can’t do. And then we lock them up for doing it.
I saw a lot of messed up dogs in Baltimore (pronounced “dugs,” by the way). And small packs of wild dogs roam the streets at night. The packs actually looked pretty happy and healthy, but it can’t be good for property values.
Here’s a dead dog left in a box on a stoop. Poor dug.
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Pictures
Some of the blight of the Eastern
RIP graffiti:
You can’t outrun a mural.
Pig on pig.
Ladies…
After a cutting.
After being cut.
It could have been me… but it wasn’t! (I blurred their faces)
