Sunday, May 26, 2013

More on Nihilism: White Neighbors, Crime, Community, and Black Youth Violence in Memphis

In a casual conversation in what was meant to welcome me to my new city, a white neighbor uncomfortably reminded of me the racial challenges that remain very much intact in the South between white folk and people of color, when he candidly referenced the degree of crime in the city as being the province of the ignorant, uneducated and low income “blacks” in the neighborhood. 
No code words were necessary. He expressed concern regarding the racial “other” moving into the white-dominated communities, causing a shifting of geography (white flight) within the city and surrounding areas of Memphis. (Amazingly, he openly discussed these issues with me, as he conveyed that I was an “exception” to other blacks he encounters on a day-to-day basis.)
Dr. Darron Smith, writing over at the Grio, has a nice piece on race and crime as experienced in Memphis, Tennessee that is worth reading.

I appreciate the sincerity of his argument and concerns about black youth violence.

Inspired by Cornel West's essay some years ago, I have written about the problem of black nihilism and its toxic impact on young people several times. I am no closer to a solution or any particularly brilliant insight on the matter.

Perhaps, there is no easy answer to a problem that was centuries in the making. However, I have come to one qualifier in my thinking on these matters: the nihilism of the ghetto youthocracy and their Chief Keef heroes that kill dozens (if not hundreds) of other black people every week across the country are a symptom of a larger crisis in American cultural values.

The United States has one of the highest rates of inter-personal violence in the world. Americans worship the gun and donate their children to its cult of death. The United States is an imperialist power that kills abroad at will. The United States is a society typified by consumerism, media spectacle, Facebook narcissism, a reality TV show culture that promises that anyone can be famous for doing nothing, and gross wealth and wage inequality. Together those elements (and others) have created a national crisis of meaning wherein human life is equated with ability to buy things and hurt others without consequence.

The nihilism of many black ghetto underclass youth is a function of a debased type of biopolitics that reflects the values of the neo liberal national security corporate democratic surveillance State.

A question. How do we take the macro-level and institutional analysis of these dynamics as described by Darron below and apply it to actionable interventions on the day-to-day?
Memphis is ranked as the tenth deadliest city in the nation. Since I arrived here, not a week has gone by when a young black male under the age of 25 has not been injured or killed as a result of interpersonal conflict within predominately black spaces and, subsequently, reported on the nightly news. The face of crime is young, black and male, and those young men are typecast as angry, overly violent, aggressive and a general menace to society. 
That image pervades our thinking, informing our manufactured understanding that all black men are to be feared and are, thus, potential suspects in a police lineup. Inequality in society makes crime more likely as populations must find ways to cope with despair. Having few socially acceptable coping skills, black men often lash out, defending what little they may possess in the form of manhood and pride.
What my neighbor failed to realize, like most white Americans, is that these circumstances are realities that create the conditions that give rise to crime and deviance and can fuel society’s perceptions of crime that lead to unjust characterizations.
I am left confused and spent by these conversations about how institutions intersect with personal behavior and choices. My response is as follows: all of what Dr. Smith may have written here is true. But, so what?

And where do we go from here?

41 comments:

Joyce M said...

This is the true face of violent crime in our country http://pysih.com/
Often when a black person sees another black person in the news for a violent crime, they think it is a reflection on themselves because racism has taught us to strongly identify with each other. Although white criminals are in the media, we don't feel it personally, so their appearance on TV or in the newspaper doesn't linger in our minds. There are a lot of white on white crimes that happen outside metropolitan areas, so we don't usually hear about those crimes either. Many so called natural deaths, accidents, disappearances and suicides among whites are just well planned and executed murders or lax police investigations.

When a white youth does something wrong, he is sentenced to rehab, released to his parents, sent to bootcamp, given deferred adjudication or any break the criminal justice system can give him or her. For black youths, it's straight to Grey Rock University.

The author of "Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish Mob", pointed out that there were murderous gang wars and even car bombings that the media did not report. Here's an example:" Daniel John Patrick "Danny" Greene (November 14, 1933 – October 6, 1977) was an Irish American mobster and associate of Cleveland mobster John Nardi during the gang war for the city's criminal operations during the 1970s. Competing gangsters set off more than 35 bombs, most attached to cars in murder attempts, many successful." Now, the news didn't reach us until Mr. Greene himself was killed by a car bomb. There are many more examples.

When I was a girl, many, many moons ago...the safest place for a black person was in a black neighborhood. But, we had sober, caring, disciplined adults to guide us and give us pride. Our fathers were our protectors and providers--not the drug gang. And we had space. Psychologist have know for decades the negative affects of crowding. https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/5597/V71N02_065.p?sequence=1

As for the statistics, can we really trust them? When I worked in a cancer center, I saw the recordings of deaths due to AIDS. White people were recorded as dying from pneumonia, while blacks and Hispanics were recorded as dying from AIDS. Example: Liberace died of pneumonia caused by AIDS on February 4, 1987, age 67, at his winter home in Palm Springs, California. The cause of death differs from those—anemia, emphysema, and heart disease—attested to by Liberace's doctor on the death certificate. The Riverside County coroner who conducted the autopsy stated that there had been a deliberate attempt to hide the actual cause of death. I remember the police forcing the hearse to come back, so an autopsy could be performed.

For some perspective on who is capable of being a killer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Dza3PplU4

chauncey devega said...

Compounded systemic inequality aided and supported by racial micro-aggressions. That stuff on aids is one more example of class, race, and medical apartheid.

Cavoyo said...

Have you heard of "More Shit Chief Keef Don't Like?" It seems like something you'd be interested in: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/More-Shit-Chief-Keef-Dont-Like

chauncey devega said...

Cool. Will seek it out!

Ben Grim said...

They need Jesus. There are things that can be done on the local level, but the effects they can have are minimal relative to the immensity of the problem that envelops the nation. I have found that the churches in gang infested neighborhood acts as a kind of antidote to black youth nihilism; providing wholesome community activities and a center around which upstanding members of blighted communities converge regularly and examples of social decency. The youth in these enclaves, the children, are often pretty great kids. They don't start out bad. But as they grow they are in danger of being swallowed by street. Gang culture. When that happens, it's all about survival. Especially for young people.

The most effective thing we can do as citizens of this nation is attack the engine that drives the criminalization of black youth. The police are eager to jail black men and funnel them into the prison industrial complex. This is where the primary focus of are efforts need to be directed. The engine that drives this is the war on drugs, which is really a war on black people, with young black men at the center of the target. Ending the War on Black People -I mean, the War on Drugs- would cut the legs out from under the beast. And don't think that the people who inaugurated that war didn't know what the consequences would be. A conspiracy fact.

CNu said...

Blacks are 12.2% of the population. Minus 1/2 for females= 6.1%. Subtract the old and young and around 3% of the population (black males) commit 70% of all violent crime and the majority of murders. Blacks
commit murder around 9,000 times a year and 96% of the victims are other blacks.

The black police chief in Kansas City has a list of 396 top perpetrators and a couple of weeks ago, 50 or so were rounded up http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2013/atf_operation.html


But why squander all those resources? An unceremonious double-tap would solve the problem once, and for all, and save everybody a whole lot of money and aggravation....,

Ben Grim said...

"They need fathers and unselfish mothers."


They need a time machine so they can go back and choose to be born to such.

CNu said...

That takes too long Joyce and one day in any urban public high school is probably sufficient to disabuse even the most soft-hearted concerning the prospects for successfully teaching those who don't want to learn, and who are unhappy with the prospect of anyone else learning either.


Nope, take the pragmatic decision, and in less than 24 hours, stack'em up like cordwood and let the flies swarm as an object lesson to any ineducable who even imagines that they want to go out like that.

CNu said...

Time's up machine for cost effective retroactive abortions....,

Ben Grim said...

They already got them, as the statistics you site indicate. They ain't born bad. They're made bad. The problem, again, is in the system that creates them. Until we change that, we ain't changing nothin'. I know how it is with you Murkins. But contrary to the thinking of the Obama's of this world, you can't kill your way out of every problem you face.

Joyce M said...

Are you a teacher or coach? My sister-in-law is a teacher and tutor. My brother is a junior high school coach, who previously worked in a school for those who were expelled from other schools. There are a lot of immigrants and children displaced by Katrina in their school. Both my brother and his wife love their jobs.

My daughter has received several game consoles as gifts. I saw how they distracted her from her education and did away with them. I replaced them with an extensive library of books, movies, including many classics, a piano and art supplies.

I don't know how old you are or where you live, but even under Jim Crow, my dad moved his family into a home with a job as a truck driver, a GI loan and the savings bonds he had collected over the years. My dad had to take a literacy test to vote, until our white neighbors asked him to carpool with them to the polls and they threatened a lawsuit, if the poll worker insisted my dad be tested before he could vote. No matter what, he never abandoned his family and even raised other children, who didn't have fathers.

Joyce M said...

Children are born every day. If we ignore what has worked in the past, then we doom future generations.

Joyce M said...

Politicians didn't raise my daughter, her family did. I chose to spend my space time with my daughter instead of running the streets and jumping from one man's bed to another. I chose to provide my child with wholesome home cooked meals,so she would not suffer the negative effects of vitamin and mineral deficiency. I chose to buy books and documentaries for my child. And I chose to make sure I knew where my daughter was and who she was with. I chose not to use street drugs and prescribed opiates as an example to my daughter. Politicians can't make a person a better mother or father--that's the family's job.

There are three ways out of poverty--family, hard work and education. It is never too late to teach those values.

The Justice department's recent efforts have lowered the murder rate in many urban areas. We always hear about the supposedly 25% of black males that enter the criminal justice system, but never about the 75% that don't. In my area and by my observations, most security guards are black male--so I guess black people aren't born to steal after all. We need to give more attention to the kids that are staying out of trouble. They are "silent, unheralded majority".

Ben Grim said...

We doom future generations by ignoring malevolent social engineering.

Joyce M said...

Are you also going to decriminalize child neglect, child abuse, felony non-support, prostitution, pimping, burglary, theft, robbery, assault and murder...since they are closely tied to drug abuse? The malevolent social engineering is the widespread introduction of street drugs and synthetic opiates into society.
Before, white people started being arrested for illegal drug distribution, the cry was "Death penalty for drug dealers!" Now with the meth and heroin use and distribution by whites, we suddenly hear "End the war on drugs!" There's even a movement to force companies to hire drug felons. This more about white addicts escaping the same punishment blacks faced in the past. I love to go shopping and see all the young, felony free black youth at work. When the white kid can't pass a drug test, it's time to stop the war on drugs. I'm not fooled.

Ben Grim said...

Are you also going to decriminalize child neglect, child abuse, felony non-support, prostitution, pimping, burglary, theft, robbery, assault and murder...



Nope. Just Drugs. That will have a positive effect on all of the other things you mentioned, removing much of the motivation for most of those things..

CNu said...

The problem, again, is in the system that creates them. Until we change that, we ain't changing nothin


This looking and blaming outside exemplifies the cowardly, dishonest sellout. Their system will not be changed until and unless it is defeated and broken. Our response to their system, on the other hand, is within our means to control. Their system was formerly far more hellish than it is today. My parents and grandparents overcame those adversarial threats and barriers - and for all practical purposes - these no longer exist anymore.


OTOH, there is a multigenerational threat/risk in our own midst and borne of three generations of continual selfish infantilism and incompetence which not only compromises and threatens the present, but which also threatens the future. Plainly and simply, it's time for black folk to stop blaming others and to begin taking out its own insufferable trash.


Everything else is merely conversation...,

CNu said...

And we need to focus some hard, cold, and permanent truth on the ineducable morons messing it up for everybody else, instead of impotently whining about racism, and identifying with trash from which every single one of these crying nincompoops would personally run, quick, fast, and in a hurry.


I value and respect your parental investment Joyce M. That's the whole and entire shooting match right thurr. All this other gum-whooping and jaw-jacking about coulda, woulda, shoulda for somebody else's unwanted bastich is a waste of space and an insult to common sense.

Ben Grim said...

Everything else and what you just said too is merely conversation. Outside of the hellfire option, what else you got?

Ben Grim said...

"My parents and grandparents overcame those adversarial threats and barriers"

Oh dey wuz gret an wunnerfull people, but we don't have grandma enny mo...So shove the nostalgia and play the cards you've been dealt.

CNu said...

lol, you obviously fail to appreciate what economic contraction, austerity, sequestration entails..., http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/senate-agriculture-committee-food-stamps-discrimination

NOBODY is going to support this inexcusable societal burden.

CNu said...

Playin'm even as we text. Or didn't you realize that my daily transgressions against a cornucopian "safe spaces" fantasy gradually push the envelope of permitted discourse back to the good old days of simple bounty, bounty hunting, and hanging useless eaters high?


Incrementally bending the parameters of permitted discourse is the first step toward bending the parameters of permitted direct action.



What you're fantasizing about, OTOH, not.so.much....,

Ben Grim said...

Yeh, but I know the ravings of a Neanderthal when I hear it. When the only tool you got is a gun you tend to think it's the answer to everything.

CNu said...

lol, evidently not, given that the Neanderthal were eaten alive by your pasty, conspecific killer-ape cousins - see - Neanderthal were a peaceful, nocturnal, and communal sort without benefit of all the intensive mirror neuronal modeling available to the upstart bipedal hominids. Murderous deceiver apes had it all over the big browed ancients, much as this clampdown will have it all over the parental throwaways over which you pretend such sanctimonious and disingenuous concern.

chauncey devega said...

I get the Malthusian tendencies. But, please watch the Eliminationist rhetoric.

chauncey devega said...

See my comment below.

chauncey devega said...

Too many churches, especially with that prosperity mess and having the minister be a new age pimp from your tithing when you can't even pay your rent on time.


But, you are right in terms of social capital and institutions that help to improve the quality of life in a community and provide resources. Black churches may not be part of that solution.


Yes, we need to reform the criminal justice system. We also need to realize that Patrick Moynihan was largely correct. We also need to break the cycle of out of wedlock births and the mess that results from inter-generational poverty from a lack of jobs in these communities.


In a perfect world there would be a Marshal Plan for poor urban and rural communities. Ain't gonna happen. But, we can practice cooperative economics and stop giving away 95 percent of our income to the Nike, Ipod, Beats by Dre, hair salons, and car leasing man. Poor black people subsidize whole industries in this country and are among the poorest people.


Black women need to teach young black girls about proper womanhood and self-respect. Black men need to do this with our young boys. Now, if grandma is 30 and dad is a career criminal we are already in big trouble at jump street.


We also need black men and others to step up and to patrol the streets in order to deal with the socially deviant element that has run amok. Our Latino brothers are doing this in Cali, there is no reason we can't either.

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CNu said...

The Black community's loss of its managerial and professional
demographic in the wake of selective housing and economic integration -
has resulted in a concentration of social pathologies now used to
stigmatize all Black folks. Black managerial and professional class folk left that hood a long time ago and so of course, none of what you've proposed above is going to happen.

The deviant parasitism presently afflicting the selfsame hood that you've thumbnail sketched both outlines the source of the hood's incurable heritable pathologies - as well as - points to the only possible cure for the same. http://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q

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Ben Grim said...

Right you are. I should never have insulted them by identifying them with you. My concerns are completely selfish. Nigger killers and drone operators are notoriously indiscriminate in their targeting. I don't won't to be collateral damage.

CNu said...

Staymad three sheets into his Schlitz Malt liquor now and just publicly venting random associations....,

Ben Grim said...

lol, u got me der

Joyce M said...

In our county hospitals, Latino volunteers go to the fathers and have them sign orders of paternity. If you are not married, at least get an order of paternity, so your child will have a link to it's father. We can wash and condition our own hair. When I refused to straighten me or my daughters hair, I was mocked by the same women who now wear their own natural hair. They were tired of the expense and the hair loss. If most women would delay child-bearing until age 22, we would all be better off.

Joyce M said...

I have a neighbor, former scientist and teacher, who was married to a multi-millionaire. She started abusing prescription drugs. She has lost everything, including her children--all honor students. She even spent time living in her car. The money she took from her pension plan is running out. She has not been arrested by law enforcement, but her life is in shambles.

chauncey devega said...

The invisible poor.

chauncey devega said...

Do watch the language please.

Ben Grim said...

hmmm.... prescription drugs. aren't those legal?

Ben Grim said...

Sorry. I meant nigga killers.

Joyce M said...

They are illegal is you forged the prescription. I have heard law enforcement say the recent heroin addictions all stem from synthetic opiates.

Ben Grim said...

Technically it's not the prescription but the forgery that's illegal.