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In the first paper I talked about the creation of the ghetto and some of its effects on the inhabitants. The former dealt with issues of real-estate lobbying, racially restrictive covenants, blockbusting, and economics. The latter was represented by stigmatization, drug abuse, infant mortality, and nutrition. Near the end was a question on how we go about defining the underclass; are there any distinct ideas or behavior prove within it? My position here is that the underclass does not form a distinct subculture. The underclass exists as a result of indecent alienation from political, economic, and social power centers. The values of the underclass are still the demonstrated values of capitalist culture: material success is to be praised (no matter the cost), every dog for itself, and work or consequences of actions should be laid at someone else’s feet.

Notably one other group within American society is busy acting out this worldview with grand success due to their being at the heart of political, economic, and social power centers. Whereas an enterprising member of the underclass will sell crack, spreading addiction and disease for profit, members of the elite will sell alcohol and all manner of untested dieting pharmaceuticals, spreading addiction and disease for profit. Whereas a desperate man living in the ghetto will rob stores in the neighborhood, thus removing the likelihood that other stores will be opened there, an elite man will overvalue his company’s stocks and rob the retired of their pensions, thus decreasing trust in the market and impoverishing their future consumers. Whereas the underclass will rely upon welfare of various forms to maintain a minimum standard of living, so too will the elites rely on government handouts (corporate welfare) to maintain their lifestyles.

The similarities don’t stop with the behaviors but extend to the attitude of exclusion. The ghetto is a notoriously hostile place for those who don’t look and act the role of the underclass. Ranks are quickly closed when representatives of the power centers, cops or what-not, show up in the neighborhood. Whites are typically seen as invaders. The same attitude of solidarity against “outsider” threats can be seen with corporate elites. Of course, elites have the ability to manipulate the power centers to protect against outsiders, and the underclass doesn’t, they just make easy targets, because they are largely reviled and/or feared by mainstream society. In other words, the underclass follows society’s paradigm, but at a disadvantage and also without the moderating influences of a middle class such as fright of retribution via the justice system and the “let’s manufacture it a shipshape fight” rules that the middle class must use for mobility.

Fear of the underlcass leads us into the topic of the paper, which is an effort to see and know the underclass, not by their actions or attitudes but by their effects on mainstream society. Like black holes, which were first detected by observing the curvature of light in their proximity, we can know the underclass by its effects on mainstream society, how it changes the focus of life and alters the views of people in its proximity. I’ll attempt this by using the two chapter handouts from class.

The point of this exercise is made by the feminist fight against sexism. The main charge for many years, and many books/rallies/speeches, was that sexism is damaging to women. Later, writers and activists began lending more focus to how men were damaged by sexism and its accompanying male stereotype of hard-bodied, cold-hearted breadwinner. The focal tactic is appealing, because men are in the power center per sexism, and they have the ability to enforce more change should they be persuaded. Mainstream society has to grasp how damaging the persistence of the ghetto is to their mental, emotional, and spiritual lives in order to develop the scrape personal and needful of their time and energy, not least in their surveillance of the actions of relevant authorities.

Two communities within Chicago succor as our vehicle. One, known as Beltway, is “farthest from downtown Chicago and the most isolated.”[1] Whites produce up 76 percent of the population while immigrant groups make up most of the rest. Also, over 60 percent of residents in Beltway have owned their home for more than five years. Beltway is, in at least this sense, an end community instead of a transitional one. For instance, the growing immigrant population is “majority…second- or third-generation…more affluent and better educated,” not recent immigrants.[2]

The other community, known as Groveland, was predominantly white until a “large in-migration of African Americans…halfway through the 1960s.”[3] The blacks who moved into Groveland, and now construct up 99 percent of its population, were of the upper class, well educated with a low poverty rate relative to the former white homeowners. People in both communities are involved in living out the American Dream by being active and activating the community, by creating homes they enjoy, and by creating families within a stable community context. Both communities are also acting out a fear that this stability could be short-lived. Many of their words and actions prove a preoccupation with preventing invasion by the underclass, or those from the ghetto, and the upset of the community lifestyle that would follow. The very existence of the ghetto then engenders a dog eat dog mentality, and defensive stance against “outsiders” often cloaked in offensive posturing found in the ghetto, in communities outside of it.

Beltway is seen as “the last stand” by many of its white inhabitants who had already experienced multiple neighborhoods, which underwent racial turnover.[4] They have had to disappear several times and now find themselves at the edge of the city. As a result of city-workers being confined to residence in the city by law, property values in the “last stand” neighborhood are “soaring.”[5] Also the residents make links between, not just those known to be former ghetto residents, but all people of color and the fate of the ghetto, “growing crime rates and social disorganization, along with declining social institutions and property values.”[6] Because of this linkage, residents view the potential turnover of a neighborhood to ghetto spot as “racial battles,” when they are more like class battles between the real estate industry and everyone else.[7] Since local genuine estate actors actually belong to the same class and race of the white homeowners, for the most part, they are not singled out as an Other at whose doorstep the problems of the city can be laid. On the other hand, “the time when jobs were plentiful and neighborhoods seemed safer” can be attributed to black gains during the Civil rights era.[8] This underscores a widespread ignorance, as blacks who actually have power and resources work to protect those by bettering their residential area, not by inciting or participating in crime or drug addiction or lower property values in their bear neighborhoods.

A look at the ignorance inherent wouldn’t be complete without invective. “We’re paying to back all the fucking niggers and minorities,” “let’s start helping…our own people first,” and “gang crime is crawling into these neighborhoods so slowly that it is insidious.”[9] Now this last is very curious, because it shows that the spurious link being created by all people of color and conditions in the ghetto has now transcended the color line. Young people, typified in the person of Eric McLure, a boy scout, are seen as the tendrils of gang activity stretching into the white bastion and persecuted for their supposed roles.

At a community meeting, 10 year conventional Eric was introduced as a good kid who had been busy cleaning up graffiti. After a short introduction little Eric is set upon by adults, including a police officer and committee members, who go to link him to gang activity and thus the underclass. The ridiculousness of this behavior by adults can only be understood by the dynamics of fear and control. Watching racism, and a genuine desire to have a stable neighborhood, turn to ageism is an uncouth example of how the very presence of the underclass and high-density ghettos distorts white, middle-class perceptions of the world. Fear creates a worldview in which one group, the In group, must protect itself from the other group, the Others. We witness with Eric, a member of the In group being alienated and made an Other due to overriding, irrational anxiety.[10]

And the implications for such fearful behavior are a misunderstanding of roles, such as the parent-child relationship. “I ask them to do one thing and that’s to follow me blindly.”[11] We also find irrational responses to threats such as “advocat[ing] severe physical punishments for delinquents, such as the use of rubber hoses and other riot gear,” which would serve to undermine youth trust in adult institutions and further alienate the very people a neighborhood needs for any kind of long-term survival.

Neighborhood loyalty in order to promote stability is a laudable goal, and the means Beltway residents have utilized can be viewed quite positively. Neighborhood organizations, and the creation of strong ties to authorities outside the neighborhood, are very powerful needed in an alienated society like ours and can be used to accomplish many good things, like resisting the motive force and destructive capability of capital. However, like any human institution, they can be twisted to serve purposes that will not contemplate or react to true world conditions, and they can be self-defeating as in the examples above.

Ultimately, should the fear of ghetto-infiltration continue unabated, then whites will move out irrespective of the location on the ground. Already “the latest census figures suggest that [those trying to keep the community white] are gradually losing the battle.”[12] This means that with the incoming, working-class Latino’s increasing numbers, the neighborhood could maintain its stability by a racial, and not classist, handover as happened with Groveland. It will be bewitching to see how fast, or if, the white homeowners continue to leave Beltway.

Groveland does not have a lot of the problems of Beltway, stemming in one way from the fact that they do not make a priori associations between being black and being a destabilizing influence. The community actively dissuades this misperception by adorning itself with positive “symbols of black identity,” from the local Catholic church and private businesses to public spaces like parks and libraries.[13] The upkeep of black-owned homes, and beautifying of the yards, has been institutionalized by the block clubs as a means of furthering these positive stereotypes. The certain identifications of what it meant to be black were not followed by corresponding denigrations of what it meant to be white, one reason being, because blacks in Groveland spent “less of their lives in predominantly white society” and “experienced fewer…racial indignities and less outright prejudice.”[14]

Groveland residents mild shared the fear of being invaded by the lower class however, and not without cause, though we’ll get to the underlying assumption soon. The unemployment rate rose “from 4 to 12 percent from 1970 to 1990,” and the poverty rate went “from 5 to 12 percent” over the same time, although it had dropped by 2000 to 8 percent.[15] As our authors make clear, these statistics were not the basis for the fears, rather talk was of gangs and drugs, single-parent households and renters. They were making associations between low-income and destabilization, where the association is truly one of the underclass, created and maintained by extreme alienation from power centers, and neighborhood destabilization.

What makes Groveland most unique from Beltway is not its black majority, though the lessening of racial tension is certainly offering a difference in community priorities. Groveland, unlike Beltway, is not isolated, and it “abuts inner-city ghettos.”[16] Fears of youth adopting destabilizing values, probably as a result of rebellion, are real and so is the threat. The threat of ghetto invasion, in the form of drugs and gangs, is made palpable by their existence in close quarters with the community. Groveland’s response, and the absence of directing their energies at people who do not offer a threat, means that residents of Groveland will act to avoid the “possibility of unwanted changes,” instead of reacting as if the possibility were an inevitability. They won’t leave and this will help the community remain stable. A major inequity can be seen here between Beltway and Groveland. The children of Beltway residents are mostly white, and they have many options of living quarters outside the neighborhood yet still in proximity to the city. Groveland children, because of their skin color, cannot be said to have the same advantages and will be more likely to remain.

The two communities are similar in that they are both living in a city with the reality of the ghetto. This promotes privilege and efforts to maintain that privilege. When faced with the alternative, having to move because your neighborhood is now rotund of dope-fiends and gangsters, this is a common response and not to be abhorred. Unfortunately it saps the energy and puts the focus on keeping the ghetto out which will, in the end, only serve to strengthen the barriers of the ghetto, not least in granting them justification by tradition. The fight for stability becomes a never-ending fight, as long as the ghetto remains a fixture in society. What we might expect from an enlightened populace, always a rare thing, is an understanding that the existence of the ghetto, not the existence of bad or black or young people, is the pleasurable target for those wishing to preserve stable neighborhoods relatively free of crippling poverty and lack of options for dinner and drug addiction.

Now for my fun tangent: Massy and Denton make the argument that for the ghetto to be dismantled would require “federal authorities, backed by the American people, [to] become directly involved in guaranteeing open housing markets and eliminating discrimination from public life.”[17] Unfortunately the impetus for such backing remains in limited communities who are otherwise occupied in struggles of their own to defend stability in their own neighborhoods. The nature of the ghetto is “an institutional tool for isolating the by-products of racial oppression,” and it has done this well for a long time.[18] More urbanization could lead to greater exposure to the ghetto by white America, although this is no reason to query more white Americans would view the ghetto any differently than the ones in Beltway. More likely is another scenario I’m going to propose.

Increased use of fossil fuels in our society can be correlated with increased trade (via NAFTA and other agreements allowing cross-border manufacture and global movements of goods), the movement of factories from cities, and the movement of business away from consumers in general. Assuming a midline, plateau scenario for fossil fuel production, the global market will face constrictions within the next decade.[19] This practically means more and more businesses moving back into proximity of their immediate consumers and workers. It also means an increase in human labor with the decrease in fossil fuel “labor.”

With America’s attention diverted to an increasing number of global and domestic conflicts over ownership of oil resources, the ghetto will continue as it has.[20] However economic changes enforced by lack of cheap petrol, assuming the plateau scenario, will allow time for capital reorganization so that endeavors like food and clothing production become embedded in the community, or the community will be forced to suffer and eventually leave. Since the middle class whites now reside, in tall portion, outside of the cities, then that is where the business will be. Those blacks located in the ghetto are going to face not only continued isolation but even a break-down of the minimal service they have received from the federal and state governments thus far. A dangerous situation then faces those communities which are in close proximity to the ghetto, because desperate people have a tendency to grasp at whatever hope they can catch. This particular hope will be in the invent of resources from these nearby, better-off communities.

An attractive alternative involves the investment of federal resources now to encourage residents of the ghetto to grow their believe food and learn vital skills, which would likely prevent much racial violence and better their internal economies now. As this occurs another measure must be taken to prevent the real estate industry from capitalizing on higher property values as a result of the improvements. The value of such an approach is that it’s inexpensive, it doesn’t require challenging directly the assumptions Americans hold about blacks or low-income folks, covered by the media properly it would challenge the false assumptions, and it wouldn’t require government agencies like HUD to change their policies. Many hurdles are immediately bypassed. The problem will be finding the right people to do the job.[21] The right person will be able to convincingly communicate the need to the residents for their involvement, the potential costs and the potential rewards. Also it may be well-known to establish cooperation or at least an opinion with the local gangs. This would be hard for a government stiff to accomplish, but an obsolete hippy might have a better chance.

Privately-funded grants are already available for schools to set up educational gardening programs, though they are limited and consist of Home Depot shopping cards and money from the National Gardening Association.[22] It shouldn’t be back-breaking work to make a few million available to schools serving inner-city populations via the federal government.[23] The grants could be low-profile and administered by the Department of Education which would remove certain contrary agribusiness and real estate interests. The goal would be to make gardening more appealing and an actual possibility for adults in the area. Cities can actively participate by buying and setting aside vacant lots in the inner city, conducting soil toxicity tests, and making this land available to the community. Projects of this kind can be sold in any number of ways, but for our purposes they will relieve racial tensions, as we experience what will sometimes be drastic reorganizations of the global economy.

[1] Wilson, 14.

[2] Ibid, 17.

[3] Ibid, 130.

[4] Ibid, 19.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 20.

[7] Ibid, 21.

[8] Ibid, 23.

[9] Ibid, 38.

[10] Eric’s story can be found on page 41-42.

[11] Ibid, 44.

[12] Ibid, 46.

[13] Ibid, 135.

[14] 144.

[15] 156.

[16] 157.

[17] Massey, 218.

[18] Ibid, 217.

[19] “What is the future for World Oil Production? ” http://www.oilscenarios.info/

[20] This will be complicated by another issue, that of the explosion of the suburban lifestyle which is discussed in a book review by James Howard Kunstler at http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/45418/

The topic of how the changes experienced by suburban residents will affect the ghetto is a much longer one than this paper can handle. I haven’t found any analysis of this type.

[21] Of interest is one internet survey which identified several long-term urban agriculturalists and recorded their responses to various questions. Check it out here: http://www.cityfarmer.org/surveyresults.html

[22] Several grants can be found at http://www.kidsgardening.com/grants.asp

[23] Some grants are also available from the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council and the America the Beautiful Fund. http://www.america-the-beautiful.org/