Here’s a model that won’t work, and a model that’s ass backwards from jump. (No I won’t argue about it…just like I wouldn’t argue with Submariner about the benefits of Omoxycillin vs. Penicillin.)
So let’s think about a model that does. If we aren’t willing to consider something really radical–like legalizing drugs–then I think we need to think about ways to generate peace amongst warring gangs. Errol Henderson out of Penn State has done some interesting practical and theoretical work on negotiating gang treaties that are similar to those negotiated between warring states.
We also need to think about alternatives to punishment. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have unfortunately provided the template for the draconian drug sentencing laws that have become the norm, but for those convicted of non-violent crimes we should have another option. Perhaps one working to rebuild communities, or repurposing abandoned warehouses, something that helps make our living spaces better places to live, rather than serving as phone operators for ATT for pennies.
I’m particularly interested in ideas that are practical and scalable. Remember we are talking about neighborhoods…but when we start thinking about 10,000 volunteers we are really talking about CITIES.
(Edited to add: I included a PDF of Dr. Errol Henderson’s work on intergang violence and interstate norms of reducing conflict because it bears reading.)
I’ll have to think about this one for a few days.
I believe your challenge asks us to make two very important assumptions. At a minimum, I think you’re asking us to assume that a practical and scalable pro-Black model that wouldn’t involve the legalization of drugs 1) could significantly improve Black social circumstances and 2) could be viable.
I think I’ll add another assumption to those two while I reflect on your challenge, just to make it even tougher on myself. I’ll assume interest convergence, a la Derrick Bell, with the institutions/groups that would have enough power to block a successful implementation of a pro-Black model, will also need to be a necessary attribute of a socially profitable and viable pro-Black model. Yet I’m not convinced that the interest convergence assumption won’t limit my model parameters to such an extent as to render it politically and economically insignificant (causing my model to fail the “significantly improve” test), even if the model would be viable.
As I begin to think about this, I think back to my old neighborhood. There are several things that come to mind.
My natural inclination, first of all, is to say ‘bomb the ghetto’. That is because, of all the theories about racism that get tossed around, the only one that I really believe is that by Massey & Denton and supported by Loury: the ghetto is not an accident. It is the prison camp of the Jim Crow world, and it replicates its ghetto mentality generation after generation to the detriment of the people who live there, the cities it blights and the nation that built and tolerates it.
Therefore my solutions have always been disinvestment. Drop squad. Affirmative Action. Find a way out. Everybody says the hot ghetto mess is a legacy of slavery. You wouldn’t ask slaves to stay and try to reform the plantation – not when the whole North is there, so why ask those trapped in ghetto to reform it?
But now I must accept the social and political reality that there are people who are totally invested in the ghetto, not least among which are the residents. Advocates for the residents have set up permanent shop in the permanent ghetto and will not change that orientation. I know, I’ve been answering the same demands of the GOP for years. So we are a nation that tolerates ghettos, get used to it.
So from my perspective, the entire scope of this question is, how do we make the tolerable, less odious? Disinvestors need not apply. With all that qualification, ironically enough, the paradigm that comes to mind is Midnight Basketball. Embrace and extend the public institutions that already exist. Make what people get for free already, mean more. I have in mind the recent DVD ‘Pride’. Make schools, libraries, hospitals, police stations, parks, playgrounds, bus stops… all public amenities into something more. That’s the institutional level.
At the personal level, marking. Nobody respects a sucker. The point therefore is not to be a sucker. When gangs came into the neighborhood, and in particular one gangster, my father had to stand up to him. I don’t know what he did, but he did something. My guess was what makes sense to me. He marked us as his own. These kids are mine, mess with them, you mess with me. It’s the old theory about the car with the unlocked doors gets stolen. The house with the uncut lawn gets robbed. The kid that walks alone to school gets jacked. People have to get marked into a ‘good gang’. I think that starts at church, and I think of fearless old women…
I will say of marking, that it has a certain righteousness. That’s not necessarily conflict resolution. It’s more, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. However, it’s practical, and for people who aren’t ready to collaborate with the men in blue, it’s the real alternative. Negotiating rules of engagement and escalation is the tough part, but you still have to deal with the way in which this ossifies the power of gangs. I think people in the ghetto, and ultimately the cops too, have to accept the permanence of gangs if they ever begin to negotiate. The problem there is that black gangs don’t seem to be able to do what other ethnic gangs did which is convert their patronage into any legitimate ongoing concerns. Then again that’s because the black ghetto is less cohesive – blacks are much more mobile in society now than the irish were then.
Perhaps a place to start is with Jim Brown and the success he had with the bros. in Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens, a couple of notorious projects in LA. The gang members said they felt respected by Jim.
It’s not because the Black ghetto is any less cohesive, it’s because the prerogative or franchise of extra-legal contract enforcement (which is essentially what organized crime does) has never been extended to Black criminals. I also suspect it’s because there are fewer truly monstrous and accomplished serial killers at the disposal of Black gangs.
How you elect to account for that fact is up to you. Negro conservatives will account for it one way, and regressives (a more apt term for passive receptive element begging or protesting for additional public largesse that will not be forthcoming) will account for it another way. Bottom-line, the hierarchical command and control system has failed to establish itself among Black gangsters and they remain stuck in disorganized, petty limbo.
I think both of you should read the PDF I attached to the post.
And as an aside I actually believe, along with Submariner, that legalization would end most of this stuff. The significant rise in homicides in Baltimore and probably Philly are drug killings pure and simple. The drug trade in Baltimore is widely dispersed among several “mom and pop” shops. Land determines the value of these shops, and there isn’t enough of it to go around. In the absence of treaties or feudal lords, the shops will settle their conflicts through violence.
anarcho-libertarian co-signage all around.
but even before I open that pdf the following quick brainfart….the seemingly irrational and clearly disparately impacting prohibition remains the political legislated morality 3rd rail because those billions and billions of dollars are too crucial to the mainstream metaeconomy.
The prohibition is not going to end, as surely as public organizational competency and additional public largesse is not going to increase.
wtf gentlemen? y’all didn’t add Katrina, bridge collapses, metropolitan grid failures and other symptoms of generalized economic shrinkage and collapse to your baseline calculus?
on to the pdf….,
Hell no….but not because they aren’t pertinent.
well?
it’s that baseline that makes me furiously hostile toward what I’ve now termed the “passive receptive” expectation that protesting or demanding improved public services is going to make those services improve!!!
That ish is every bit as stupid, and possibly even more in consideration of the redefined baseline(s) as the incessant negro conservative tirades about upgrading personal morality and stopping out of wedlock births.
Operationally, you manage accessible real world conditions on the ground to mitigate risk. crying about “woulda, shoulda, or coulda” is just.plain.useless and onlhy one thing pisses me off more than uselessness, and that’s pompous, self-righteous uselessness….,
now I gotta go read that pdf.
read it…, not happy.
The road not taken right up front in that paper is why it’s 8 years old and hasn’t been implemented. that paper’s proposals do not reflect the historical example of how prior american ethnic gangs obtained “legitimacy”.
Instead of tamping down the territorial anarchy, why not instead focus on evolving the structures to corporate levels of commercial viability with associated standardized governance?
That way, these gangs become established cogs, as opposed to complete expendables in the metaeconomy with all the prerogatives that that status entails.
In order to become corporate, these non-state actors have to come to terms with the communities in which they’re embedded and adhere to community standards. Not killing civilians and not being toxic in the community in which you operate are HUGE elements of this further evolved organization
Militant assimilation and accomodationist assimilation come full round to meet one another in the middle.
My launching point had nothing whatsoever to do with empowering gangs or hoping for pie-in-the-sky by-and-by from the police. It was focused narrowly and specifically on upgrading the power of folks in neighborhoods to impose standards and norms from competing organizations, gangs/popo/other – and politically enforce compliance with the same. The Only Thing Power Respects is power. Powerlessness OTOH – seems only capable of respecting and submitting to the power of another, even when those powerless elements begin from wildly divergent starting points.
It’s a singularly pathetic day in cakeland today….,
I’m still thinking about this challenge. I fear any model I might suggest at this point would be your standard, sophomoric, blogger b.s.
While thinking about Philly 1997 to 2007 in particular, and while attempting to compare it with another dangerous and self-destructive decade of a social system with which I’m far more familiar (Los Angeles, CA circa 1980 to 1990), I realized I needed to get a question answered. And, I’d like an answer that’s light on the b.s. if anyone reading this thread can provide one.
Which events, acts, or omissions (the most influential five to ten will do) caused Philly to arrive at its present dangerous and self-destructive state?
Social Anatomy of racial and ethnic disparities in violence….,
IMOHO its all in there
cnulan:
I’m a big fan of a “well-educated Black professional/guardian class moving back to our disconnected Black communities” model. And, I certainly grasp the conflicts between the guardian model (similar to socialism or communism?) vs the commerce model vs hybrids of the guardian and commerce models as forms of social organization.
Is it your assertion that the exodus of the Black guardians, the moving out in droves of Black professionals, is the chief cause of the dangerous and self-destructive state that Philly finds itself in? If that is your assertion, and you’re right, then the Philly problem will be much tougher to correct than I had thought. Even the best of us, even those of us who care enough to blog about these social problems, lack the conviction to return to the communities that need us most. And, if those communities will need their Black guardians to come back in order to be healed, then those communities may very well be doomed.
How on earth would we be able to convince enough Eurocentric Blacks to give up their opulent lives, lives they built by promulgating and demonstrating the most valued ideas, symbols, and rituals of Eurocentric culture, to rejoin the ranks of the Afrocentric Blacks? There simply aren’t enough Afrocentric Black guardians to do the job in these communities. Our best scholars, our most successful professionals, our shiniest exemplars, don’t want to live in the communities that need them most. We’d rather philosophize and theorize from afar, away from danger.
Pardon my sarcasm. But most of us, despite what we might write or say, really do act as though the types of problems that trouble Philly are problems for others to fix.
Philly, Cali, KC, and every other formerly integral Black community which played host to the full spectrum of Black socio-economic life due to Jim Crow and restrictive housing covenants. Think about it man, there really is no other explanation. Given my advanced years (^; – I remember growing up in precisely such a diverse yet totally segregated Black community. What vice there was in our community was isolated to a given stretch and there was a clearly established protocol for where good-timing was permitted and where not – and that protocol was mutually and reciprocally observed by upstanding and downlowing folk alike. Those protocols don’t exist anymore because they’re not enforced anymore….,
IMOHO – first, the impending seismic shifts in the U.S. economy and resulting ripple effects in the fabric of civil society will provide some degree of impetus for re-aggregation. There is after all, strength in numbers.
Second, there is immense upside value in realestate in urban cores. The long neglected rail system will become increasingly important and eclipse long-haul trucking as a dominant means of mass transport of goods. The increasing price of fuel makes this an inevitability.
Lastly, by proactively getting smart and concerned Black folks together not to socialize, that’s so much peacock/peahen bullshit that inevitably takes care of itself, rather, getting together around real project oriented Work with measurable goals and timelines that predispose folk to professionalism and formal agreements.
sho’s you right. and that’s a point that bears repeating brah…, and it goes for the entire spectrum of arms-length punditry, from the negro conservative to the political regressive. my new coinage for punk-assed progressives who only talk…,
cnulan:
We’re on the same page. I see what you see. Here’s the problem: the well-educated U.S. Blacks who could heal our dangerous and self-destructing communities are trapped. They’re the voluntary prisoners of a war between two conflicting cultures, or rather the voluntary prisoners of millennia-long attack by the economically, politically, and militarily stronger culture against the economically, politically, and militarily weaker culture. Most of them don’t realize they’re voluntary prisoners. Some of them realize their voluntary prisoners, and they also realize they are comfortable prisoners; they no longer feel the full pain of the double consciousness Du Bois described. They have figured out that if they’ll act like good boys and girls, culturally, they’ll be guaranteed their opulence. And if they’ll restrict their iconoclasm to words and not actions, they might even be able to make themselves feel good about their voluntary, yet opulent, imprisonment. Only a very small few of those who realize their culture is being aggressively attacked are still fighting for their losing culture. So, their culture is slowly, but quite surely, generation after generation, being erased from the consciousnesses of the genetic descendants of those who created it. And sadly, the culture’s would-be heroes, those who could defend it, its exemplars, are about as reliable as Alcibiades.
Dood…, did you see what I saw the other day when you first peeped this? If you did, and I know you did, then it’s suggestive that comfort and freedom are increasingly illusory, at best.
Why do you think I’m so adamantly critical of what you’ve read me refer to as the peacock/peahen spectacle….,
isn’t that spectacle equally pivotal to the ungoverned and ungovernable little terrorists adding injury to the myriad insults of the hood?
a breather…which gives me time to respond critically and affirmatively.
critically:
craig when you say you presented a workable model what model were you talking about exactly? the move from vmb enabled community hubs to quasi state institutions that deal not with neighborhoods but with cities requires both private AND state resources. i’ve emphasized the role of the state and institutions in general a few times before and it bears re-emphasizing now.
further you’ve made claims about black communities before integration before that bear further clarification. structural dynamics made it very difficult for communities in the south and in the north to police themselves the way that you argue they did. i’d argue that these communities had crime rates that were significantly higher than those of their non-black counterparts. this isn’t due to cultural reasons, but rather it is due to poverty and the lack of structures of equitable law enforcement.
you proposed an idea of vmb enabled communities to somehow deal with the gaps left by police and by the state. while i can empathize with your critique of what you call regressives, it’s ironic that you rely on the state for your contract protection, and are willing to push for training 10,000 volunteers (at a rate of one per day?)…but aren’t willing to even think about pushing those same people to get resources that they are in effect SUPPOSED to get. i don’t understand this at all.
now in thinking about what conflict resolution should look like I ran across Restorative Justice Online. But with the plethora of resources available I don’t see these plans being scalable.
I talked about this in urban politics. There are only three possible connections between three people. Between 30 taken three at a time? Almost 900. The move from neighborhoods to cities requires a level of structural differentiation and accountability that is very very difficult for neighborhood organizations to wrestle with alone. Unless you’re willing to take the type of fascist top down approach that characterizes the ultra-conservative jews that Fisher referenced.
Personally, I don’t rely on anything or anybody for any aspect of my protection. Consequently, my entire ethos is constructed around autarky and the nucleation and proliferation of enlarged spheres of comparable cultural competency.
and demonstrably impossible for the municipal authorities to wrestle with given the current array of systemic incentives available to municipal governance constructs.
ignorance of hasidic organization is no excuse for an allegation of fascist social order. from what I can see, they are exemplars of racial/ethnic/cultural autarkic competency – absent control of a single essential resource and in stark defiance of the norms of the culture in which they’re embedded.
Spence, I waited a week to cool down and not respond angrily to your handwaving. What with being banned from the hermit’s lair for rhetorical non-compliance – I thought it best that I just leave this one alone for a while. Problem is, returning to it, it doesn’t look any better.
Martin Kilson does a wonderful job of affirmatively countering much of what you’ve written and alluded to here, including direct reference to DuBois on Philadelphia.
It’s clearly time for me to disengage from further correspondence with folks who are simultaneously conflicted and disengaged because their primary preoccupation is the cultivation of a careers in pop media….,
Quickly again, and in order:
1. You sign a contract with another party, and that contract is violated. Who do you go to for redress if you can’t get the needs of that contract met through peaceable means of resolution?
This is what I’m talking about. Yes you’ve got your own business, and interdependent means of providing for the education of the people you care about (the Dubois Learning Center is an excellent example of this). But you, just like the rest of us, rely fundamentally on the state.
2. How exactly would it be less difficult for neighborhoods with limited resources to police themselves than cities with billion dollar budgets? There are a variety of disincentives at the level of the municipality, yes. But it isn’t as if disincentives are absent at the (collective) neighborhood level.
3. The hasidic jews are ultra-conservative. Ultra-conservatism and fascism are inextricably linked. I’m not sure how to parse “from what i can see…” given their private nature. One of the reasons I don’t hold much truck in comparisons to [insert ethnic group here] is because we often DON’T see what happens within them and are willing to make tremendous leaps of logic based on blindness.
4. Martin Kilson and I AGREE. Where do you see disagreement EXACTLY?
5. Similarly you and I agree on many things. We just don’t agree on the benefits of what is in effect black libertarianism.
And with the last comment I’m assuming you are referring to the recent decision of the Assault folks to start a speaker’s bureau. This actually isn’t a bad idea…..
organization is key, plenty of models to choose from – why exactly do you suppose the FOI is effective?
and if they don’t begin taking fledgeling steps, 9th ward here they come…, keep waiting for the calvary to arrive and save the day.
I don’t share your uncertainty. When I was much younger, a good friend of mine from South Africa embraced hasidism. Because we remained friends, and shared interest in the “mystical” – or better psychological motives – underscoring his adoption of seriously observant practice, I was afforded a rather unusual degree of access and exposure to the culture.
It is decidedly NOT what you’ve characterized it as, and, abundantly worthy of emulation insofar as it is centered on an interior life which is scrupulously guarded and cultivated.
Black culture has damn near devolved into pure dopaminergic self-titillation. If open source self-debasement is where your values fundamentally reside, then you should stop equivocating and jump on Cobb’s uncritical embrace of all things American.
Say whatever you want on the ideological tip Spence, but bottomline, your polity is your way of life. You’re not advocating anything substantively different from Cobb and neither is Earl no matter how much lip service you pay to the contrary.
No. You believe your polity is your way of life. And it isn’t. Culture deeply influences the very definition of the market (what is and is not included within it), how politics is defined and adjudicated. But it is NOT the same thing. The hasidic jews you refer to, the people who do Work that you refer to, they all live within a STATE and an ECONOMY with a set of practices that can only be limited to culture under a narrow set of circumstances. You aren’t going to find ANYTHING that Kilson wrote that makes this claim.
To the extent then that I acknowledge that the state exists, that the market exists, and that these things cannot be ignored and you do not….even as you rely on those things…we have very different ideas.
I don’t ignore the existence of any of these things. I don’t argue that the hasidim have ignored any of these factors either. To the contrary, they’ve absolutely mastered the exoteric environment in which they operate so as to enable their mesoteric and esoteric worlds to thrive – and they’ve done it in the most idiosyncratic and normatively oppositional ways you might ever imagine short of donning renaissance festival or star trek gear!!!
Where you and I differ is that I elect not to depend on external public factors in the same prostrate, passive-receptive begging-assed way that defines the regressive political world-view – whether we’re talking about education, self-defense, economics or politics.
Kilson gave a secular-materialist, and thus from the outset doomed to failure, prescription for intentional Black community across socio-economic lines.
What you’ve proffered is vastly less than that, as it depends on organizations and structures with built-in disincentives to change and established track records of antipathy to poor and working class Black folks even during the most resource flushed salad days of the American culture/market/economy and even under second-line inheritor management. (mismanagement)
The hasidim are onto something worthy of emulation and they’ll thrive no matter how stank things become in the culture/market/economy over the next several years.
What you’ve proffered is vastly less than that, as it depends on organizations and structures with built-in disincentives to change and established track records of antipathy to poor and working class Black folks even during the most resource flushed salad days of the American culture/market/economy and even under second-line inheritor management. (mismanagement)
No. I’ve argued clearly that we need a new vision of what cities do, of how they operate. And I’ve also argued that this is a cultural endeavor that comes from the generation of new practices and new identities to accompany those practices. But I’ve never argued that we should ignore the state, particularly not in urban contexts where blacks constitute a significant body of citizens. It doesn’t work theoreticaly (particularly given the scale of cities), it doesn’t work practically. The hasidim if they thrive will do so because they are exceedingly small in number (how many are there worldwide much less within the states?), and white for all intents and purposes.
statement of the obvious…,
neato.., now let’s square up on the specifics of how this gets operationalized?
neither did I. So I was particularly struck and heartened by the fact that the Police Commissioner was forwarding the suggestions he had received from local business execs and muslims to organize a cadre of concerned men to engage the issue and that he himself intended to participate.
you’re arguing with yourself here….,
huh?????
um hmmmm…., let one turn up in Forsythe County GA or Sedalia Missouri and let’s see how that “white” thing is working for him.
i’ve written about what types of practices we need here. turning alleys and burnt out street blocks into gardens, developing schools or even organizations in schools to teach kids math and organizing skills like the algebra project, etc.
neither did i…
so perhaps i missed something. the police commissioner has called for little in the way of resources (defined anyway you want other than black male bodies)….how exactly does this work as an example of state involvement? because HE’S going to help does this make his suggestion a state-aided activity?
there are a range of ways in which something like this could be helpful or at the very least not hurtful. of the range of ways this appears to me to be the least helpful. even with the idiotic racial frame the commissioner is putting on the entire policy.
let me say this another way. if this activity were accompanied with a significant outlay of funds needed to in effect deputize these 10,000 brothers….then something like this couldn’t hurt. probably still won’t help much given the hypercapitalistic nature of the violence.