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Regardless of the bad press, the reported, miss reported and under reported deprivation, the pot-holed roads you could lose Mini in, the ex crack houses that are given face lifts and passed on to lone parents with one kid or refugees with five, regardless of the crime and drugs, the noise and drama, there still is nowhere more life filled than the inner city.
Donny Hathaway was right when he said “Everything is everything” in the ghetto. Consequently it has become common place for street culture and area culture to name and proudly claim ghetto status for the estates and communities in which some live and the rest hang out.
It’s the life of the so called and defiantly, ‘Ghetto’ that causes the inner city to produce the ‘Ghetto Fabulous and Tragic’ life styles, and individuals, who pursue the pre-packaged, musically glamorised, socially accepted, fashion endorsed, and media romanced caricature that has become Ghetto life. It’s that ‘ghetto life’, that has produced the multi-platinum selling Rap and RnB stars here and abroad, who rose up out of the Ghettos that gave birth to their voice and expressions, propelling them to prophet like prominence. They speak of the life ‘On road’ and all the drama that comes with it; the girls and the guys that were too nasty to either dick or ding, the whites they shot or the greens they blazed, the ends they made and the friends they lost, the police they ran from and the bird they did, the dads that were never there and the mums who never let them down, the school education they gave up for street education and the baby mothers who had no education, the corners where mans’ got jacked and wrecked, the West Indian take-away that acted like they were doing you a favour taking your money, the DJ’s they killed and the haters that stole their lyrics, all made up the life that was to them ghetto life. Life was ghetto and ghetto was fabulous, ghetto fabulous.
The ‘Tragic’ aspect of ghetto life, I believe all will agree, is the rise of ‘Whites’ in both its powder and rock forms. The mindless violence that follows cocaine like an STD you can’t get rid of, and the break down of seemingly any and all types of value systems that once appeared to hold communities together, albeit by a sometimes very thin tread, are all faces of the tragic. The tragic is seen in the fact that when young people start smoking they now enter at the ‘green house crew’ and not the 10 B&H crew of, yesterwhen? The tragic is seen in the adoption of a ‘me only’ value system, which renders everyone and everything ‘a nothing’ of any significance. The tragic is seen in the imagistic prostitution of young women by a ‘black-culture hungry’ white music industry, and the accompanying Pimpification of young males, all of whom stand with six pack in one hand and ‘meat and two veg’ in the other. The tragic is seen in the increased educational drop out rate of young men and women living in ‘the ghetto’, opting instead for the, ‘only a punk needs an education’ classes being taught on street corners everyday. The tragic is seen in the Afros that have no meaning, the Cane rows that only raise cane, and the pants swung low exposing fake men and false manhood. The tragic is seen in the perpetuation of this ghetto bubble by those that may have been fortunate enough to break out of their ghetto prison, but still glorify it, like they really do want to get back there. The ‘real tragic’ is that ‘ghetto fabulous’ is presented as the only true way ‘we live’ whomever ‘the we’ of the ghetto may be, especially the ‘Black we’.
For me, as a watcher of street culture, the greatest tragedy is that the ‘tragic’ are glamorised as the fabulous and the real ‘ghetto fabulous’ are totally lost sight of.
I see the real ghetto fabulous everyday; I work with and for them. The truly ghetto fabulous despite their environments and backgrounds, break all the moulds and buck the trends of the streets, the stereotypes, the negative imaging, bad policing, peer pressure and what ever else bears down on them. They’re not saints, they just don’t blaze, and they don’t shot whites or greens or blues or turquoises, or magentas… They do perform well in school and don’t have babies before they’re old enough to own a provisional license. They don’t get arrested, even if it’s a family tradition.
The areas they live in may be ruff and the estates rougher still, but it does not reflect on who they are, who they are becoming and eventually will be. There are mothers and fathers there who are raising balanced, stable, good children against all the odds and in spite of their situations. They’ve turned ‘set backs’ into ‘set ups’ and ‘no ways’ into ‘my ways’. These people, (whom we overlook, in our mad rush to glamorise and stereotype the worse of what the ghetto is), are the real ghetto fabulous and we must never forget this.
The real ghetto tragic, whether they do so willingly or from ignorance, are those who everyday buy into the life ‘the road’ has become and see it as life’s only way. The tragic believe and perpetuate a stereotyped, manufactured, perceived black culture and continue to glamorise it as the real ghet-te-o. They embrace the stereotypes and live them; they view Jail as the new male right of passage and seek nothing but ‘ends and bling’ as their external confirmation of power and success. The tragic are those who have broken out, mainly via the music trap and continue to ensnare the minds and lives of the masses still ‘on road’ by not telling the full story, and building a positive bridge for others to follow out on.
The fabulous and the tragic are always with us, we’ve just been looking at them and the rest of the street culture through Elton John looking specs and the picture’s all wrong. I was once told by an English professor that ‘if all a person has is perception, then that perception becomes their reality’. From all outward appearances it seems clear where present perception is. Our task is to reveal the alternative reality that already exists within our communities regardless of the present perception and change that perception by affirming and celebrating that alternative reality. We are to affirm the truly ghetto fabulous wherever we find them, while opening a door of hope to the tragic, knowing that the conditions and people that produce ghettos will always remain. As a society, we must never become complacent in ridding ourselves of those conditions, but must always reject the idea that those conditions cannot produce the multi racially fabulous that presently live there.
Yeap. Yeap. Back so soon. If you missed Monday’s Panaroma, you can see it again on the BBC website.
The programme follows two young men in Newham. One witnessed the murder of another 13 year old and you see the fear in which they travel arond the streets in case they are recognised by the enemy clicks. In the words of the presenter, “it’s easy to dismiss all this as a cartoon battle but real people are dying“.
The lives of young people on the streets of London are ruled by different laws than the ones that you and I live by.
London Week of Peace is just under a month away and will be held on 10–17 September. Information on local programmes is available on the Peace Alliance website.
“A new generation of role models from within local communities is needed in order to tackle underachievement among Black boys and young men and counter a culture of low aspiration” the recent report by REACH tells us. This is nothing we didn’t know before and it is restating the obvious. The only difference is that we now have evidence on which to base discussions, plans and programmes.It’s good to see in the BBC broadcast that it is not just organisations like From Boyhood to Manhood, nor is it just politicians and community leaders telling young people what they need. It’s young people themselves saying that they want positive role models. They are keen to follow the example of lawyers, doctors, teachers, charity leaders, successful local politicians and others. It is also good to hear Hazel Blears, the Government’s Communities Secretary welcoming in the report. F4DB hopes that this is not just empty words and rhetoric. F4DB hopes that the government is going to put their money where their mouth is and fund the recommendations as set out in the report. It was at Kennington Community Fellowship recent baby blessing that Pastor Eddie Hypolite addressed last week’s shooting in Brixton. He acknowledged that life sometimes gets in the way of parenting but clearly set out the responsbility of both parents saying that they need to give their children love, set clear boundaries for them and give them the consistency of the presence of both mother and father. The breakdown which we are seeing in our communities is the result of the breakdown in the family. He paid tribute the young man in the BBC broadcast who rejected the typical role model of footballer while acknowleding the contributions of his pastor and his father. While it’s true that organistions like Operation Trident were set up to tackle gun crime within the black community and that this was an area of concern, today’s news of another shooting makes it clear that these problems are not isolated to inner city areas, ‘problem young people’ or to the black community. Areas previously unaffected are also suffering the same effects and the same outcomes. Everyone suffers. Gun and knife crime affect you no matter where you live, no matter what your relationship was to the victim and not matter what your ethnicity is. The whole country must sit up, take note and take action.
A copy can be obtained by emailing communities@twoten.com. And quoting product code 07 REU 04778
Yesterday I wrote a post on shootings in London. Today I am sorry to have to write that the latest shooting in Brixton took the life of a previous attendee at F4DB. Nathan Foster was killed while trying to broker peace following the theft of a gold chain. He will be much missed by his family, his girlfriend and his one year old son. Our condolences go out to them all.
