Corinna Contreras

Sociology 185 D Theories of Race

December 7, 2009

A History of Place and Space: The Black and Latino Body on Camera

And in the beginning there was light...or was it media?

I turn on the television and what do I see? As the craze today, the new "colonial land-grab" of

an advanced twenty-first century civilization supposedly tamed by the teleological serpent of

historical progress, the conquest of public space finds a dominate place in American culture.

New "realities" are built to satisfy our unsatisfactory feelings of emptiness, of disconnect in an

ever colliding world. We have shows that claim news but read fringe talk politics. We have

reality t.v. that entertains big breasted women vying for the love of a washed up has been 15

minute celebrity (Flavor of Love and For the Love of RJ I'm tossing these words in your

direction). And we love it, at least the ratings do. Television serves to satiate our appetite for a

slice of public space and thus today we have an explosion of the public sphere with participation

in mass media a daily if not constant process of national interaction (insert tweet please)."Reality

T.V." captures life by the script and "news" poises intense intrusion of private space in exchange

for a public and national discourse. The way we have come to understand the inner-city seems

dictated by selected portrayals of "at-risk" youth behaving badly as they shoot themselves dead

and cover every corner with lines of spray paint and bitch-slap'n melodies.

So what does all this have to do with the work of Patricia Collins and Cathy Cohen? Everything.

National consensus and an American sociological imagination

In this paper Cohen's idea of consensus will be understood within the context of sociological

imagination; we, as an American society have accepted that certain groups are overrepresented in

"inner-city" slums and that the increase in their plight takes hold because of economic
disadvantage; this acceptance comes within the context of media representation where news

images and reality television focus on all aspects of the "ghetto," depicting its unruly conditions

of habitation, a new concrete jungle. People even agree that the problem must find quick

solution. Part of the solution revolves around lowering the high rates of youth initiated violence

as this is understood as "troubling, " one of the many buzzwords in use today.

On Monday, November 23, 2009 Eyewitness News New York, NY aired a news segment

entitled, "'Day of Outrage' Puts Spotlight On Gun Violence." It reports on a rally sponsored by

Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, where hundreds of concerned community

members, anti-gun activists, and victims of gun violence gathered that day in the Grand

Concourse section of the Bronx, NY to increase awareness of the violence that has become a

daily occurrence in many inner-cities (rallies were held across the nation), including the Bronx

("Day of Outrage"). Rallies were held in twenty cites with other minority population centers such

as Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles taking part in the campaign ("Day of Outrage"). One

victim, twenty-five year old Aisha Santiago was caught in crossfire and received a fatal bullet

wound to the back in attempt to push her son out of danger; another, fifteen year-old Vada

Vasquez was shot in the head a block from her school but is after a stint in intensive care,

expected to make a full recovery ("Day of Outrage"). The news story focuses on the popular site

of the problem, minority youth wielding weapons and killing their community members in the

process of their trigger-happy rampages. Although youth violence is a pressing issue, the root of

the problem does not begin here.

This nationwide rally displays a type of consensus not only present at a national level but also

at a more specific, minority level where community members try to fight back the violence that

has silenced their youth.

Popular imagination holds the following images: a poor brown boy holding up his gang signs,

showing of the shine of his new assault rifle; or the trashy young brown whore on the street

corner looking for another trick under the watchful eye of her pimp; or even the hardworking

single ethnic mother, struggling to make ends meet while her son gangbangs his life away. The

eye of the camera captures only truth does it not? Or does it does it create a hyper-masculine

minority caricature only capable of delinquency, in other words a thug culture? We must

understand that what we see is only superficial and the gravity of the situation is its

institutionalization. The clip from the Bronx rally does aid in illuminating the struggles of inner-

city life but at the same time it stops before truly examining the cause of pervasive violence. For

this reason, consensus ends at citing the superficial problem and not the true issue of

institutionalization.

What happened to consensus?

Cross-cutting this socialized consensus is the perception of the "ghetto" youth and their

placement within the sociological imagination. Some understand the institutionalization of

poverty and its effects on community; these people share a positive image of community youth

and what they could achieve if granted equal access to national goods and space. However, it

seems that popular belief as portrayed in our media, of inner-city slums, place the burden on

Black and Latino youths of "bad moral behavior" who can never amount to anything more than

another seat in court, another streak of spray paint against the crumbling city walls.

When it comes to isolating the root of this problem with youth delinquency the fragmentation

could not be more grand. While agreement remains strong that the inner-city has festered into

crime-ridden streets, and that the inhabitants of these strangely decorated,

and interestingly colored homes seem mostly Black and Latino, a division appears when

discussing the role youths play in the "maintenance" of inner-city poverty. For many, the
problem seems solely the fault of those committing the crimes. When searching for news reports

about city violence on Youtube.com, I came across a video of an ABC Channel 7 news report

titled "Worst of 2008 Violent Crime On the Rise in Chicago;" while the video illuminates some

disturbing trends, the violence and frequency of the crimes did not capture my attention as much

as the comments that surround the Youtube post. On December 15, 2008 user "chicagotube1"

posted this video with the following information as its description:

So now my question is why do African Americans keep killing one another...I try to be

objective, but just look at the CPD statistics (which don't lie) and see that the larger

percentage of crime happens in black neighborhoods. Why, why?? And some idiot

interviewed above said something about seeing someone else with 'something' and then

wanting it for yourself...in other words robbery. With warped thinking like that there's no

wonder these fools will never progress further ("Worst of 2008 Violent Crime On the

Rise in Chicago").

According to the provided statistics from the Chicago Police Department, the report states that

someone is killed every seventeen hours in Chicago (2008) highlighting the pervasive spread of

violence in the predominately black community of this major city. The user's comment above

represents part of the discourse in place today regarding the role of youth in ghetto culture as one

that displays their "natural" inclination to acts of rage and stupidity. This type of pseudoanalysis

ignores any wrong doing in part of the dominant culture's institutionalization of violence as

occurs with unfair access to education, public space, and other national resources, placing the

blame entirely on the actions of these juveniles. Absence of any discussion pertaining to the ease

of access to weapons leaves room for this user to comment only on the condition of black life

frequently portrayed in the news and other media outlets as one saturated in violence for the sake

of violence. Statistics only reveal part of the story; the statistics used in this report and seen by
this user select for information within certain parameters; they only numerate the number of

people killed due to this form of urban warfare leaving to popular imagination the reasons as to

why this warfare continues to escalate.

A comment on the video by user "viking1263" posted two months ago echoes the superficial

blame of the video description. It reads:

"Blacks seem to have no ability to reason. They just don't seem to grasp the fact that it is their

mindless and animalistic behavior that brings them such misery....they live in a society governed

by law and order but instead of accepting that they want the world to accept them on their terms.

They can't seem to accept that shit like crotch grabbing, ebonicking, walking around with your

pants hanging off your ass is abnormal and degenerate. They will never change. They can't."

This comment not only displays a type of outward racism it also employs certain imagery and

aggressive language to justify the user's belief in the inferiority of African Americans. Examined

side by side, these two comments convey the emergence of the public sphere as a place to parade

minority struggles as language and imagery distort the popular imagination of the dominant

society. To blame the "Other" serves to benefit the privileges of the dominant culture at the

expense of the unfortunate poor often seen as ill-educated and producers of their own plight.

An intrusion of privacy...the black and brown body on display in the concrete jungle

To "viking1263" African Americans seem to have a natural inclination towards a brutal

existence. This person has come to imagine black behavior as lacking the sophistication of other

'higher' races that seek to educate their youth and provide stability for their family. Unlike this

ideal race, blacks simply do not have the same capacity for upward mobility and progress, they

are the uncivilized other, a burden for all. It is obvious that user "viking1263" and

"chicagotube1" have interpreted the media's extensive representation of the black body on terms
external to their own favored characteristics. The news, in a constant chase for the next hot story,

opens the black body to the public imagination as part of a national discourse.

Drawing a parallel between this observation and the arguments Patricia Collins makes in her

academic book, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism, the

continued public display of black bodies as part of the public sphere accentuates the extent of

racism in the popular imagination. She states, "Just as contemporary safari tours in Africa create

an imagined Africa as the "White man's playground" and mask its economic exploitation, jungle

language masks social relations of hyper-segregation that leave working-class Black

communities isolated, impoverished, and dependent on a punitive welfare state and an illegal

international drug trade" (102). "Viking1263's" use of the word "animalistic" carries with it a

particular historical perspective of the black body. This "jungle language" does indeed mask the

real issue at hand, economic disparities between the minority "other" and the dominant white

culture. With limited access to actual education, the economic situation of the inner-city poor has

little chance of improving, instead they must turn to different methods of generating income.

As a consequence of "non-traditional" methods of establishing income the African American

and Latino bodies become accepted as public sites of discussion and utilization whether it takes

the form of relinquishing bodily control to an external power such as the court system or media

pundits. Left up to the opinion and analysis of others, the minority body loses political power to

control it's own image. It instead accommodates the tailor made image of ghetto-fabulous as part

of its accepted culture and status of self.

Aggressive, dirty, and dangerous with a twist sexy please

In examining the public dimension of the minority body, a discussion concerning the image of

the female body can only clarify the discussion. Collin's writes, "historically, this ideology of

Black sexuality that pivoted on a Black heterosexual promiscuity not only upheld racism but it
did so in gender specific ways." (101). These gender specific ways continue to manifest in

contemporary media with the aggressive black female character a television favorite, particularly

this ghetto aesthetic finds residence in the reality television shows such as MTV's Flavor of

Love. Collins goes on to explain that "African American woman encountered a parallel set of

beliefs concerning Black female promiscuity," a concept that media such as Tiffiny New York's

trashy and loud character on Flavor of Love continues to perpetuate (101). In context, this quote

discusses the issue of the sexual body. The sexual body serves two purposes, none of which

place the desires of the female at its core. In fact, ignoring the desires, the needs of the female

becomes normative. The male controls access to her body, dictating its importance, restricting its

maintenance, recovery, and potential. Historically, the Black female has endured a loss of

ownership, possession of her body left to external politics. The media becomes an active agent of

possession, selecting entertainment as an excuse for further exploitation of the female body. Her

status as a woman, shrouded in stigma, becomes that of less than. Not only has her body become

a property of the external invader but the image, the symbology of the Black female becomes

twisted in perversity.

The perpetual phantasmagoria of danger associated with the "ghetto" woman has an almost

mythological legacy, promoted and propagated today by means of mass media. Collins writes in

her examination of an perceived "Black promiscuity," "for example, depicting poor and working-

class African American inner-city neighborhoods as dangerous urban jungles where SUV-

driving White suburbanites come to score drugs or locate prostitutes also invokes a history of

racial and sexual conquest" (102). The inner-city as symbolic metonymy of the female body

enhances the ghetto aesthetic of poor minority city woman. Without access to the same

privileges as whites they open or are forced to open their bodies to the public. In public

imagination her body becomes the image of the inner-city and vice-versa.
"Park Panic"...this is what happens when you let them loose in public

In 1989, the case of the "Central Park Jogger" whirled around an image of a raped,

beaten, and dead White woman in a investment banker found left alone to die in a public space

rapidly colored with Black and Latino culture; using the only free and accessible place afforded

to them, these groups appropriated the Park as a cultural space creating a vibrant hip-hop scene

in this highly visible public space(102). The startling belief that a gang-bang style rape with as

many as twelve Black and Latino youth preceded and caused the woman's death seemed a public

discussion upheld in the public eye by the media and all its influence (102-103). In 2003 all of

the originally convicted youths were exonerate (some had served jail sentences) after a series of

events lead to the confession of a convicted murders and serial rapist, the DNA testing initially

held as solid evidence loomed in question; the corroboration of the confession sealed the

innocence of the twelve boys (103).

Media scrutiny of the twelve boys centered on a dislike of increased presence of minority

youth culture in the public arena and the free use of this appropriated space did not go

unpunished. "The 'park panic' that followed the incident drew upon this fear of young Black men

in public space, as evidenced by their loudness, their rap music, and their disrespect for order

(graffiti);" This quote brings to the heart the reality of inner-city life, one that is to be lived in the

public sphere for lack of private space and the stripping away of bodily control to the will of the

masses (103).

In my personal life I have deemed it necessary to delve behind the superficial imagery

provided by contemporary media. To understand the institutionalization of these functions of

society allows for a regain of bodily control whether it takes the form of political or sexual

control. Language that promotes a false profile for the true struggles of inner-city life should not

be tolerated, or at minimum questioned. In the media, more positive minority role models are
desperately needed and the appetite for whores and ghetto-esque females as well as thug men

needs quelling.

Works Cited

"'Day of Outrage' Puts Spotlight On Gun Violence". Channel 7 ABC Eyewitness News. Posted 23

Nov. 2009. WABC-TV New York, NY.

< Http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7134599>.

Hill Collins, Patricia, 2005. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New

Racism. Routledge, New York.

"New York Tribute Video". Youtube. Posted 10 July 2007.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1smiZRczFzc>.

"Worst of 2008 Violent Crime On the Rise in Chicago." Youtube. Posted Sept 2009.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiQgGXMSmss&feature=related>.