Urban Ghettos: The Message

1
Urban Ghettos The Message

• Identify features and themes of ghetto life in
  The Message
  
• What emotional responses are described?
• What kind of song is The Message?
• How do meaning and form relate to one another?

2
Who is responsible?

• for crime, drugs, poverty, etc.
• personal shortcomings or societal (structural)
  factors?

3
Urban poverty in the 1970s and 80s

• poor, segregated neighborhoods in which a
  substantial majority of individual adults are
  either unemployed or have dropped out of the
  labor force altogether (Wilson)
• difference between traditional (institutional)
  and jobless ghettos
  

4

• rate of black men between 20 and 29 employed in
  manufacturing dropped from 3/8 to 1/5
  
• unemployment among black men between 20 and 29
  rises to 60 - 90 in some ghettos

5
Macro-economic factors causing dramatic rise in
ghetto poverty

• internationalization of U.S. economy
• manufacturing migrates to Third World countries
• migration of manufacturing plants to suburbs
• immigration

6
joblessness

• difference between poverty and joblessness
• joblessness and transition into adulthood
• the demographics of crime
• impact of joblessness onto family structure

7
crime

• crime as an alternative to joblessness
• the impact of crime on the neighborhood
• crime and demography incarceration rates
• the war on drugs and the crack epidemic
• the availability of guns
• gangs
• the impact of gangs on neighborhood life

8
The ghetto as life-world

• absence of businesses
• absence of public transportation
• understaffed schools, unqualified teachers
• high-rise projects (in Chicago, New York, etc.)
• vacant lots, burnt-out buildings
• no recreation facilities
• danger from violent crime
• the broken windshield theory

9
families

• flight of middle-class and working-class families
  from the ghettos
  
• absence of role-models, absence of fathers
• the structure of lower-class black families and
  changes in the industrial economy
  
• living from hand to mouth
• the working poor
• 1990s the need for multiple jobs and the
  unavailability of child-care
  

10
race

• race as force in segregation
• race as a distraction from the real issues
• the new racism victim blaming in The Bell
  Curve
  

11
social organization

• the extent to which residents of a neighborhood
  are able to maintain effective social control
  
• strength of social networks
• extent of collective supervision of children
• participation in voluntary organizations

12
Psychological costs of joblessness

• most people in jobless ghettos share mainstream
  values (work ethic)
  
• but are unable to live up to them
• struggle against odds
• self-blame, hopelessness, depression
• increased importance of peer-approval

13

• absence of work, absence of structure
• entropy and cognitive-emotional dysfunction
• shared culture of joblessness
• absence of social networks that may facilitate
  employment
  

14
Summary

• macro-economic changes lead to disappearance of
  jobs
  
• joblessness leads to social disintegration (loss
  of structures, networks and opportunities)
  
• rise of an alternative drug economy
• disparity between values and opportunities leads
  to psychological dysfunction (depression,
  violence)
  

15
The Hip-Hop Nation as an alternative form of
social organization

• How has the hip-hop movement responded to
  poverty, joblessness, crime, drugs, and despair
  in the urban ghettos?