Deconstructing Our Notions of Ghetto - NPACS, Document 2

Ars Longa, Vita Breve: Immortalizing the Ghetto through the Arts


“...So with eager confidence I breathe life through parch and pen
Quill and ink of good intent can quell feuds and arguments...
Breathing life into my pen
In great traditions, now and then,
Truth begins to make amends for mistakes made by the leaders of men
Words
Like glyphs, stand for all time
Not even the guns of Alexander, Napoleon or Hitler could stifle these lines
Willie Shakespeare said it once
Oscar Wilde posed it, too -
Ars longa, vita breve
So long lives this, immortality for you
The life brought to my pen is of heavenly decree
So, these words and thoughts aren't really of me"
- excerpted from "In the Beginning" by Sonja Moore, 2006


There is the notion of life mirroring art or is it the other way around? When the content evokes painful or difficult memories or emotions, it is easy to deny the truth of what an original piece suggests and to blame the artisan for his depiction. If, however, "life is but a stage and we are all players" how can the "playwright" be at fault? The artists, writers, poets and musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries have had the burden of being charged with immortalizing cultures of violence and with rescuing lost heroes from the annals of history. It is through their work that we can begin to deconstruct our past, present and future understanding of our life experiences. Sonia Weitz speaks of “mind journaling” (since she was not allowed to have paper and pen) as a means of remembering, honoring and surviving. Is her work of any less value than those who actually drew or wrote during their captivity? The Jewish artists of the Holocaust; as well as, their family and friends, are immortalized by their words, visual arts and music. They surmounted the walls and barbed wire of the ghettoes with their imagination – providing a vehicle that allows us to get a sense of what they were feeling in captivity. Would we truly have an accurate depiction of events without their voices and their vision? Would they have been able to endure without their creative outlets? Would we be able to truly connect with their struggles without their art? Probably not as much.


Just as the trials of European Jewry is captured in visual arts, creative writing and other forms of artistic media, the African American experience in the ghetto is well-documented, too. A different continent, a different time and different circumstances don’t make their depictions any less poignant, but their adaptation and in some cases, acceptance of ghetto conditions is striking. Cora Daniels writes of America as a “ghetto nation” – a place that contains urban ghettoes, but has, unfortunately, adopted a ghetto lifestyle and mentality that is spreading beyond its urban centers. Trapped in a modern-day version of a closed ghetto, Blacks were closed in by viaducts, expressways, brick walls, streets, railroad tracks and other man-made structures. Overcrowded, filthy, drug-infested areas became the dwelling for America’s poor or lowing classes. Northern city communities that were once home to newly migrated Southern Blacks became the home of the “kitchenette” and then, housing projects (a/k/a “Jets” or “The PJs”). What happens when human beings are treated like animals in a so-called democracy? How do they respond? How do they view themselves and the rest of society? How does society view them?


“…just as society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew…The structure of the American commonwealth has trapped both these minorities in to attitudes of perpetual hostility. They do not dare trust each other!”
-“Harlem Ghetto” by James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Ghettoes, past and present, have been maintained on the basis of racist ideology rooted in an us vs. them mentality. From within and without, battles rage over who will be on top. It is an issue of membership and acceptance whether you’re talking about Harlem, NY or Chicago, IL. The negative lifestyles associated with ghetto residence are perpetuated not only by stereotypes, but by fear and mistrust among residents and towards those outside the ghetto. Often the punch line in ghetto humor is aimed at government (local and federal), as in many Good Times episodes. At other times, when ghettoes are filled with multiethnic groups, the enemy in proximity becomes the target or daily scapegoat – as is the case when one considers the relationships between Blacks and Jews or Blacks and Asians. Baldwin writes of the “Negro” doesn’t hate the “Jewish ness” of their neighbors (who were their local merchants or employers, in many cases), but because of what they perceive as an alleged disregard of their struggle against oppression. According to Baldwin, this shared history of suffering, as perceived by “Negroes” of his time, should have been the bridge to equitable treatment and business dealings. As long as both groups hold fast to the ideologies of the dominant culture, he postulates, there is to be no reconciliation between the two groups. Ironic when you consider all that both cultures have to offer to one another and the assistance given by the Jews to African Americans (helping to found & teach at Black universities and aiding in the Civil Rights Movement & founding of NAACP).


“In America life seems to move faster than anywhere else on the globe and each generation is promised more than it will get, which creates in each generation a furious, bewildered rage...of a people who can’t find solid ground beneath their feet…the Negro lashes out against himself and those that represent their demise.”
- “Harlem Ghetto” by James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Even more troubling than the festering rage contemporary residents waged against their perceived enemies is the embracing of all things ghetto. Over time residents went from working hard to make a better life and get out of the ghetto to boldly proclaiming their “ghetto fabulous” status – even going so far as to make no efforts to “move on up” and creating media to encourage the continuance of ghetto life (consider the first time you heard the song “Baby Mama” or heard the B-word in a rap song). Ghetto residents no longer gave the impression of striving for “the American Dream”. They seemed to now, “fester” as a raisins in the sun. It is this rage that leads to the destruction of communities in race riots and explains the reasoning behind the lack of reconstruction following such destruction. This festering led to a kind of anti-establishment rage that has been playing out in America’s ghettoes since the 1970’s and has overtime become the staple of Hip Hop culture, which was once fused with expository messages aimed at “edutainment”.
In researching and archiving a number of poems, songs (lyrics, audio files, video files) that relate to Jewish and African American ghettoes there is an opportunity for multimedia, multicultural dialogue and exploration. Sonia Weitz wrote of the “sounds of misery and cries of longing of a “surplus population,” an unwanted people -“victims of the victims” who were plagued with inhumanities that “assaulted their senses” and made them feel like they were no longer “in the land of the living.” LeAlan Jones, years later, writes of a Chicago ghetto as being “like Vietnam” – knowing things you’re not supposed to at an early age, needing to act older than your age in order to survive, witnessing death on a daily basis. “The violence and killing are out of control…I think if we make it out of here we deserve a medal of honor…because if you aren’t wounded physically you’re wounded spiritually,” Jones writes. Ghettoes, past or present, are no places for children or anyone, but those who survive make use of their creative abilities. If our communities – ghetto or otherwise – don’t allow for this kind of outlet, then they risk the end of vibrant cultures.

(there was a comparative table that could not be cut/paste here)