Yeah man, the Popeye's and Church's are just around the corner and the Bud is almost always closer than that, anytime, feel free. And yeah, I think ethnography is germane to the subject because before I got here, in '94, I'm not sure what my stance on the death penalty was but I'm pretty sure my ideas regarding crime and punishment were nowhere near as draconian as they are today. I truly appreciate your spoken resistance to my stance as I am not very much challenged, intellectually at least, in my day to day life here. Now to further break your heart I seem to be wanting to say more...and I guess I will.
So speaking of ethnography, it is the very specific human culture here in the heart of New Orleans that has changed my life, made me edgy, sad, despondent, not suicidal but something akin to it, and also as rewarded, happy, and fullfilled as I think I am ever likely to be (however, often I feel the fullfillment is just a self preservation device). I haven't done every recreational/inspirational drug known to man but I've experience a good few, and abused a few less than that, and nothing has come close to the mind altering experiences I have become privy to as an observer and occasional participant in the goings on of the local downtrodden. Which means nothing. Until the "downtrodden" forbid you to consider them nameless, and become fixtures in your life, and force you to call them by name, jesus, I have to learn twenty new names a year, me, a virtual hermit, and the thing is at some point--I fell in love: with these armies of inner city children who are surviving in a very difficult situation; and we should not be fooled by the clean clothes and new Nikes they wear. They are dirty, because there is a geographical surrounding majority that considers them, regardless of disposition--"niggers, fuckin' niggers, low class niggers, porch monkies," and worse (imagine?) and there are local communities that brag--"we don't allow no niggers 'round here."
Now the subject changes to failure which is a theme I am happy to explore as it seems, as much as any single facet of human life, to be a thing that ties us all together.
On the porch of this house at Dumaine in the Sixth Ward of New Orleans there is frequently, but not always, a gathering of niggers. This is what the children call themselves. The role models, also allowed on the porch, with certain conditions, are your basic run of the mill drug dealing, occasionally murderous inner city gangsters. They will play cards and dominoes and will invariably refer to each other as "nigger" or "punk ass bitch" or some equally harmless term. Afterall, stick and stones...right?
The schools these children attend ( I mean specifically and am not referring to every inner city school in New Orleans) are the worst in the city, ranking--according to standarized tests--so far below average it is almost phenomenal. I might even brag these children are some of the most poorly educated in any so called "First World" country on the planet.
The murder rate in '94 was a peak and per capitally speaking was twenty times that of New York City. The city hired a new chief who promised--and delivered--to cut that number in half, and that's where we are now, for the last few years. So only ten times that of NYC. It's only about 200 humans a year, that's less than died at the Federal building in OK. Get it? That's my bad joke for the day. "Its only about 200 humans a year"
Who's killing whom you might ask? Well Frank, the niggers are killing each other. On a rare occasion a few years back where in this small town of less that 500,000 there were 14 murders in one week and three of those murdered were white people, the local populus went berserk and marched on City Hall. I was there. It was fun.
On an average bad week mostly during dog days of summer when tempers are short and there are eight or nine or ten or twelve murders and it's just the nigger's killing each other, nobody marches. We all know it's just the gangsters culling.
When the local paper publishes school by school test results and the numbers--on the hundred scale--are in the twenties, nobody marches. Nobody goes berserk.
That's all I can stand to write about failure at this time.
So given this context who do I want to kill? How can I support a death penalty? I want to be wrong, Frank, but I'm feeling like these societies we have allowed to grow like cancer are harboring certain individuals who are evil incarnate. Possible? I want them to be killed, culled, like wheat from the chaff. I hate to express this but that's the point, so does everyone, and we allow shit to fester until it becomes our norm and that is unacceptable. I'm not doing anything worthwhile here. All my effort is worthless: I pat a kid on the shoulder, smile at another, chastise one, encourage his brother. My efforts are weak. My ex performs a hundred times the effort and I'm not even sure about her results. The effort to help the ones who clearly want help is often so tremendous, and difficult, and lacking clear reward, that I can see why there aren't armies of prosperous Americans offering to help. It isn't fun.
Once there was a neighborhood activist who went too far, perhaps in frustration, and chastised the wrong kid. The kid sprayed him with talking bullets that spoke plainly--"Thanks for the effort motherfucker."
I just want things to be better than this, Frank, I don't want to be talking about the death penalty. Thanks for listening.
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- frank 6-14-2001 9:50 pm
Yeah man, the Popeye's and Church's are just around the corner and the Bud is almost always closer than that, anytime, feel free. And yeah, I think ethnography is germane to the subject because before I got here, in '94, I'm not sure what my stance on the death penalty was but I'm pretty sure my ideas regarding crime and punishment were nowhere near as draconian as they are today. I truly appreciate your spoken resistance to my stance as I am not very much challenged, intellectually at least, in my day to day life here. Now to further break your heart I seem to be wanting to say more...and I guess I will.
So speaking of ethnography, it is the very specific human culture here in the heart of New Orleans that has changed my life, made me edgy, sad, despondent, not suicidal but something akin to it, and also as rewarded, happy, and fullfilled as I think I am ever likely to be (however, often I feel the fullfillment is just a self preservation device). I haven't done every recreational/inspirational drug known to man but I've experience a good few, and abused a few less than that, and nothing has come close to the mind altering experiences I have become privy to as an observer and occasional participant in the goings on of the local downtrodden. Which means nothing. Until the "downtrodden" forbid you to consider them nameless, and become fixtures in your life, and force you to call them by name, jesus, I have to learn twenty new names a year, me, a virtual hermit, and the thing is at some point--I fell in love: with these armies of inner city children who are surviving in a very difficult situation; and we should not be fooled by the clean clothes and new Nikes they wear. They are dirty, because there is a geographical surrounding majority that considers them, regardless of disposition--"niggers, fuckin' niggers, low class niggers, porch monkies," and worse (imagine?) and there are local communities that brag--"we don't allow no niggers 'round here."
Now the subject changes to failure which is a theme I am happy to explore as it seems, as much as any single facet of human life, to be a thing that ties us all together.
On the porch of this house at Dumaine in the Sixth Ward of New Orleans there is frequently, but not always, a gathering of niggers. This is what the children call themselves. The role models, also allowed on the porch, with certain conditions, are your basic run of the mill drug dealing, occasionally murderous inner city gangsters. They will play cards and dominoes and will invariably refer to each other as "nigger" or "punk ass bitch" or some equally harmless term. Afterall, stick and stones...right?
The schools these children attend ( I mean specifically and am not referring to every inner city school in New Orleans) are the worst in the city, ranking--according to standarized tests--so far below average it is almost phenomenal. I might even brag these children are some of the most poorly educated in any so called "First World" country on the planet.
The murder rate in '94 was a peak and per capitally speaking was twenty times that of New York City. The city hired a new chief who promised--and delivered--to cut that number in half, and that's where we are now, for the last few years. So only ten times that of NYC. It's only about 200 humans a year, that's less than died at the Federal building in OK. Get it? That's my bad joke for the day. "Its only about 200 humans a year"
Who's killing whom you might ask? Well Frank, the niggers are killing each other. On a rare occasion a few years back where in this small town of less that 500,000 there were 14 murders in one week and three of those murdered were white people, the local populus went berserk and marched on City Hall. I was there. It was fun.
On an average bad week mostly during dog days of summer when tempers are short and there are eight or nine or ten or twelve murders and it's just the nigger's killing each other, nobody marches. We all know it's just the gangsters culling.
When the local paper publishes school by school test results and the numbers--on the hundred scale--are in the twenties, nobody marches. Nobody goes berserk.
That's all I can stand to write about failure at this time.
So given this context who do I want to kill? How can I support a death penalty? I want to be wrong, Frank, but I'm feeling like these societies we have allowed to grow like cancer are harboring certain individuals who are evil incarnate. Possible? I want them to be killed, culled, like wheat from the chaff. I hate to express this but that's the point, so does everyone, and we allow shit to fester until it becomes our norm and that is unacceptable. I'm not doing anything worthwhile here. All my effort is worthless: I pat a kid on the shoulder, smile at another, chastise one, encourage his brother. My efforts are weak. My ex performs a hundred times the effort and I'm not even sure about her results. The effort to help the ones who clearly want help is often so tremendous, and difficult, and lacking clear reward, that I can see why there aren't armies of prosperous Americans offering to help. It isn't fun.
Once there was a neighborhood activist who went too far, perhaps in frustration, and chastised the wrong kid. The kid sprayed him with talking bullets that spoke plainly--"Thanks for the effort motherfucker."
I just want things to be better than this, Frank, I don't want to be talking about the death penalty. Thanks for listening.
- jimlouis 6-15-2001 2:41 am [4 comments]