Ghetto culture is anticulture

I just had an argument with a friend about how "gangster" culture is harmless. Every single time someone comes up with that excuse I think about a few things. A few years ago I remember talking to my nephews and finding out most of them had dreams of dropping out and becoming rappers. They had little to no interest in school because of the world they saw on MTV and BET. They bought that shit and ate it up. To an outsider it's hard to understand how fast one music video can change things for everyone in the "hood". But the effects are pretty drastic on the culture. Take "weezy" for example, once he became popular there were clones of him everywhere in North Philadelphia. They even tattooed themselves the same way he was tattooed.

I had friends that bought the clothing they saw in music videos the week they came out. Their language changed, the words they used changed. They were puppets to whomever was controlling the media on the television and music industry. Whatever culture or word was fabricated by the TV or radio was their world. This is far different from other ways of developing as a child. In other places books, comic books, affluent parents and great schooling provide counterweights to any lure from the TV. In North Philly you had the supermarket magazines and the corner store. The internet wasn't that popular either because it was still a baby back then. Interestingly enough though many places in "the hood" got DSL/Cable before the suburbs did because it was so close to the data centers in the center of the city. It's just not many people knew what the hell the internet was or how to use it. It was considered "one of those white people things" and thus not very useful. Except of course for the one smart guy that bought a bunch of blank CDs and downloaded napster songs or whatever movies he could for $5.

Of course I'm overgeneralizing the situation here. There are obviously people out there with good parents that knew about books and other things to counter any advances by a media monster bent on controlling these people. But in general most of these kids are just cogs in this machine. They're slaves spoonfed this culture into their brains by peers and media to keep them uneducated and in the hood. Wouldn't want those brown people thinking after all, that's too dangerous. Go into a church in "the hood" and see who's sponsoring the church and what messages the church is spreading.

But then so what? So what if a bunch of people think the world really is like the music videos they put on TV? R&B is far less crazy and has positive messages from various artists so what's the harm? Well the harm is people take that sort of thing seriously.and reinforce the violent mentality they see around them with music and television. The result is a young adult with a mind that thinks everyone out in the world must be punished very violently and they must instill fear in others or they're worthless to society. They're weak and pathetic to everyone around them. When was the last time you've seen someone in "hip hop" culture that's openly gay? What about the rappers whose career rides on their time in "the hood", when have they ever shown any emotional weakness?. What could possibly be wrong with having that mentality?

The worst case I ever saw personally was with an argument between four people. One guy stole the others cell phone and got caught. So now you had four guys staring at each other each backing their friend. However ghetto culture tells you not to call the cops, "no snitchin" you see it in hip hop comedy and music too. So of course these enterprising young gentlemen take the situation into their own hands. I woke up at 4am at a huge orange glow in the center of the street and lots of screaming. It turns out they had stabbed the two thieves 238 times and put them in their car outside and set it on fire with them still alive inside. The neighbors tried to put the flames out on one of the passengers in the car with hoses, ineffective. The other was burned to a crisp inside, clearly dead and ignored for the time being. As I saw this man rolling around on the street on fire  my mom was going nuts thinking it was my dad. It was the same model car as him so I had to actually go up and check that it wasn't my dad rolling around on the floor on fire for her own mental secuity. It's one of the more... interesting... things I've had to do. I told the neighbors to cover him with a wet towel if they could instead to put out the flames. Thankfully that worked and a few minutes later the place was swarming with police and fire department crews.

POLICE FIND 1 DEAD, 1 HURT INSIDE A BURNING VEHICLE Police found the severely burned body of one man and another man suffering from stab wounds inside a blazing four-wheel drive vehicle in Hunting Park yesterday. Officers and firefighters responding to a call found a black 1986 Chevrolet Blazer engulfed in flames at 4:21 a.m. in the redacted block of North Marshall Street. Inside were the dead man and the second, badly burned man,

The news stories always run these things in such an "exciting" tone. At the time I didn't actually know why those random men were on fire in front of my house. I didn't know why anyone would want to do that to someone I didn't even recognize. I took a criminal justice class for undergraduate for kicks and found out my professor used to work as an assistant to the DA in the city. He started talking about a car on fire with two people stabbed inside and I stopped him to ask if it happened to be in 1998 on my particular street. Ended up being the case, he explained that when the case went to trial the two guys who put them in there were confused as hell that the guy survived being burned and stabbed in a car. It was a fairly quick case for the jury because it was all over a goddamned phone. No, unlike civilized people you can't be a snitch or a little bitch about it. Of course not the reinforcement to the culture doesn't allow you that flexibility. Now of course people will go "not everyone is bad stop generalizing X point". But it doesn't matter what point I'm generalizing, the fact of the matter is there's something, anything reinforcing these behaviors and that is enough to cause an issue.