Ghettoization as an Act of Violence Against the Black Body
The black body in the United States of America has historically been the locus of a great deal of violence, both state-sanctioned and otherwise. Much of this violence is made possible through the process of ghettoization, in which black bodies are restricted to certain geopolitical zones which limit their socioeconomic and physical mobility.
Through analyzing racial covenants in land deeds from Hennepin County, Minnesota and the ways in which ghettoization has been portrayed in several works of African American literature, we can begin to understand the process of ghettoization as inherently violent.
The Mapping Prejudice Project began at the University of Minnesota “to identify and map racial restrictions buried in historic Minneapolis property deeds.” The racial covenants uncovered by the Mapping Prejudice Project reveal two things about this country’s history: the continued desire to create a white utopia separate from the increasingly diverse country around them and who gets to be considered white.
One of the deeds, from September 18, 1939, specifies that the premises shall not “be conveyed, mortgaged, or leased to any person or persons who are not of pure Caucasian blood or descent.” The emphasis on “pure Caucasian blood” is a sentiment echoed in Colson Whitehead’s North Carolina chapter, from the novel The Underground Railroad. When the men criticize the white people of Louisiana. They represent a “repulsive mongrel state” and have “pollute[d] their European bloodlines with Egyptian darkness” (Whitehead 168). If the goal of white separatist is to live free of the presence of people of color, then the purity of white blood is essential for the creation of a white society. A biracial person, even if they are white-passing, disrupts the homogeneity of this dream society simply by existing. They have no place in this white utopia.
The white utopia created by these deeds and by the white men in Whitehead’s fictional North Carolina is based on a policy of expulsion or exclusion of people of color. “We abolished niggers” announces one of the rich white men of Whitehead’s North Carolina when they had passed legislation that banned black people from being in the state.
But the exclusion of people of color from certain residential areas is not always explicitly stated. Sometimes it is the slow gentrification of a neighborhood, where rent hikes and cultural shifts make the area hostile toward people of color. Sometimes it is redlining or race-based predatory lending which denies people of color financial access to certain residential areas.
The irony is that, presently, most white people in America believe that have the option to see themselves as other than white, but as George Yancy notes in the chapter “Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self,” “whiteness is precisely the historical metanarrative that affect their sense of themselves as atomic individuals, and as sites of exclusive transcendence” (Yancy 2015, 109). In other words, white Americans live in a paradox in which whiteness forms the core of their identity, but it is not recognized as whiteness because it has been established as the racial norm and, therefore, transcends categorization. This reinforces a racial binary in which white people are on one end and everyone else is marked other, while simultaneously denying the binary exists.
This is how the ghetto is maintained without the presents of explicit racial covenants in deeds. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva refers to the way racial injustice and segregation is explained away as “abstract liberalism” (141). Abstract liberalism imagines that we are living in a post-racial society and applies political and economic liberalism “to racial matters in an abstract and decontextualized way” (Bonilla-Silva 2001, 141).
In this age of growing white nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, it feels almost irresponsible to avoid the subject of how white separatism has contributed to the creation of the ghetto. The purpose of segregation is to prevent the mixing of the so-called inferior and superior races, sure enough, but it is also the creation of an alternative history.
In America, the antithesis to the ghetto is the suburb. It is close enough to the city to be considered contemporary and economically stable, but far enough away to be considered morally pure. Historically, the suburb has been the domain of the quintessential white American family. These predominantly or, sometimes, entirely white spaces mythologize the meaning of whiteness in America. The bind that this puts white people in is that they end up “trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it” (Baldwin [1962] 1993, 8). The erasure of people of color erases the historical trauma that they have suffered at the hands of white supremacy.
The erasure of people of color erases the historical trauma that they have suffered at the hands of white supremacy. The absence of the African American denies this history of slavery, of Jim Crow, of police brutality that built this country and that built the wealth that allows whiteness to live so comfortably. James Baldwin writes to his nephew in The Fire Next Time “I am, then, both visibly and legally the descendant of slaves in a white, Protestant country, and this is what it means to be an American Negro” (84). Because the presence of a black body in a white space disrupts the alternative history created for whiteness. Because the black body has been turned into an artifact of historical trauma at the hands of white supremacy. Because the black body would force the white supremacist to confront his own definition of what it means to be American.
America is nothing if not efficient and it has done a wonderful job relying on homosocial interactions to make residential segregation seem normal. In his book White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva reports the results of a survey in which black people are asked what they believe is the cause of residential segregation. He reports that “although the majority of blacks blamed the government, whites, or racism for school and residential segregation and demanded school equality…their views were not monolithical” (Bonilla-Silva 2001, 171). A few black people surveyed argued that segregation was natural, while others claimed it was no one’s fault. “the postwar United States underwent a slow geopolitical repositioning that involved many racial dimensions” (Winant 2001, 147).
Baldwin writes “This innocent country has set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended you should perish” (7). Ghettoization is inherently violent because of the way that it politicizes the black body and, therefore, leaves it vulnerable to more apparent forms of physical and judicial violence. In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that the mission of the ghetto is “to crack knees, ribs and arms” (23). There is the creation of artificial borders which entrap the residents of the ghetto and make them feel as though they cannot escape.
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
The black body is politicized in the ghetto because the black body is made into a reflection of the landscape in the ghetto. This means that is the ghetto has health and mental care facilities which are underfunded, the ghetto also has a plethora of black bodies plagues with treatable health issues and ignored mental illnesses. In the ghetto, the black body is gerrymandered out of existence as district lines are drawn and redrawn to reduce the impact of the black vote.
In the ghetto, the black body is reduced to a symbol of the “Struggle”. The black body is a reminder of slavery and Jim Crow. It is a reminder of racialized housing practices and predatory lending. It is a reminder of the prison-industrial complex. The black body is not allowed its own individual history but must bear the history of every black body in every ghetto since the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The black body is completely detached from individualized black consciousness, which is to say it is detached from humanity.
Black communities are often aggressively policed by officers who do not live in the communities they are policing. In this way the police act as an imperial force, enforcing the unjust laws of a distant authority. It plays on the historical mistrust that black people have in the police force, mistrust that has been earned after centuries of police brutality. In From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor invokes the early twentieth century laws called the Black Codes to argue that the police are often tools for protecting the interests of a small, influential group of people and upholding the ideals of white supremacy. He writes that “African Americans had to produce labor contracts to prove they were not vagrants or be hurled back into conditions intimately resembling slavery” (Taylor 2016, 109).
Taylor also present several excerpts from the Black Codes which were written and enforced on St. Landry’s Parish in rural Louisiana following the Civil War. One such code reads:
Section 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no negro shall be allowed to pass within the limits of said parish without a special permit in writing from his employer. Whoever shall violate his provision shall pay a fine of two dollars and fifty cents, or in default thereof shall be forced to work four days on the public road or suffer corporeal punishments hereafter.
The language bears similarities to the racial covenants from Hennepin County.
Both documents were drafted following the Civil War, but it is telling that the covenants come from a northern state, which would normally be assumed to be more supportive of integration. This is what Yancy means when he calls whiteness insidious. These documents intend to restrict the movement of black bodies, which is also the goal of ghettoization.
Colson Whitehead brilliantly makes parallels between the slave patrollers and the contemporary police force in his 2016 novel. In his chapter on Ridgeway, the famed slavecatcher, Whitehead writes, “[The patrollers] stopped niggers they knew to be free, for their amusement but also to remind the Africans of the forces arrayed against them, whether they were owned by a white man or not” (77). This passage carries echoes of the Black Codes, but it also is reminiscent of policies like stop-and-frisk and Arizona’s SB 1070. It shows that the role of the police is to carry out the criminalization of black existence, like those notarized in the racial covenants from Hennepin County, Minnesota.
These local police forces are increasingly militarized, often receiving tanks and other weapons from the United States Armed Forces when the military upgrades. As we have seen in Ferguson and in other cases, these tools are often used disproportionately. Officers with plasticine shields and tear grenades are more outfitted to deal with guerilla terrorists than they are with protestors carrying homemade signs. Black bodies become the sites of “state-sanctioned racial violence that [is] inextricably linked to vitriolic speech” (Yancy 2015, 109).
Militarizing the police contributes to this alternative history. The actions of the police are excused because American culture encourages hero-worship, in which the police force and the military are all beyond criticism because they are supposedly risking their lives for the good of the American people. Their judgement is assumed to be sound or, even worse, they are absolved of responsibility for their actions because they are “just following orders.” So, when the white people in the suburbs see the police greet protestors with riot gear and violence, they assume that the police are responding appropriately.
Let’s put a few assumptions about gang violence to bed right off the top. Gang violence is not the result of some moral failing within ghettoized communities. It is not proof of an inherent moral capacity for violence nor is it a direct consequence aggressive hip hop culture. Gang violence, like much of the violence that happens in marginalized communities, is a case of misdirected resistance. It spurs from the desperation to be able to claim something (land, people, anything) in country that denies people economic mobility based on race or class. Gang violence is an attempt to play the game of the American Dream, which measures success in terms of material wealth, without having any of the pieces that make moving around the board possible and with the knowledge that everyone playing is not playing by the same rules.
In the story of the boy who aimed a gun at a young Coates, the internalization of this objectification is evident. The black body is understood to be the site of violence even by those in possession of one. How does one exert ownership of a black body? Coates’ answer is through violence. He writes that when the boy pulled out the gun, he was “holding [Coates’] entire body in his small hands” (Coates 19).
Angie Thomas explores a similar subject in her young adult novel The Hate U Give. Starr says that she does not “understand fighting over streets nobody owns” (Thomas 2017, 17). However, as the people of Garden Heights continue to lose their streets to riots and fear of police retaliation after Khalil is killed by a police officer, it becomes clear why these gang members are so desperate to “own” the streets. It is the illusion of control, the illusion of power. To live in a ghettoized black body is to live knowing that nothing you have, not even your physical form, is ever truly yours for an extended period of time. It is the ultimate form of alienation. To be a part of a gang is to attempt to overcome alienation from fellow humans, if no alienation from the self. To try to claim a part of the streets, no matter how small, is to attempt to overcome alienation from your surroundings.
This localization of violence also has adverse psychological effects on ghettoized black bodies. A 2006 study done by the National Center for Biotechnology Information reveled that after surveying 617 African American patients “in primary care setting” 65% reported exposure to a traumatic event. Of those who reported exposure, 51% showed signs of life time prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. That is roughly a third of the participants showing signs of depression or PTSD. The study also found that “African Americans exposed to traumatic experiences are more likely to be at increased risk for developing alcohol and/or substance problems” (NCBI 2006, 1630). This is yet another way that ghettoization is inherently violent. The concentration of black bodies in low-income neighborhoods with little opportunity for upward mobility increases exposure to these traumatic events which can lead to long term mental and health issues, including PTSD and addiction.
Thomas explores these psychological effects in The Hate U Give through Starr, who has seen two of her best friends shot and killed by the time she is sixteen years old. Her trauma expresses itself through flashbacks to the night Khalil was killed. These are triggered when her white boyfriend, Chris, grabs her hands. She imagines the cop to be “as white as Chris” (Thomas 2017, 83).
There is one other section of the Black Codes that Taylor presents that is particularly troublesome:
Section 11. Be it further ordained That is shall be the duty of every citizen to act as a police officer for the detection of offences and the apprehension of offenders, who shall immediately be handed over to the proper captain or chief of patrol.
The Black Codes give white citizens authority over black bodies in a way that is reflected today in the numerous calls to 911 made by white people and against black people. This is the criminalization of black existence outside of these carefully constructed geopolitical zones. This makes every white person complicit in the criminalization of black existence. Even if they choose not to report a black person for violating the unwritten laws of existence, they are complicit because they are given power over black bodies by virtue of their whiteness. They are complicit in that their governance is based on a mythology of white purity and black immorality and this is a myth that only they have the authority to deconstruct.
In his closing remarks to his nephew, Baldwin writes, “if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it” (10). This, too, is the role of literature in our understanding of our current sociopolitical landscape.
Every method of ghettoization discussed in this article, legislative or extrajudicial, has a literary counterpart. There is an instance where a black author attempted to understand the psychology or the philosophy of categorical segregation or violence. Coates and Baldwin attempt to create a theoretical framework through which we can begin to understand what it means to be white (or to believe one is white) and what it means to be a Negro. What does it mean to possess a black body with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow lurking in the shadows and in legal codes?
Thomas’s fictional account of the aftermath following a police shooting explains the psychological effects of ghettoization and trauma in a way that is more widely accessible than the NCBI study. Whitehead makes assertive statements about white complicity in the creation and maintenance of the ghetto through policies of exclusion and the role of the police force in upholding white supremacy.
The role of literature is to make broad, abstract topics, like ghettoization and whiteness, accessible to that when we are presented historical artifacts, like the deeds from Hennepin County, we can use the literature to make connections between the artifacts and contemporary landscape. They are the tools with which we can untangle the alternative histories on which this country was built.
References
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Random House, 1993.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. White Supremacy & Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2001.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015.
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. New York: Harper Collins, 2017.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Anchor Books, 2016.
Winant, Howard. The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Yancy, George. “Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self.” In “I Don’t See Color”: Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege, edited by Bettina Bergo and Tracey Nicholls. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.
