Keepin’ It Fake
What does the term “ghetto,” used as an adjective, mean to you? In her recently-released book Ghettonation, journalist Cora Daniels defines it as a catch-all for all behaviors irresponsible, crass, impulsive, and self-destructive. In his Washington Post review thereof, Spelman professor William Jelani Cobb agrees with Daniels’ overarching point that certain elements of black culture are, to say the least, problematic. But he argues that she conflates truly pernicious traits (e.g. crime, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse) with those that are merely tasteless, unrefined, or—if you prefer—culturally distinctive (hyper- expressiveness, excessive use of street slang, “ghetto-sounding” names). Cobb sees the lumping together of these two very different behavior categories under the unifying banner of “ghetto” as evidence of class bias on Daniels’ part. Whether or not that is the case, I think it’s likely that most laypeople probably commit the same error; that is, viewing ice grills and violence as part of a single mindset.
But forget about that for a second. What if those “harmless” ghetto habits didn’t connote social pathologies such as gang violence and poor impulse control? What if they were only seen by cultural outsiders as impolite, crude, or otherwise inappropriate? Under these assumptions, they’re still obstacles to black progress if they’re “always on,” so to speak. For me, one of the biggest problems with the “ghetto” mentality is its inability to incorporate code-switching. If you want to be wild, crazy and ridiculous with your friends, great—but on the job, a certain degree of conformity is called for. The fact that your employers are paying you licenses them to dictate certain aspects of your behavior. So if keepin’ it real isn’t in your job description, you’d best keep it fake at work.
Jelani might call me biased in favor of white middle-class values for pointing all this out. But he obviously knows how to keep a comfortable middle-class faculty position at a respected university, which means he probably doesn’t strut around campus with ice in his grill loudly hitting on the married women. Just like every other minority group in every other nation on the planet, we essentially have two choices: accommodate a little for the sake of long-term success, or keep it real 24/7 and get left behind. It’s no surprise that lots of young black men would love to get ahead while keeping it real, like rappers and ballers do, but that’s not realistic for the vast majority of us. We need to start acknowledging that code-switching is a critical requirement for success and that “ghetto-ness” is a serious liability in the world at large.
Published on April 3, 2007 at 10:52 pm.
24 Comments.
Filed under black culture, black image.
