{"id":30,"date":"2007-05-15T21:26:02","date_gmt":"2007-05-16T04:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2007-05-15T21:33:09","modified_gmt":"2007-05-16T04:33:09","slug":"not-my-kind-of-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Not My Kind of Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really wanted to like Cora Daniels\u2019s latest book, Ghettonation<\/em>. I wanted to, but I didn\u2019t. And when I condemn the book\u2019s stabs at humor, meandering footnotes, and unnecessary glossary of ghetto-isms it\u2019s not a wry attack on a book I didn\u2019t enjoy. On the contrary, I wanted this book to succeed and found these wearisome attributes to continue to cloud or overcast any relevance I could attain from the text.<\/p>\n

Picking up the book for a top-secret project I am partially involved in, I\u2019ll say I had an invested interest in gaining any insight into the concept of \u201cghetto\u201d from the text. Teaching in South Central, growing up in the past two decades, and simply being immersed in hyper-media youth culture, I felt like I understood what \u201cghetto\u201d means, but was hoping for a more dynamic, nuanced explanation to phenomena of society\u2019s embrace of all things \u201cghetto.\u201d After all, this is something I see my students embodying (or at least trying to embody) daily. The gigantic white t-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers is the ghetto uniform 101, with varying accessories optional. This kind of self-reflective paragraph that you, the reader, are currently scanning is exactly the kind of text that makes Ghettonation<\/em> so frustrating. The personal narrative that Daniels employs is not the best for a universal examination of \u201cghetto.\u201d The frame is too limited, even through the author\u2019s knowing eyes. Though claiming that \u201cghetto\u201d is not rooted in a specific class or race, Daniels\u2019 anecdotes and analysis end up legitimizing \u201cghetto\u201d as predominantly lower class and African American-centric (her examples of Paris Hilton and stomach stapling surgeries not<\/strong> withstanding).<\/p>\n

Daniels\u2019 fickle attempts at academic analysis are befuddled and deracinated by attempts at jocularity through \u201cghetto\u201d vernacular. After lambasting examples of ghetto behavior, Daniels frequently goes for the quick joke by demonstrating her own, occasional (or is that frequent?) ghetto behavior. Nearly every one of these examples is followed by a parenthetical note that, \u201c(I be ghetto).\u201d Cute. Well, it\u2019s cute at least the first time, but the trite utterance is found on nearly every page and, instead of utilizing the juxtaposition as something to build towards an argument, it merely siphons out any heat or momentum an argument may have been gaining.<\/p>\n

And then there was the discussion of education. I\u2019ll give credit to Daniels for properly enunciating that \u201cghetto\u201d is an embracement of low expectations; this is something that frustrates my curriculum daily. I have numerous students wanting nothing more than a \u201cD\u201d in my class so they can graduate \u2013 no other aspirations. But what about the hegemonic, class-ist structures that bar our students from success like \u2026 oh, say, No Child Left Behind? Daniels has exactly this much to say on the legislation:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal law requires schools to publicly report their performance data for the first time by race and ethnicity. Schools that do not produce acceptable text scores for all students are punished with a variety of economic sanctions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

In fact, 150 pages into the book (which itself is just shy of 200 pages in length) I was ready to finally give up. But the latest chapter\u2019s title was \u201cSchool Me\u201d and I knew \u2013 I knew<\/em> \u2013 that this was going to be filled with intellectual gems. And what did I learn here? I learned that, according to Daniels, the problem with our educational system can be summed up by the fact that our students are \u201cliving for the moment\u201d and not worried about their futures (see, low expectations). But is that it?? Why isn\u2019t the past invoked here? What about the fact that our students have had probably a decade\u2019s worth of shoddy teachers by the time they graduate? That the school system \u2013 at least in an urban \u201chigh poverty, high minority\u201d area (as official district data likes to call it) \u2013 deliberately frustrates and breaks our students. That the bridge from schools to prisons is seen daily as I watch student after student handcuffed in front of the school for laws like jaywalking and truancy<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I realize I\u2019m ranting here (it\u2019s a blog, after all), but it\u2019s frustrating to see NCLB reduced to a sentence that doesn\u2019t at all encapsulate what this fiasco is all about. It\u2019s also frustrating to see Daniels\u2019 reductionism about why are kids are failing.<\/p>\n

Finally, my biggest qualm about Ghettonation<\/em> is its lack of really adding anything to \u201cthe discourse\u201d as the phrase has been thrown around. In page 192 in the book, Daniels writes, \u201cThe time has come for the death of ghetto.\u201d However, Daniels never really convinced the reader that ghetto was \u201cbad\u201d or something that can even be signaled easily and exterminated (\u201cI be ghetto,\u201d remember?). Daniels begins and ends her book with the same aphorism: \u201cI am ghetto. I am not ghetto. I am you.\u201d I don\u2019t get it. I realize this is supposed to be the profound, oh snap, there is no spoon, cut the red wire or blue wire, it was Col. Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick<\/em> reveal, but it doesn\u2019t mean anything. Daniels conveniently dances around any reasonable challenges, explanations, or critique by figuratively shrugging her shoulders and saying that ghetto is everywhere and nowhere. Slick. If you\u2019re going to write a book called Ghettonation<\/em> and, at the end of it, you are going to call for \u201cthe death of ghetto,\u201d why wouldn\u2019t you actually explain what \u201cghetto\u201d means, why it is bad, and how to \u201ckill\u201d it? I ask these questions out of frustration. As I said, I really wanted for this book to give me answers \u2013 I\u2019ve been grappling with the \u201cghetto\u201d issue as well.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I\u2019m inclined to think that \u201cghetto\u201d is class and race based. Even when Daniels pointed to celebs acting ghetto, you have to remember the romantic allure of the lower class. Jarvis Cocker of Brit pop band Pulp sang it best:<\/p>\n

\u201cSing along with the common people,<\/em>
\n sing along and it might just get you through,<\/em>
\n laugh along with the common people,<\/em>
\n laugh along even though they’re laughing at you,<\/em>
\n and the stupid things that you do.<\/em>
\n Because you think that poor is cool.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>