imagining the real - Goldsmiths, University of London

imagining the real
chicano youth
hip hop
race
space
and
authenticity
by India MacWeeney
ISBN:978-1-904158-91-2
First published in Great Britain 2008 by Goldsmiths, University of
London/India MacWeeney 2008
©Goldsmiths, University of London/India MacWeeney 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any form or by any means without the permission of the publishers or
the authors concerned.
Additional copies of this publication are available from:
Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of
London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.
Price £7.50. Cheques, made payable to Goldsmiths College, should be
sent with the order.
1
Abstract:
This paper is the result of ethnographic research I conducted with a
group of Chicano 1 teenagers from the Northern New Mexico city of
Española between June and July of 2006 on the ways in which global
hip hop intersects with local identity. Through the analysis that follows,
I will explore my subjects’ relationship to hip hop culture, and their
understanding of how this culture is consumed and emulated in their
community at large. Conceptions of place, race, authenticity, class,
and taste emerge as important in my informants’ readings of popular
discourses and local practices, as well as in my analysis.
Nuevo Mexícanos:
New Mexican cultural identity emerges out of a history of alternate
dominance and subjugation, in which ethnicity, nation, land, and
belonging are broken-apart and reconfigured. Chicanos occupy a
unique ethnic position here, as the majority are not immigrants from
Mexico (Rosaldo, 2003). Rather, they are the descendants of Mexican
citizens whose land was incorporated into the United States during the
war of 1848 (Jankowski, 1986; Mato, 2003; Rosaldo, 2003) and many
can trace a ‘pure’ line back to Spain (Gonzales-Berry and Maciel,
2000). Consequently, ‘Identification with a Spanish past is…stronger in
New Mexico than in other regions that have a strong Chicano presence’
(Gonzales-Berry and Maciel, 2000, p.1), and it is common for New
Mexican Chicanos to view themselves as culturally distinct from those
in Texas and California (Jankowski, 1986; Maciel and Gonzales-Berry,
2000) as well as from recent Latin American immigrants in their home
communities. Maciel and Gonzales-Berry (2000) argue that because
1
The term Chicano, originally a racial slur, was appropriated by the Mexican-American civil rights
movement in the 1960s. Chicano is a term applicable to anyone of Mexican descent who lives in the USA.
2
‘the political (and social) position of Nuevomexícanos 2 was unique’
historically, it has made their ‘status and development different from
those of Chicano communities in other regions of United States’
(p.85).
Conquistador and Dreamcatcher entwine in a curious homage to a complicated history.
Entering Española.
I lived in Northern New Mexico for the better half of eight years
between 1997 and 2005. Among many Anglo transplants such as
myself, Española was a place to be avoided: working class and
majority Chicano, it is barren, littered with fast food drive-thrus, and
often comes into view of the larger Northern New Mexico community in
the form of stories of heroin trafficking and gang violence. It does not
seem to be the ‘land of enchantment’ that many of these lifestyle
2
Maciel and Gonzales-Berry (2000) use the term Nuevomexícanos to reflect the culture particular to New
Mexican Chicanos.
3
migrants moved to New Mexico in search of, but rather a land of
disenfranchisement.
Jeremy,
a
19
year
old
graffiti
artist
and
filmmaker, explains Española’s reputation as a troubled community:
It’s like you see things when you’re in this town – you see
people and how they have to live – and I’m not gonna say my life was that
hard cause it really wasn’t because I had my parents and they provided for
me what I needed. But there’s a lot of people that have it hard in this town
– they don’t have (what I had) you know? And I think that’s why a lot of
people talk about (Española) like it’s bad or whatever.
While the area surrounding the town is composed of farmland, Indian
pueblos and ‘Spanish’ villages steeped in local folkways, Española itself
is a quasi-urban environment of 10,000 people where cows graze
between disused trailers decorated with graffiti tags. One of the young
men I interviewed characterized Española as ‘rural with a really dull urban
twist’, which, though unflattering, is pretty accurate. It is located in Rio
Arríba County: the poorest in the state. Española is known (locally
anyway) as the ‘lowrider 3 capital of the world’, as the Chicano tradition
of customizing classic cars is a still going strong there, as it is in Rio
Arríba County more generally.
Process.
While the state of New Mexico is a rich mixture of Hispanic, Anglo and
Native American ethnic groups (among others), Española was 84.4%
‘Hispanic’ according to the 2000 US Census. The expression ‘black
community’ seems out of place here, which had, according to the
same report, a .6% black population. Nonetheless, black popular
3
A car is made into a lowrider through baroque alterations and embellishments which emphasize religious
devotion, prosperity and Chicano pride. It originated in the southwest of the United States. A lowrider is
both the car and the person driving it (Chappell, 2000). Lowriding is sometimes but not always associated
with gang culture.
4
music from hip hop to ‘oldies’ has been enthusiastically consumed in
Española for generations.
Illustrated trailer on the way into Española.
In 2001, I was working at a youth shelter on the rapidly developing
but decidedly unglamorous south end of Santa Fé, New Mexico as a
youth worker. For the many kids that came to the shelter from
Española, rap was (more often than not) the music of choice. My idea
for this project stemmed from an interest in how kids from a
dominantly Chicano community related to and through a mediated
notion of ‘blackness’ and the ‘ghetto’ in their consumption of rap, and
how rap music ‘came to occupy the space between their experience of
race and their conceptualisation of it’ (Hewitt, 1986, p.7).
5
Five years passed, and I was attending graduate school in London. For
my dissertation research, I decided to revive this idea and return to
New Mexico to conduct interviews and participant observation with a
diverse group of local young people about hip hop, identity, race and
place. Through a colleague I got in touch with Diego López (27yrs.)
the coordinator of Hands across Cultures Teen Centre (HAC) which
organizes art, recreation and prevention programs for area youth.
Diego grew up in Española listening to hip hop, started making films in
high school, and went on to study media arts at UNM in Albuquerque.
He has chosen to return to the community he grew up in, and is
dedicated to making a positive contribution to it through his work at
the HAC Teen Centre. He has a talent with people and seems to be
able to speak with administrators and youth with equal ease and
grace.
When I first met Diego (and each time thereafter) his manner was
relaxed and open. He hugged me hello on our second meeting and
listened intently as I spoke. When asked how he is, he responds
simply with ‘chillin’. He is good at what he does and is respected and
well liked by the youth with whom he works. Diego helped me to
arrange a group interview with Donny (age unreported), Trent (16 yrs)
and Jesse (19 yrs), all of whom spend time at the centre and are
interested in hip hop culture. Diego made a point of coming and
shaking hands with each of them before we began the interview. Their
willingness to speak with me was due largely to their trust in him.
From online research I found out about Youth Conservation Corps
(YCC), a summer work program at Española Valley High School
(EVHS). I dropped by the high school one day to enquire, and found
the group at work on the school’s grounds. I explained my project to
6
the group leader: Lawrence Naranjo, and was permitted to spend time
on the work site with the young people in the program. After a week’s
time, I offered to teach the required but unpopular daily writing class
as a means of engaging with youth in the program. It was clear that
Lawrence enjoyed teaching writing about as much as the teens
enjoyed sitting through a class after working all day. So, he was happy
to have a break and I was happy to have an opportunity to engage
with these young people in a more meaningful way. I had my students
write about music: who listens to what, how musical taste relates to
other life choices, how music and identity are intertwined. We then
discussed what they had written. After I had taught a few classes I
arranged interviews with Robert (17 yrs), Jesse 4 (for the second time)
and Stephen (17 yrs), who were the most engaged during class and
the most interested in hip hop.
I was connected with my remaining informants: Jeremy (19 yrs),
Ángel (18 yrs) and Ryan (18 yrs) by Ellen Kaiper, the creator and
director of a very successful video production program at the high
school, which all three young men had been involved in. Incidentally,
Diego López had been through the same program when he was a
student at the high school, years earlier. I cold-called Jeremy, Ángel,
and Ryan, and set up the interviews by telephone. Their willingness to
meet with me sight unseen was premised upon the strength of their
relationship with Ellen and the high school’s video program. I met
Ángel and Jeremy together (as they are good friends), and Ryan
separately. While the interaction with Ryan was limited to one
interview, Jeremy and Ángel became important contributors to my
research.
4
Jesse was involved with both HAC and YCC. I interviewed him on three different occasions in both
contexts.
7
The most successful interviews with my young informants were
conducted in groups. I found that in the group context the boys were
able to riff off one another and make connections they might not have
made if stuck alone with a 30-something year old white woman from
New York! 5 Further, not all of these young people were able to
articulate the links between their lived experience and cultural ideology
in response to the direct questioning of a one-on-one interview (See
Hewitt, 1986).
Through the process of informal group interviews the boys made
intuitive links between experience, opinion and knowledge collectively.
I entered into their dialogue, allowing them set the terms of the
discourse within broad topics that I was looking to explore. Some
interviews were conducted informally in the context of other activities
such as photography or graffiti writing. I hired Ángel and Jeremy, who
are experienced video makers, to assist me in documenting a lowrider
and custom car show 6 . I thought that utilizing their skills in this way
would be useful for my research and validating to their sense of
themselves as professionals. The pay probably didn’t hurt either. In
this context talk flowed quite comfortably.
We Are…
That all of my informants are male and almost all were connected to
youth programs through their own creative work (mostly video making
and graffiti projects) was something of an accident. I had actually
been looking for teens (male or female) who were not engaged with
their community in this way. I was interested in finding disaffected
5
Frosh (2002) found that the boys he interviewed felt similarly free to joke and free-associate in the group
context. He argued however that vis-à-vis personal topics, his informants were more comfortable in a oneon-one interview. For more personal subjects, I divided the boys into pairs of friends.
6
All photographs were taken by the author unless otherwise noted.
8
kids, disengaged from youth groups (such as clubs and classes) who
may have flirted with the underground economy and gangs, youth who
connected to rap music through a fantasy of criminalised blackness.
Instead I found a group of highly critical and engaged young men who
expressed dismay about the current state of mainstream rap and
those in their community who emulated its stock personas.
My informants came from backgrounds which ranged from very
troubled to quite stable. In either case, many have seen the drug
culture in Española impact their families:
Growing up I lived with my dad and my mom and they got divorced when I
was 7 years old…8…I don’t even know, and then I started living with my
dad for two years and then I moved with my mom to Albuquerque for two
years – and then I came back up here and finished up middle school and
high school. They’ve always been into drugs, like heroin and stuff like that
and then my younger sister got into it and then (she) had a kid when she
was a senior, so I’m an uncle.
My dad he became a mechanic and my parents got divorced because my
dad got into drugs pretty bad, but now he’s completely clean for ten years
and now he is going back to college. He’s struggling but he’s working hard
and I’m happy for him.
All of them are or were students at Española Valley High School. Many
of them are also graffiti writers and know each other through those
circles:
There’s a lot of kids at the high school who like hit up (write graffiti tags)
and there’s kind of an unspoken bond between all of them because it’s
graffiti and that’s just the way it is.
While some feel a certain bond with Española, the place where they
were raised, all of them to a greater or lesser extent feel limited and
frustrated by the lack of opportunities and activities open to them
there:
9
I went to New York. I went to the National Youth Poetry Slams – and we
were around like 400 crazy po’ kids from around the world. And just being
around that many intellectually acute people who were like chill in such a
tight place – made me think of how lame this place really is. Yeah, can’t
wait to leave this place.
Most shared a similar dismay with the current state of rap, and felt
that it did not stay true to the ethos of hip hop culture:
Sometimes I feel like rap today isn’t… I don’t think it should be considered
hip hop, you know? It’s not real to what hip hop is. All of it’s the same, it’s
always talking about jewellery and girls and guns and stuff like that. And I
think that hip hop is more than that, has more of a meaning to it than that.
Two of my informants pose by the dam.
‘Staying true’ was important to them – not only in their music, but in
their daily lives. They viewed themselves in Trent’s words as ‘for real
kids’. Through the critique that they made of local hip hop trends in
10
our interviews, these young men articulated their authenticity and
confirmed their individuality. They defined themselves most strongly
by what they were not (see Bjurstrom, 1997), describing who others
were, they let me fill in the blanks.
Whose Music?
Anybody can listen to whatever kind of music they want, but a lot of
people only give attention to the kind of music that deals with their own
race.
- Stephanie, 16 yrs.
In ‘Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections’, Appiah (1998)
critiques what he dubs ‘cultural geneticism’. The logic of cultural
geneticism goes that ‘you earn rights to culture that is marked with
the mark of your race’ or you are disallowed rights if you and the
music are ‘marked’ as different (p.90). Certainly music can be a
container for racial or ethnic identities (Bjurstrom, 1997). Chambers
(1976, p.158) writes that black folk music ‘revolves around the black
experience, black consciousness of economic and social deprivation,
and the continuing enslavement in a racist ideology’. As hip hop
emerged out of a contemporary branch of the same experience and
traditions (see Lipsitz, 1994a/b; Rose, 1994a/b; Potter, 1995), issues
of
racial
or
ethnic
ownership
and
authenticity
are
especially
pronounced within its discourses (see Rivera, 2003; Flores, 2004).
In speaking with my informants, I was curious to find out to what
extent they identified hip hop as ‘black music’ and if this affected their
feelings about listening to it. Diego López (HAC Teen Centre
Coordinator) is working towards certification as a drug prevention
specialist. Ironically, he plays mostly gangsta rap in his office at the
teen centre. During our interview he listed his favourite rap artists for
me and I asked him about ‘cultural geneticism’:
11
India:
The rappers you mentioned are all African American artists;
was there any part of you that thought of it as black music?
Diego:
I think I didn’t view it as black music. But around here there
isn’t that many black people….I didn’t even think about it, I
didn’t think it was ours or theirs. But when a lot of Latin groups
started coming out, I gravitated to them a lot too, because I felt
that they were more what I could identify with. Still, I still jam
out to black music. But when Cypress Hill came out, I felt like
they could be part of us…
Bennett (2000) found among one section of the white hip hop
community in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK – a city which like Española
has a very small black population – a sense of similarity between his
informants’ lived experience in Newcastle and the lived experience
described in rap music shaped their relationship with the music to a
much greater extent than an identification (or lack thereof) with black
culture.
For these local enthusiasts, hip hop’s use as an authentic mode
of expression does not centre around the form of felt association
with the African-American experience… Rather, there is a
commonly held view among white hip hoppers that the essence
of hip hop culture relates to its ready translation into a medium
that directly bespeaks the white British working-class
experience.
(Bennett, 2000, p.158-9, original emphasis)
Like the young people in Bennett’s study, Diego’s connection to rap
was premised in large part upon the way in which its dominant
concerns related to his own social experience, not a connection to the
black experience per se:
India:
Did you relate to any of the social problems that rap
describes?
Diego:
Definitely, the whole drug culture, the whole drug culture you
could identify with over here. Like Outkast – ‘I’m giving a
shout out to my uncle Donnell locked up in prison’ – and you
12
think about your own family, your uncle who’s locked up in
prison for drugs – you know what I mean?
During our interview at the Española public library, Ryan, a selfpossessed young man who studies at the University of New Mexico,
depicted rap as incidentally but not essentially black. However, he
argued that hip hop speaks most forcefully to and from the AfricanAmerican experience:
Ryan:
I think (blacks are) more into rap cause it’s a way for them to
get out and it’s what they know. And over here its Northern
New Mexico music and that’s what we know…but really (it’s)
what (you) can relate to…like Eminem can relate to it, and
now he’s rapping too…
In her study of media consumption and identity among AfricanCanadian teens, J. Kelly (2004) found that like Ryan, her informants
accepted whites (like Eminem) as having hip hop authenticity if they
had had certain kinds of socio-geographic experiences. By Ryan’s
logic, if you can relate to hip hop from your own struggles then you
have earned your place in the culture (see Rivera, 2003; Boyd, 2004).
Ryan connects ‘relating’ to where you are from and the kinds of
knowledges that are developed at the intersection of place and
experience. His view is that blacks continue to dominate in hip hop
production because of this type of socio-geographic knowledge,
because it is, ‘what they know’.
When I first met Trent at the HAC Teen Centre, he looked me in the
eye and immediately shook my hand. Precocious and intelligent, he
seemed like a kid who had spent a lot of time among educated adults.
In contrast to Ryan’s rather race-neutral portrayal of hip hop roots and
culture, Trent on several occasions emphasized that hip hop had
emerged out of a black cultural milieu. But like Ryan (and for that
13
matter, like all the other young men whom I interviewed) Trent
believed that earning your place in a culture hinges on a kind of
authenticity that comes out of the lived experience of particular kinds
of places (see Flores, 1994; Kelley, 1996; Forman, 2002; Rivera,
2003; Baldwin, 2004). Trent spoke about his own cultural identity in
these same terms:
Trent:
My mom is a Mexican American and my dad’s like
completely white and they got divorced when I was three
and my dad lives in Austin and so I was raised by a
Hispanic woman my entire life, so I would more associate
with that group, but I am still half white. But I think no matter what,
if you grow up in Northern New Mexico you are going to get that
(Hispanic) influence.
Forman (2002, p.60) argues that ‘(p)eople… ascribe to particular
discourses about places as a mark of their “insider status” in particular
groups or communities’. Trent used this logic when he granted
Hispanics hip hop belonging on the basis of being ‘there’ (the South
Bronx, South Central LA) and ‘living the same lifestyle’ (see Flores,
1994; Potter, 1995; Rivera, 2003; R. Kelly, 2004) as black hip
hoppers:
Trent:
Rivera
(2003)
I think that the black people were mainly the movers and
shakers for the hip hop movement but Hispanics were there
man, they were there and they lived the same lifestyle, but it’s
aimed more towards black culture because I think that’s really
where it originated mostly.
reasons
that
Chicanos
were
granted
‘honorary
nigganess’ or ‘street blackness’ in hip-hop’s movement in the 1990s
towards ‘lived experience’ as the litmus test of ‘authenticity’. Referring
to poor Latinos she writes: ‘Such Latinos could even be perceived as
closer to this class-based blackness than so-called bourgie (bourgeois)
blacks’ (p.99). Both Ryan and Trent reflected this perspective as they
14
explained to me how place and experience override race in the
construction of hip hop authenticity.
Similar Struggles in a Global Ghetto.
I was told before we met that Ángel came from a difficult family
background. He mostly kept his distance during our interview, but at
times revealed things about himself that were deeply personal in a
detached and matter-of-fact tone. He explained to me how hip hop
helped him deal with his struggles growing up:
Ángel:
Like when I was growing up I had a hard family and stuff, a hard life
– so like its just like the lyrics that they say sometimes has to do
with my lifestyle…It just helps me overcome the hard times that I
am going through…
While much of the rap that Ángel listened to came out of a
geographical and cultural milieu that was a far cry from the high
desert of Northern New Mexico, he was, nonetheless, closely
acquainted with a set of class experiences and social troubles parallel
to those depicted in its lyrics.
In Trent and Ryan’s thoughts on hip hop authenticity, they articulated
a relationship between certain kinds of places and the experiences that
those places give rise to, as they made links between environment,
experience and identity. Clearly, disparate communities have identified
to rap through a notion of similar struggles and the broadly conceived
‘ghetto’ in which such struggles take place (Bennett, 2000; Prevos,
2001; Wermuth, 2001; Huq, 2003). The ghetto has therefore become
a trope through which commonality is asserted. In Ángel’s conception,
‘ghetto-struggles’ are not restricted to the black community:
15
Ángel:
I mean I see just the ghetto, you know, they’re not the same
exact ghetto but we both go through struggles…. And respect,
we (the black and Chicano communities) have respect for
each other I know that.
Certainly ‘(r)apper’s emphasis on posses and neighborhood has
brought the ghetto back into the public consciousness’ (Rose, 1994a,
p.11). Rivera (2003) argues, for example, that the movement towards
a notion of ‘honorary nigganess’ in the 1990s was premised in part on
a shift towards ‘ghettocentricity’. Through ghettocentric rap ‘the
diverse experiences of being young and black or Latino in America’ are
‘expressed with a shared emphasis on spatial location and identity
formation but informed by radically varied contexts and environment’
(Forman, 2002, p.3). The ‘respect’ that Ángel referred to is premised
upon the ghetto authenticity that the barrios of Española and the black
ghetto share.
Abandoned trailer settlement west of town.
16
While Diego comes from a very solid and supportive family, he told me
that he grew up with very little money and witnessed friends and
family getting involved in ‘the dope game’ in Española:
Diego:
I grew up very poor financially but like with a strong
family. That’s the major factor to where I didn’t get
caught up in the dope game and all that stuff…Like I
turned to sports and stuff like that, but it’s definitely
around. Like even in my family, like cousins and stuff
like that, they all went to prison for slanging (dealing) – you
know what I mean? I think I made it out just
because of my (immediate) family.
Diego elaborated on the way in which his experience of the local drug
culture is reflected in the lyrics of rap music. His connection is based
on a certain kind of experience and a certain kind of place:
I think a lot of people around here can relate because they
have similar cultures, growing up in the ghetto or not
necessarily the ghetto here, more like barrios, you know what I
mean?
In Diego’s response – ‘growing up in the ghetto’ is an experience of a
place and of certain kinds of social problems – in this case ‘the whole
drug culture’. In his description of the barrio as a Chicano ghetto both
spaces lose their specificity in terms of ethnicity and culture via an
emphasis on similar experience.
Throughout the interview, Diego emphasized the various crossovers
between black and Chicano cultures and non-white groups more
generally. The space of the barrio or ghetto becomes the ideological
unifier for ‘groups of different backgrounds sharing the bottom’
(Flores, 1994, p.93). Mato (2003) has argued that as much as the
barrio is a real geographic and social space, it is also a Hispano
‘imagined transnational community’ (p.282). But the notion of the
17
ghetto has become even more general and inclusive than this. The
importance of race is elided in favour of a universal notion of ‘the
ghetto’ and the experiences which are endemic to ‘ghetto life’.
Wall and broken window, Riverside Drive.
I first met Jesse, Donny and Trent at the HAC teen centre where Diego
arranged a group interview. Jesse and Trent treated me with respect,
and responded enthusiastically to my questions. I think that they were
pleased an adult was interested in hearing their perspectives on a
culture which is very significant to them, so interested, that she would
be audio-taping their responses. In contrast, when Donny showed up
late to the meeting, he shook my hand but avoided my gaze. It
seemed important to him to communicate his disinterest to me. He
spent much of the time during the interview playing with his lip ring
18
and looking around the room like he wished he was somewhere else.
Nonetheless, he, like the others had much of interest to say.
When I asked this group of young men how they related to rap lyrics
from their experiences of growing up in Española, they described the
powerlessness and stasis which often characterize hip hop depictions
of the ghetto. Indeed, Española is clearly lacking in positive sources of
activity and engagement for the youth who call it home. Young
people’s attachment to their music becomes especially vital here. The
following is a passage from a song by one of Jesse’s favourite rappers,
Common:
The days of old Chicago and Fun Town.
As shorties we run ‘round, play strike outs till sun down.
But the shit ain’t as fun now, and the city’s all run down.
I’m out with my crew, ain’t nuthin’ to do but…
Niggas be rollin’
Ain’t nowhere to go…
Niggas be rollin’
When asked, Jesse, Trent and Donny articulated the link between the
felt quality of everyday ghetto life as illustrated in rap lyrics and their
lived experiences of Española:
India:
What kinds of struggles do you relate to in rap music?
Donny:
Yeah, I don’t know. How they explain living day to day the
same thing… Get up go to work, come home, go to sleep and
do the same thing over.
Jesse:
Nothing changes.
India:
So there’s something about the monotony, nothing changing
etc?
19
Trent:
Yeah, especially when you live in a town like this. But that’s
like a pretty recurring issue in a lot of rap songs, like ghetto
rap songs. It may not be exactly the same thing but they’re
talking about living the same lifestyle and nothing changing
regardless of how hard they try and make it change, and that’s
the way this town is a lot. It will get you down if you let it.
While Trent acknowledged that there are qualitative differences
between the barrios of Española and the ghetto as depicted in ‘ghetto
rap songs’, the ‘lifestyle’ which characterizes the two spaces is ‘the same’
and similarly limited by the location in which it developed. The
experiences in space and of space are joined. Both Española and the
ghetto are presented in some sense as oppositional to those who call
them home. Forman (2002, p.29) argues that ‘(f)or the hip-hop
culture, place may be significant for its familiarity, its nurturing
factors, and its supportive infrastructures, but it may also…be
threatening, alienating and dangerous to its inhabitants’. Indeed,
many of my informants expressed a kind of ‘love-hate’ relationship
with Española. While all of them felt a bond to the culture of the area,
they were also keenly aware of the limitations inherent in this
particular social, economic and geographic space. Jesse explained how
such limitations often result in patterns of poor decision making for
local young people:
Jesse:
Española is pretty much of…you gotta know people to
have fun, because if you don’t know anyone, you’re just
stuck at home watching TV, getting in trouble, getting
pregnant…
The ‘ghetto’ is interpreted as a common site of struggle (Forman,
2002; Rivera, 2003). It is what ideologically joins Chicano experience
in Española to popular discourses which have emerged from the black
community, it is therefore a ‘symbolically constructed community’
(Bjurstrom,
1997,
p.45).
Indeed
20
the
connection
that
diverse
communities have made to (ghetto) rap music has related to a notion
of what could be called the ‘global ghetto’ be it the barrio or the
banlieue (see Mitchell, 1996; Prevos, 2001; Wermuth, 2001).
While many of my informants lack the first-hand experiences to discredit or verify their impressions, the ghetto is – through its
representation in the discourses of rap music – described to them as
being similar to the barrios in which they have grown up. Diego speaks
with passion about the strictures of the ghetto for people of colour
generally:
Diego:
People still feel oppressed and feel like it’s a trap.
People often rap about how the ghetto is a trap to keep the
black man down, or not just the black man, but minorities
in general. Usually its blacks and Latinos, or Mexicans… You
hear a lot about the government, how they’re fucking you.
Strip-mall landscape on the south end of town.
21
Wannabe West Siders in the Imaginary Ghetto.
People around here are like: ‘I want to be gangster… I’ve got to listen to
rap too and stuff’. You don’t really see anybody, any rappers not trying to
be tough and stuff like that.
- Robert, 17yrs.
‘(T)he ghetto exists for millions of young black and other people of
color – it is a profoundly significant social location…’ (Rose, 1994a,
p.12), but the notion of this space is also discursively constructed
(Forman, 2002). Through black and popular youth discourses the noun
ghetto has come to double as an adjective. Trent uses ‘ghetto’ this
way in his description of Española:
Trent:
There’s a real, real ghetto-ness to this place. It’s really ghetto,
but it’s ghetto in a Northern New Mexico kind of way… I don’t
know, we are ghetto, man. We’re the lowrider capital of the
world!
Trent does not call Española ‘the ghetto’ but rather describes it as
‘being ghetto’. ‘The ghetto’ is a place. But ‘ghetto’ is a quality, a state
of being and of living. His depiction of Española is full of tongue-incheek pride: on the one hand it confirms his street cred (because he
knows what ghetto is) but by naming it, he also distances himself from
being ‘ghetto’ himself. Trent’s original and somewhat studied sense of
personal style eludes such easy classifications, it could be described as
hip hop meets hipster: vintage belt buckle, converse all-stars, baseball
hat cocked to the side. I think that being ‘ghetto’ for Trent represents
a kind of unconsciousness: politically, aesthetically, spiritually, that he
makes a point of defending against.
The ghetto is both real and imaginary. Like the adjective ‘ghetto’ that
it produced, ‘the ghetto’ has become a signifier of tangible ‘realities’
(Kelley, 2004) and intangible qualities. In response to media images
22
and ghettocentric rap, there has been a global youth romance with the
idea of the ghetto as a space on the edge of law and order: ‘a place of
adventure, unbridled violence, erotic fantasy and/or an imaginary
alternative to suburban boredom’ (Kelley, 2004, p.130).
The young men I interviewed identified a local social class of wannabe
‘thugs’, ‘gangsters’ or ‘ghetto people’ who ostensibly subscribe to the
fantasies that Kelley (2004) describes. However, youth growing up in
Española are more likely to be the victims of ‘urban problems’ than
‘suburban boredom’ 7 . Further, young people here are also influenced
by the local sub-cultural role of the cholo, vato loco 8 or lowrider 9 . So
while some Española youth may engage with the ghetto fantasy, it is a
fantasy that feeds off of their life experience and certain Chicano subcultural forms.
I met Dave at the community college in Española. A middle-aged
military man turned new-ager, he had been a Los Angeles gangbanger in his youth. Dave explained local youth engagement with a
ghetto fantasy through a notion of what he called the ‘urban myth’.
Dave’s idea was that teenagers in Española - motivated by their
genuine experiences of social or personal hardship – identify with the
spaces and identities of the mediated ghetto as a means to process
and manage such experiences. In our group interview at the HAC Teen
Centre, I described the ‘urban myth’ to Donny, Trent (and Jesse) and
asked them to assess its validity in regards to Española. I was curious
7
The urban problems which affect Española youth have been chronicled in the local Santa Fe New
Mexican newspaper by: D. Roy, 1993; D. Chacon, 1999.
8
Cholo is a word for ‘young guy’, but usually implies a street or gang oriented youth. Vato loco literally
means ‘crazy guy’, and is usually used to describe a man who lives La Vida Loca: the ‘crazy life’ of street
gangs.
9
The significance of these Chicano sub-cultural roles have been described and analyzed by: M. Brake,
1985; J. Smethurst, 1995; C. Márez, 1996; B. Chappell, 2000; R. Kelly, 2004.
23
to what extent they thought it expressed lived reality for local youth
and to what extent it expressed fantasy:
India:
Is the urban myth theory valid?
Donny:
Yeah that sounds true.
Trent:
There’s a lot of those types of people around here.
India:
But in the first place does it have to reflect some level of their
reality?
Trent:
Oh definitely.
(Group makes sounds of agreement.)
Forman (2002, p.198) has argued that ‘The spaces of Compton and
other similar minority communities that emerge through (gangsta rap)
are simultaneously real, imaginary, symbolic, and mythical’. In my
informants’ understanding also – reality and fantasy are not mutually
exclusive categories. One may give rise to the other. Trent and Donny
agree that the ‘urban myth’ represents a popular fantasy for many
young people in Española, and also that there is a dialogue between
fantasy and lived experience. But even as they do so, they can’t help
poking fun at this group, who, to some extent anyway, seem to be
playing at something they’re not.
Weinzierl and Muggleton (2003), in their discussion of Thornton’s
(1996) concept of ‘subcultural capital’, argue that one of the important
aspects of defining oneself as ‘in’ is in defining oneself as ‘authentic’.
This is particularly true in hip-hop culture (Forman, 2002; Rivera,
2003; Baldwin, 2004) in which: ‘…realness is the most valuable form
of cultural capital’ (Jackson, 2005, p.176). At various points in the
conversation Trent, Donny and Jesse called the authenticity of the
‘ghetto’ group into question:
24
Trent:
Yeah, there’s nothing to do (in Española) but there are ghetto
people here, there’s for sure ghetto people around.
India:
How would you describe a ghetto person?
Donny:
All the wannabe west siders 10 .
Trent:
There’s like stupid gang conflict here.
Jesse:
For no reason.
Trent:
Yeah it’s really dorky.
Jesse:
Just like a trend that they want to be part of.
Trent:
It is and it’s an old trend that like stuck for some reason here, I
don’t know why but this town is so far behind other places that
it’s easy to get caught up in that stupid scene if you’re not
smarter than it: because it’s just what people are into.
The compromised authenticity of the wannabe west siders results in
their loss of cool. Trent, Donny and Jesse presented themselves as
‘smarter’ and therefore more able to dodge hegemony, hold onto their
authenticity and keep their cool. In a similar conversation, Ángel and
Jeremy defined themselves in contrast to the wannabe group as
individualistic, thinking for themselves. Indeed, though they are close
friends, these two young men each have their own very unique sense
of personal style in both behaviour and dress. Individuality emerges as
an important signifier of authenticity for them:
Jeremy:
I really don’t think they can relate to the ghetto thing they just
want to – that’s what they want to look like.
India:
Why do you think they want to?
10
The term west sider refers to the use of west side by gang (and hip-hop) culture to describe the western
US and often Los Angeles in particular. To call someone a wannabe west sider is to call them a wannabe
gangster.
25
Ángel:
I think they want to be like everyone else, instead of being like
an individual.
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Through their critique of the wannabe west siders my informants
described what they are not. They articulated their social identities as
individuals in opposition to the ‘trend’ of playing the gangbanger role.
Best (2006), in her book about young people and car culture, writes
about ‘César’, a Chicano teenager who, unlike the other kids in his
community, doesn’t ‘cruise’ on the strip as he associates it with the
cholo/homeboy crowd of which he is not (and doesn’t want to be) a
part. In his study of black youth masculinities, Sewell (1997) describes
Kelvin experiencing a parallel tension between group membership and
a sense of personal authenticity. While proud of his black heritage,
Kelvin is resistant to the dominance of black street culture in his
school. As it was for César and Kelvin, individuality was extremely
important to all of my informants. Many of them were resistant to
elements of Chicano (sub)culture – such as lowriders, that in their
minds are hegemonic in the Española scene. In part, their rejection of
these identities was premised on the ‘group think’ mentality that these
subcultures exemplify:
Trent:
We are the lowrider capital of the world – but I don’t associate
with that many people who have lowriders – I know a few…
Donny:
I hate most of the lowriders around here!
Jesse:
They always bring them out and then they’re always throwing
heños 11 , looking at people wrong, trying to get in trouble.
11
Heño is a Chicano slang term for a ‘dirty look’. To look at someone this way may be interpreted as a
kind of challenge or provocation.
26
Jesse is humorous and easy going and seemed to take particular issue
with the ‘badass’ lowrider performance. Implied in his colourful
description and in the group’s earlier depiction of the wannabe west
siders, is a critique of a tough, competitive, macho mentality. Frosh
(2002), in his study of youth masculinities found that some of the boys
he
interviewed
justified
their
resistance
to
such
‘hegemonic
masculinity’ 12 by claiming to be above it as they were more authentic,
more talented and more mature. In their indignation, my informants
projected a similar sense of their own evolved consciousness as
compared to the unthinking behaviour of those whom they disparaged.
Package store and local landmark.
Another means by which my informants distinguished themselves from
the ghetto/gangsta group was through their taste in music. Thornton
(1996, p.117) has argued that in club cultures ‘‘underground’ sounds
12
The term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ was coined by Connell (1985).
27
and styles are ‘authentic’ and pitted against the mass-produced and
the mass-consumed’. Of all of the young men that I spoke to, only
Ryan openly claimed that he liked mainstream rap. While some of the
others named (favourite) artists that would be considered mainstream,
they did not explicitly identify them in this way. Instead, in our
conversations they used their knowledge about (underground) hip hop
music and culture to distinguish themselves from the wannabe west
siders and their mainstream tastes in gangsta rap:
India:
What kinds of music and music cultures are associated with
the ‘gangster’ group?
Donny:
Maybe Tupac
Trent:
Old School Rap
India:
Maybe old school gangsta rap?
Donny:
Gangsta rap, yeah there we go.
Trent:
Bone Thugs is still bumpin’ (laughter)
Jesse:
Yeah oh yeah.
(General agreement)
Later, Jesse, who is less of an underground hip hop connoisseur,
admitted to liking Bone Thugs, but in the context of the group
discussion with its attendant pressures, this mainstream gangsta-light
group is thoroughly rejected. Donny, Trent and Jesse went on to
describe their (underground) music as political, artful and ‘cultured’
and contrast it to the wannabes’ music which is commercial, vulgar,
hyper-masculine or superficial 13 . De Nora (2006) argues that “(m)usic
can
be
used
as
a
device
for
the
reflexive
process
of
remembering/constructing who one is, a technology for spinning an
13
See Thornton’s 1996 and 2006 discussion of the positive value ascribed to the underground in club
cultures and the negative value attributed to the mainstream.
28
apparently continuous tale of who one is”(p.141). Accordingly, my
informants frequently used their taste in hip hop to define self and
other:
Trent:
There’s no real appreciation for hip hop culture here – it’s all
about being a bad ass.
Jesse:
Yeah, (the wannabe west siders) always want to be the top
dog.
Trent:
There’s no one who listens to real cultured hip hop its all about
money…
Jesse:
Money, hoes…
Trent:
Your power and your position
India:
How would you describe the hip hop you listen to and the
themes that are different from that?
Donny:
It’s poetic.
Jesse:
It’s not all about just having money and being financially this
cause you do that.
Donny:
(It’s not all about) shooting people.
India:
Is it political?
Group:
Yeah…
Taste is a means for these young men to define who they are and who
they are not: a ‘site’ 14 for identity formation (Dolby, 2001), a site for
group belonging. Taste is a way for them to understand and
communicate their collective values and sensibilities in one fell swoop.
But as they look to establish their collective identity through a critique
of the wannabe west siders’ macho behaviour, tastes in bombastic
14
Dolby (2001) references Foucault (1972).
29
commercial rap and disregard for politics, a certain kind of classism
creeps in. Class judgement is made on the basis of what Thornton
(2006) describes as embodied and objectified markers. To call
someone ‘ghetto’ is, among other things, to ‘class’ them. One way in
which the subcultural elite separate themselves from the masses is by
achieving a classless identity: ‘The assertion of subcultural distinction
relies, in part, on a fantasy of classlessness’ (Thornton, 2006, p.101).
And while each one of the young men that I interviewed comes from a
distinct and real socio-economic place, there is something about them
as a group – sitting in the youth centre, talking about graffiti writing
and underground hip hop that defies class-bound identity and
understanding. The wannabe west siders who cruise bajito y suavecito
(low and slow) throwing heños and bumpin’ lil’ Rob on the other hand
are chronically class bound.
White Kids and Ghetto Blackness.
When I asked Trent and Jesse if there was a social division in high
school between themselves and the wannabe west siders, they told me
that their social experience and that of the wannabes was in many
ways similar. The difference lay, therefore, in how that experience was
processed and used, what they did with it:
India:
Is there a real division in school between the ‘bone thugs n
harmony’ set and the underground hip hop fans?
Trent:
Yeah, but you still associate with those people, cause they
also feel where you’re coming from
Jesse:
‘Cause they’re from the area.
(Various signs of agreement from the group.)
Trent:
But it’s different, they are kind of like a more ignorant style –
but they’ve still got their style.
30
My informants, while cynical about the wannabes, thought that this
group could at least ‘…feel where you’re coming from’ and therefore
accepted them to some extent in turn. In contrast, white and/or
privileged youth who were playing the ghetto part, but hadn’t ‘earned’
their ghetto status by enduring socio-economic hardship, and thus who
could not lay claim to class specific ‘nigganess’ (Rivera, 2003), were
shown no mercy. They had ‘no right’ to be ghetto. Donny, who was
particularly vocal on the subject, commented about this group with
incredulity:
Donny:
You see like rich kids bumpin’ Tupac thinkin’ they’re ghetto!!
This group of white and/or privileged wannabe ghetto types formed
the outside extreme of ghetto inauthenticity and therefore were most
laughable in the eyes of the group. The ‘rich kids’’ inauthenticity stems
from having an almost entirely mediated experience with the ghetto
which does not benefit from either first-hand exposure to a class based
‘ghetto’ experience (like they have in the barrios of Española), or firsthand exposure to the race and class based black ghetto that rap music
talks about.
Trent, unlike many of the other young men I interviewed, has had
first-person experience in the ghettos of New York City. He clearly
wanted to share this experience and described what real ‘ghetto-ness’ is
like with authority, passion, and concern. Trent bears the stamp of
ghetto authenticity because he has experienced it ‘live’, not just
through the ‘media’ 15 . By laying claim to this experience he was able
to distinguish himself from the ‘rich kids bumpin’ Tupac thinkin’ they’re
15
See Thornton (1996) for a description subcultures’ ‘dogged ideological’ opposition to the media.
31
ghetto!!’ as well as from the wannabe west siders who may have never
left the New Mexico, both of whom are just following ‘a trend’ 16 :
Trent:
It’s like a trend or something that they are trying to fit into, but
they would never really fit into that because, I thought I
understood where black people were coming from when they
were talking about the ghetto and shit, and like I went to New
York this year, and walking through Brooklyn, that shit’s
fucking ghetto!! (Group laughs, agrees) And I was like, I don’t
want to chill here much longer, and these people live this
everyday (serious). Some people don’t understand because
it’s a fucking trend, and culture should not be a trend!
In Trent’s use of the adjective ‘ghetto’ here, it is not a romanticized
notion of the urban battleground and gangsta warrior. As he spoke
about the ghetto with righteous indignation, he made clear that the
ideological ghetto and the real ghetto are not the same place. His
comments, as much as they reflect his ‘street cred’, also reflect a
genuine commitment on his part to authenticity and a concern about
the commodification of suffering that Rose (1994a) has problematized:
….the return of the ghetto as a central black popular narrative
has also fulfilled national fantasies about the violence and
danger that purportedly consume the poorest and most
economically fragile communities of color.
(p.11)
Trent also used his experience of the ghetto as a means to understand
‘where black people are coming from’ both literally and figuratively. In
his (2004) article: ‘Looking for the “Real” Nigga’, Robin DG Kelley
discusses social science’s role in defining a popular notion of real
blackness. This notion is contingent, in part, on the construction of the
seat of real blackness: the ghetto. Through our conversations, I found
that my informants’ descriptions of the ghetto and of blackness came
to be mutually representative and mutually constituting. Certain types
of clothes and behaviour were linked to blackness, these markers of
16
In his (2000) study of white hip hop cultures in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Bennett found that among his
informants there was considerable disdain for those who only listened to hip hop because it was ‘trendy’.
32
blackness were linked to the ghetto and both were linked back to
notions of authenticity (see Powell, 1995/96 in Rivera, 2003; J. Kelly,
2004). For example, when Trent, Jesse and Donny discussed the film
‘Malibu’s Most Wanted’ with me, they depicted ‘ghetto styles’ as
essentially and singularly black, and therefore out of reach to other
(and particularly white) culture(s).
Trent:
I don’t understand how you can be completely white and try
and adapt to someone else’s culture – like, ‘check it out, I got
(tyre) rims, I got grills (silver/gold capped teeth).
But there were other situations in which such ‘cultural geneticism’
wouldn’t hold sway. Trent, Donny and Jesse reasoned that you may be
entitled to ‘act’ or ‘dress’ black/ghetto for instance if you have been
raised in that culture. You can wear it if you’ve lived it.
Donny:
Unless you grow up into it.
Trent:
Yeah, I don’t know I guess if you grow up around that, you are
that. You could be the whitest person in the world and be
blacker than shit.
Jesse:
People will look at you and (think) you’re not real, that’s what
they’re thinking.
Donny:
Like people you see here who are white who’ve grown up
here, know Spanish and all that.
Jesse:
Yeah, you talk to some of these people and you’re all talking
about them in Spanish and they go and tell you something all
crazy and oh, trip out. (Group laughs)
They seemed to accept ‘adapting’ to black culture if you have had the
life experience (in the ghetto) to justify it. In this case your cultural
exposure and ‘class status’ would make you ‘black’
17
(Boyd, 2004,
p.326). Based on this notion that lived experience ‘makes race’, both
17
Later, Jeremy and Ángel argue against a notion of class based blackness when they critique Chicano
teens for acting or dressing ‘black’.
33
Jeremy and Trent claimed a ‘brown’ identity for themselves because
they were both raised in Hispanic households and communities, even
though they are both ‘part white’. Ironically, this also may be how
other white and Chicano youth validate adopted ‘black’ or ‘ghetto’
identities as logical and authentic.
Gleaming rims, photographed by Ángel at the Lowrider and Custom Car Show.
Impressions of Blackness.
As Española does not have a sizeable black community, I was
interested to find out what image of ‘blackness’ my informants (or
their peers) had constructed from the rap music and videos that they
were listening to and watching. I also spoke with Ángel and Jeremy
regarding their first-hand experience of travel to a Boston black
community.
34
Tricia Rose (1994a) has argued that rap videos have had a significant
impact on the meaning that non-black, non-inner city youth make of
the black ghetto and the black community generally. She notes that as
music videos provide a visual landscape, they interpret existing
meanings and create new ones. Although MTV did not initially air rap
videos, this changed with the 1989 pilot of Yo! MTV Raps (Rose,
1994a). Interestingly, Yo! MTV Raps was cited by several of my
informants as the means by which many Española youth were first
exposed to rap and hip hop in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I asked
Ángel and Jeremy how hip hop first made its way to New Mexico:
Ángel:
I think it was introduced when ‘YO! MTV Raps’ was on.
Jeremy:
Yeah, exactly
India:
Is rap’s movement to New Mexico mainly to do with the
media and TV?
Jeremy:
Of course, almost everything out here in New Mexico is
influenced by the media…I mean most of the things we get
in New Mexico is from that – you don’t walk around the
street finding people rapping. Probably in the early 80s you
wouldn’t walk around the street finding people rapping like
you would in New York City.
In this way, New Mexico’s youth culture is a highly mediated one.
Further, because Española’s ethno-racial diversity is quite limited, the
popular media does not merely provide entertainment here, but
windows into other worlds. And while consumption of hip hop videos
(for example) give these young people notions of ‘real black life’,
‘(r)eality, conceived as the physical and material plane where actual
social processes occur, exists at a crucial remove from the textual
representations that circulate in its name’ (Forman, 2003, p.14). From
our
conversations
it
appeared
that
my
informants
held
two
(seemingly) conflicting images of this ‘real black life’: one of racism
35
and ghetto hardship, the other of ‘bitches’ and ‘bling’. This likely
reflects rap’s ‘contradictory articulations’ (Rose, 1994a, p.2), the
‘multiple subjectivities’ of the young people who listen to it (Back,
1996), and the contradictory fantasies that the collective unconscious
sustains
about
African-American
people(s)
and
culture(s)
more
broadly.
Audience for the ‘car hop’ at the Lowrider and Custom Car Show.
I first interviewed Stephen during a break from his YCC (Youth
Conservation Corps) work day. Stephen is a gentle, unpretentious
young man. He is a self proclaimed rap producer and graffiti artist who
listens to Kanye West and is bothered by the stereotypes some people
have about those who are into hip hop. Hip hop and rap are distinct in
Stephen’s mind as they are in the minds of many young men that I
36
interviewed 18 . Rap was described as celebrating materialism and
violence, whereas hip hop was described as reflecting a higher
consciousness: politically, spiritually and artistically. I asked Stephen
in the interview what kind of image youth in Española developed of
African-Americans from watching rap videos:
Stephen:
I guess just like now, wearing all kinds of necklaces and
jewellery and sorta like being all big, to show that they have
everything and stuff. I don’t know, just living the rich style I
guess.
Francisco, a remote 19 year old who I met at the local head-shop
where he works, made a similar assessment as Stephen:
Francisco: 22 inch rims and a lot of diamonds. That’s all I’ve seen around
here. They (Española youth) listen to it (rap music) and then
go buy it.
When I interviewed Diego López, he argued that not all Española youth
have a purely mediated image of ‘blackness’. Diego is a true mentor
and advocate for the youth that he works with. It was clear that he
wanted to make sure I didn’t underestimate their sophistication:
Diego:
I don’t know if you could say that rap influences their
perception of the black community – they are influenced by
other media (too) and some of them have travelled. They
probably get some influence – but they have all sorts of
different influences. I think they are a lot more well-rounded,
than what we give them credit for.
Jeremy and Ángel were close friends who built their friendship through
a video course at the high school. They had travelled to Boston
together through a youth program, and talked about impressions they
formed of the black community from their first-hand experience on
that trip. Jeremy was open and confident around me and tended to
18
The term ‘rap’ was often used to describe more mainstream music, while ‘hip hop’ was used to describe
the underground and political sub-set of the genre.
37
dominate the conversation. Ángel was more reticent and tended to
hang back. Their account of the black youth they met in Boston
suggests a notion of a ‘geographically bounded blackness’ (J. Kelly,
2004, p.142).
But this perhaps reflects the particularly strong link
between place and culture in New Mexico (see Jankowski, 1986;
Gonzales-Berry and Maciel, 2000), as much as it reflects these young
men’s cognitive maps of black identity and space.
Jeremy:
People in Boston suck man, seriously… All they look for is
looking good.
India:
Who are these people?
Jeremy:
India:
People from teen centres...they don’t need cars so they spend
all their money on clothes. They were all walking around in fur
jackets!
……………
The kids in Boston: were they white kids, black kids, both?
Ángel:
Mostly black.
Their description of the ‘mostly black’ teenagers as ‘people in Boston’
positions race as an ‘absent presence’ (Alexander, 2000, p.3) in our
conversation. Later in the same interview I asked the boys more
directly about their impressions of the black teenagers they met and
any generalizations they may have made about this group on the basis
of their experience:
India:
You guys grew up in a place with a very small black
population. What was that like being in a black community,
around so many black teenagers?
Jeremy:
It was pretty different.
Ángel:
Yeah, ‘cause they like act weird.
India:
How’s that?
Ángel:
I think they act like they’re better than everyone.
38
Jeremy:
They don’t care, they act like they’re better than everyone and
they don’t care, and they don’t even know what they’re doing.
Both Alexander (2000) and Frosh (2002), in their studies of masculine
youth identities in Britain, found that Asian and white youth expressed
a mixture of ‘envy and antagonism’ (Frosh, 2002, p.158) regarding the
black boys at school. Frosh (2002) writes: ‘…many of the boys we
have interviewed share (the) conviction that African Caribbean boys
are ‘hard’, stylish and to be admired, but also carry an image of
aggression and disdain for others’ (p.161). In Stephen’s mediated
understanding and in Ángel and Jeremy’s first person accounts there
was a similar tension between admiration and disdain for the images
of blackness they had constructed.
A source of particular irritation for Ángel and Jeremy (and a subject of
conversation with my other informants as well) was Chicano youth in
Española who ‘want to be black’. This topic of discussion was
consistently initiated by the young men themselves. In part, their
critique reflected their disdain for wanting and trying to be something
that you are not. In part it reflected their dismay at the abandonment
of Chicano culture which such ‘wanting’ and ‘trying’ implies. When I
asked for an explanation of this trend, Jeremy responded by saying
that the images of black wealth and power which dominate many
mainstream rap videos were taken at face value and emulated by
some young people in Española:
Jeremy:
I think that when you look at the media and you look at what
they play and the way things are shown – who is the one that
has the most necklaces that are gold and platinum? Who has
the most girls, even in the music videos? Who dresses the
nicest? Who has the most expensive stuff, and that’s when it
comes to rap – because they dress the nicest and they have
the best stuff - I think that’s what people look at. And I think
most of the time the people that portray that are African
Americans and that’s because they started the hip hop culture,
39
and I think that’s why everyone wants to be an African
American.
While explaining the logic behind this pattern of emulation, Jeremy
clearly distinguished himself, and by extension: his friends, as being
savvy enough to outsmart it.
Trying to be Black (and not doing a good job).
Donny:
Like that movie – ‘Malibu’s Most Wanted’ – everyone is pretty
much like that guy.
India:
Elaborate.
Jesse:
It’s a white guy who thinks he’s black.
Trent:
Like really thinks he’s black.
Jesse:
It’s a good (movie) because it shows what people are actually
thinking.
Rivera (2003) argues that within hip hop, ‘Pan-latinidad’ or the notion
of ‘La Gran Familia’ of Spanish speakers, has ‘oddly “niggafied” certain
Latino groups such as Chicanos, through their association with New
York Caribbean Latinos’ (p.107). But there is also a tradition within hip
hop cultures of syncretism between black and Chicano styles (see
Cross, 1993; R. Kelly, 2004; Swedenburg, 2004) which many of the
young men I spoke with exemplify. Diego, whose own mix of baggy
jeans and 1950s style button down shirts, merges stylistic influences
across culture and time, spoke to black and Chicano style blending in
our interview:
Diego:
I used to work with a lady and she said it seems like all the
blacks want to be Chicano and all the Chicanos want to be
black. There is definitely style meshing, in the clothes and you
hear it in the music too. Like rap music came from black
people, but a lot of Chicanos are rapping now. There’s a lot of
blacks rapping in Spanish now too.
40
Rose (1994b, p.82) argues that ‘black style through hip hop has
contributed to the continuing blackening of mainstream popular
culture’. But black vernacular and style have become so thoroughly
integrated into popular youth culture (see Alexander, 1996) that they
have transcended clear racial association to become part of a shared
system of signification for young people of all races (see Back, 1996).
As mentioned, Española’s relationship to African-American culture is
almost entirely mediated, and ‘a celebration of blackness in the
absence of blackness’ is plainly apparent (Bennett, 2000, p.152).
Indeed, most of the boys I interviewed consume black rap in far
greater proportion to Chicano rap such as Aztlán Underground or SPM
(South Park Mexican) and their speech (like that of most youth) is
peppered with (originally) black argot such as ‘dawg’ and ‘fo sho’.
However, many of them also exhibit a certain ‘cultural nationalism’
(Jankowski, 1986) about Nuevo Mexícano culture. For Jeremy and
Ángel, knowledge of their ethnic and regional roots functions as a form
of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1979). One of the ways that Ángel and
Jeremy often define themselves is by defining the ‘capital’ that others
lack, both in terms of their tastes and their cultural self-awareness:
Jeremy:
People don’t care as much about their heritage or their
ethnicities or anything like that. No one cares anymore,
everyone just wants to be part of the media, what the media
shows you. We’re lucky, ‘cause we’ve had the opportunity to
be exposed to our ethnicities through ENLACE (Latino youth
program). But not everyone in this town has that and not
everyone cares… there are a lot of people that don’t care.
Alexander (2000) found that in press accounts of the rise of the ‘Asian
gang’, the urban (black) street style that these young Asian men
adopted was interpreted as a signifier of cultural disintegration and
41
betrayal. Ángel, spoke with disappointment and frustration about the
dissolution of local Chicano culture in favour of an adopted black street
culture which is transmitted through the media - even going so far as
to lament the fading lowrider culture – a culture which he has not
previously allied himself with:
India:
How do you think of your roots and your heritage?
Ángel:
I don’t know, I like it but I wish we had it like we did when this
town was the capital of lowriders and stuff like that. I just
wish we had stuck with the old things. But now everybody
wants to be like African American – I don’t know – they just
keep changing and changing and they don’t even know who
they are. They’re just being controlled by the media.
In Ángel’s account, the consequence of this trend is not only a loss of
local Chicano culture, but the disappearance of individual identities
within that culture. Knowing who you are is premised upon an essential
connection with your culture of origin. Not knowing that culture means
not knowing yourself. J. Kelly (2004) writes in her study of media and
racial identity that ‘students spoke of their white friends who
attempted to perform blackness as lacking a “true” self and attempting
to align themselves with blacks in order to gain a sense of self’
(p.144).
From Ángel’s perspective those who ‘want to be black’ are
similarly lacking in a real and meaningful sense of self, and thus are
more easily duped by the media superstructure which hawks black
culture to unsuspecting Chicano youth.
In his study of black masculinities, Sewell (1997) found his subjects’
descriptions of ‘acting white’ involved detailed accounts of the
behaviours and qualities that betrayed a desire for whiteness. When I
hired Ángel and Jeremy to help me photograph and interview people at
a lowrider car show one hot July day, they ‘identified’ those who ‘want
to be African-American’ by similarly detailed assessments of personal
42
style and behaviour. The opportunity to hang out with these two young
men, who as videomakers were very much in their element, was a
good conduit to the kind of casual conversations that are hard to
manufacture in a more formal interview setting. The following
conversation evolved when I asked Ángel and Jeremy to assess the
musical tastes of passers by on the basis of their appearance (which
they had already started doing on their own). After indicating who
listened to 50cent, who to Lil’ Rob, and who was still listening to
Rapper’s Delight(!), Ángel, who was considerably more talkative than
usual, singled out a young man who in his opinion was clearly ‘trying
to be black’:
Ángel:
See that dude right there, with the Yankees hat? He’s trying
to be black. Like what people from Spaña 19 do you see with
a New York Yankees hat, and shorts decorated (like that)?
That’s when they want to be black.
In Ángel’s reading, certain strains of regional hip hop/street style are
categorically black. As fashion not only establishes what group we
belong to but what group we do not belong to (Miles, 1998), it
becomes a way for Ángel to identify the guy in the Yankees hat as an
outsider, both spatially and racially. Ángel points out that someone
with a New York Yankees hat does not belong in the same group as
‘people from Spaña’ (i.e. Chicanos). Dolby (2001) posits that ‘race is
formed through the global/local nexus of taste practices’ (p.16); and
this young man’s taste in fashion betrays his racial aspirations to
Ángel. These (assumed) racial aspirations may irritate Ángel in part
because they imply that Chicano culture is somehow ‘not enough’.
Because of this, our young ‘wannabe’ has chosen to go elsewhere in
search of himself.
19
Locals often refer to Española colloquially as Spaña.
43
Man identified by my informants as ‘wannabe black.’
Apart from Chicano youth in Española who want to be black, there is
also a small group of local black youth whose authentic blackness is
questioned and critiqued by Jeremy and Ángel. According to the two
young men, their experience at a Boston youth centre gave them an
idea of what ‘real black people are like’ and they traded on a type of
‘credentialism’ based on this experience (Back, 1993). They contrasted
their observations of ‘real black people’ in Boston with those they’ve
had of the (mostly) bi-racial kids in Española. The following is a
conversation we had after the lowrider show when they spotted who
Ángel called ‘the blackest guy in this town’.
Jeremy:
He’s half (black)…To us he’s not black cause we saw what
actual black people look like. Like when we got back here and
44
saw all the black people we knew we were like: ‘What the
heck? Imitation black!’…you know, it’s just not the same.
India:
Are they ‘imitation’ in terms of the way they look, act… what?
Ángel:
Act, look.
Jeremy:
Complexion, the way they look, the way they act… the way
they walk (Ángel chimes in)
India:
How do they act?
Jeremy:
They try to be like the people that we saw… and they’re not
doing a good job.
Their tone was playful but also cynical, mocking even. Thornton
(1996) has argued that ‘Nothing depletes (subcultural) capital more
than the sight of someone trying too hard’ (p.12). And although these
local black kids may not be ‘trying’ at all, it is on that assumption
which they are judged. Whereas local Chicano youths’ efforts towards
blackness are gauged on the basis of their consumption of black urban
hip hop style, the real blackness of local black kids is assessed based
on ‘Complexion, the way they look, the way they act…the way they walk’.
Jeremy and Ángel have determined that the black kids they know in
Española are ‘not doing a good job’ in their performance of black racial
‘etiquette’ (Omi and Winant, 1986). Central to their notion of
blackness is a sense of geographic and class specific authentic
‘nigganess’ (Rivera, 2003) which may have been initially defined
through images of ghettocentric blackness in popular culture (and rap
music in particular) but has been apparently verified by their
experiences with ‘actual black people’. Forman (2002) writes:
Hip Hop’s discourses have an impressive influence among North
American teens of all races and ethnicities, providing a
distinctive understanding of the social terrains and conditions
under which ‘real’ black cultural identities are formed and
experienced.
(p.9)
45
But it seems that to Ángel and Jeremy, ‘real blackness’ is a gated
community: hard to get into, easy to get out. It is a notion of
blackness in the singular. The difference of black culture in Española
becomes defined as ‘imitation’ and thereby inauthentic and highly
suspect. Authenticity is positioned as central to earning respect, and
Ángel and Jeremy’s snide commentary would imply that the ‘blackest
guy in this town’ has not earned theirs.
Conclusion
It is in part through the lens of hip hop music and style that these
young men construct a view of who they are. Via distinctions between
themselves and others they explained themselves to me: an interested
stranger. In our dialogue, and in their commentary on space, race,
struggles,
and
‘wannabes’,
they
communicated
their
ghetto
authenticity, their ‘street cred’, their political views, their personal
values and their cultural allegiances. They did this, much more, by
articulating that which they opposed than by articulating what and
whom
they
supported.
Their
understanding
and
description
of
themselves as ‘for real kids’ – individualists and hip hoppers with subcultural capital to spare - further reinforced the wall they erected
between themselves and the wannabe others, even as this wall was
unstable at best.
Dyson (2004, p.64) describes how the ‘specter of mainstream dilution’
within hip hop discourses splits rap into the conscious and the
commercial. I found that my informants’ ‘official’ opinions often
mimicked the ‘mainstream dilution’ line of reasoning. They frequently
longed for an imagined hip hop past prior to commercialization,
commodification, gangstas and bling. However, a deeper reading of
46
our conversations, reveals my informants’ positions on commercial
rap, wannabe west siders and (trying to be) blacks as fluid and
changeable; contradictory even. As Back (1996) wrote in reference to
youth on a South London housing estate: ‘the subjectivities of these
young people are multiple and reflect the diversity of ideologies and
discourses that they both consume and engage with’. Perhaps it is only
in context of the lived experience of place, class, ethnicity, race, and
gender that we can see their articulations as ‘making sense’. Rose
(1994a, p.2) explains the predicament of understanding hip hop in
similar terms: ‘These unusually abundant polyvocal conversations
seem irrational when they are severed from the social contexts where
everyday struggles over resources, pleasure, and meanings take
place’.
Through the place-bound discourses of hip hop, these young men used
their lived experiences as credentials for ghetto (and therefore hip
hop) authenticity and belonging. While the barrio experience in
Española does bear some relationship to the hardships suffered in the
ghetto, the link between these two spaces is as much ideological as
empirical. Their relationship to the ‘ghetto’, like the wannabe west
siders and (trying to be) black kids that they disparage, is both real
and imagined. In their brushes with black culture, in their underground
tastes in music, in their own version of the ghetto experience; they are
experiencing the world in its immediacy and simultaneous constructing
an imaginal space for the ‘real’ to inhabit.
Most did not interpret hip hop as essentially black music. But are
nonetheless enjoying images and sounds which emerge primarily from
the African American community, a community that they have had
little-to-no first-hand contact with. I grew up listening to rap and hip
47
hop myself. I was excited by, what was at the time a revolutionary and
powerful means of making music and commenting on the socio-racial
order. But I clearly remember feeling that there was a disconnection
(in the eyes of others) between my identity as a white middle-class girl
going to private high school and the black nationalist and masculinist
hip hop I was listening to. So when I realized years later how
important hip hop was to many Chicano kids from semi-rural Northern
New Mexico, I was similarly interested in the roots and ambiguities of
their identification.
A truck at the Lowrider and Custom Car Show.
Certainly rap offers a fantasy of blackness to the many white kids who
listen to it. But rap offers a particularly compelling fantasy for Chicano
youth who can play both ends of the racial spectrum of dominance and
subjugation as: ‘(a) mestizo person is descended from both the
conqueror and the conquered, but is neither one altogether’ (Chappell,
48
2000, p.18). Youth consumption of hip hop in Española bears some
relationship to that of black inner city youth, as they too may identify
with the spaces and struggles that the lyrics describe. However, their
consumption could also be compared to that of the white suburban
teenager whose experience with blackness is mainly through his i-Pod.
In
this
way,
young
people
in
Española
dodge
the
academic
stranglehold which positions hip hop consumers as either for real
ghetto kids or white wannabes. These young men are both and
neither.
********************************************************
49
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