The Tragedy of the Ghetto
Last night I watched the immaculate film "Tsotsi", 2005's Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film and it got me thinking about how people live and the way we see others. In the film we are introduced to this young thug called "Tsotsi" (the patois of that Johannesburg neighborhood word for thug) who has no conscience and murders a man in broad daylight in a crowded subway car. But when he jacks a BMW with a baby in the back seat his life is changed. The young thug (probably about 16 years old) finds himself unable to abandon the baby in the back seat of the stolen car he leaves on the side of the road, so he takes the child into his own home. Instead of becoming a burden on Tsotsi, the child ends up touching him enough to convince him that there is a difference between right and wrong. So where is my point? Other than gushing about the best film I've seen this year (and probably in years...it's better than Cidade de Deus), it also brought up enough questions about society, poverty and conscience.
The woman that Tsotsi carjacks is very wealthy, even by American standards. She and her husband live in a gorgeous mini-mansion and have a Mercedes and a BMW and all kinds of jewelry and artwork. Tsotsi., on the other hand, lives in a shack without a bathroom, running water and his electricity comes from a stolen car battery. When he needs to feed the child, he holds up a young mother at gunpoint to breastfeed the baby. Tsotsi has no other means of income other than the hustle and armed robbery. He's 16 and has never been to school, has no parents and limitless psychological damage. This is not just a fictional story about a kid in South Africa, it's also a true story about a kid in East Saint Louis, or from the Cabrini-Green projects, or from South Central LA or the Lower 9th Ward. It rings true for all of them.
The problem with our system (everywhere, save a few enlightened Scandanavian or Benelux nations) is that we expect the poor to be able to rise from the ashes and emerge from the ghetto. Most of the time someone is born poor, they die poor. The success stories like my father, who emerged from a poor background in inner city Brooklyn and a murdered father, are success stories for a reason: they aren't that common. When you're born into poverty and abuse, it's hard to know anything else. $100 seems like a lot of money to someone who grew up in the Lower 9th because they only have a 70% chance of having a job, but that will only sustain them for a short while. When you have no education, no references and no experience, it's pretty much impossible to make a living legally. So what do men resort to (because women can live off of others a lot easier than men) for survival? Illegal activities like selling drugs, robbery, pimping and violence for hire become the only way to make it out of the ghetto without being an actor, rapper, model or athlete.
The question is, why do we let this continue? Is it really better for us if a portion of the society is marginalized and forced to subsist off of 1/10th of the average wage? It certainly doesn't help us live in a peaceful and secure society. We force violence into the ghettos because we make certain activities illegal while disregarding the simple needs of man. While we have some people with 6000 square foot mansions with a pool and an acre of land worth $5,000,000+ that they don't even live in (a personal example...), there are people still without a home in New Orleans after almost a year. I don't think that everyone should have a perfectly equal share, but some people just never have the chance to even get into the game. By the time they're 8, they've already fallen so far behind their peers that their only option in live is to live a life of crime or minimum wage. Would you rather sell cocaine for huge profits and little work, or work yourself to death to live a life of pigs feet and used clothing? The choice is easy, and for some, there is no choice. They live with thugs, they only know that life and it's impossible to break free.
So I always talk about how we should institute a highly socialistic tax policy with 80% taxes on everyone and everything where we'd pay for medical expenses and housing/energy costs out of the population's pool of funds. I just don't feel right when I drive in my Mercedes by the ghetto and I see the poor people without any opportunities to have what I have. I may be smart, but I'd be a failure if I was any less than what I am now based on where I came from. I believe everyone should have an equal opportunity from birth...but that's probably just a pipe dream.
The woman that Tsotsi carjacks is very wealthy, even by American standards. She and her husband live in a gorgeous mini-mansion and have a Mercedes and a BMW and all kinds of jewelry and artwork. Tsotsi., on the other hand, lives in a shack without a bathroom, running water and his electricity comes from a stolen car battery. When he needs to feed the child, he holds up a young mother at gunpoint to breastfeed the baby. Tsotsi has no other means of income other than the hustle and armed robbery. He's 16 and has never been to school, has no parents and limitless psychological damage. This is not just a fictional story about a kid in South Africa, it's also a true story about a kid in East Saint Louis, or from the Cabrini-Green projects, or from South Central LA or the Lower 9th Ward. It rings true for all of them.
The problem with our system (everywhere, save a few enlightened Scandanavian or Benelux nations) is that we expect the poor to be able to rise from the ashes and emerge from the ghetto. Most of the time someone is born poor, they die poor. The success stories like my father, who emerged from a poor background in inner city Brooklyn and a murdered father, are success stories for a reason: they aren't that common. When you're born into poverty and abuse, it's hard to know anything else. $100 seems like a lot of money to someone who grew up in the Lower 9th because they only have a 70% chance of having a job, but that will only sustain them for a short while. When you have no education, no references and no experience, it's pretty much impossible to make a living legally. So what do men resort to (because women can live off of others a lot easier than men) for survival? Illegal activities like selling drugs, robbery, pimping and violence for hire become the only way to make it out of the ghetto without being an actor, rapper, model or athlete.
The question is, why do we let this continue? Is it really better for us if a portion of the society is marginalized and forced to subsist off of 1/10th of the average wage? It certainly doesn't help us live in a peaceful and secure society. We force violence into the ghettos because we make certain activities illegal while disregarding the simple needs of man. While we have some people with 6000 square foot mansions with a pool and an acre of land worth $5,000,000+ that they don't even live in (a personal example...), there are people still without a home in New Orleans after almost a year. I don't think that everyone should have a perfectly equal share, but some people just never have the chance to even get into the game. By the time they're 8, they've already fallen so far behind their peers that their only option in live is to live a life of crime or minimum wage. Would you rather sell cocaine for huge profits and little work, or work yourself to death to live a life of pigs feet and used clothing? The choice is easy, and for some, there is no choice. They live with thugs, they only know that life and it's impossible to break free.
So I always talk about how we should institute a highly socialistic tax policy with 80% taxes on everyone and everything where we'd pay for medical expenses and housing/energy costs out of the population's pool of funds. I just don't feel right when I drive in my Mercedes by the ghetto and I see the poor people without any opportunities to have what I have. I may be smart, but I'd be a failure if I was any less than what I am now based on where I came from. I believe everyone should have an equal opportunity from birth...but that's probably just a pipe dream.
posted by Dan Pasternack at 5:03 PM
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