Originally published in Verbicide issue #4

Soft Skull Press, 174 pages, trade paperback, $13.90

William Wimsatt Upski wrote a book called Bomb the Suburbs, and on the back is a description by Cashus D that is as tantalizing as it is damning.  Cashus D calls it “a missing link between cultures,” and I’d like to think that this collection of essays, stories, interviews, and editorials has done much for myself, a total white boy.  Upski looks at race, hip-hop, and graffiti from the perspective of a chameleon.  He’s a white kid who could be with the black guys.  I listen to the Tribe, and one of my favorite artists is Basquiat, but I don’t have the first idea of what it means to be black, and this book clued me in as to why.

The suburbs are the culprit, but more importantly for Upski, the suburb “is one of the most important metaphors for where our heads our today.”  He has a laundry list of what the suburb accomplishes as well:  “Socially, they intensify segregation and mistrust.  Culturally, they erode the sense of history, narrow the outlook, and dull the imagination.  Economically, they intensify inequality by isolating the rich and poor.”  It should be noted that he means “bomb” as in, graffiti.  What Upski is getting at, ultimately, is that the city should go to the suburbs, and the suburbs should go to the city.  Some more mixing is needed, and he addresses why it hasn’t been happening.  Ultimately, it’s because whites don’t know any better.  Whites don’t have the first clue about what it’s really like to grow up in the ghetto, and they don’t have the first clue what it’s really like to be black.  While Upski dances around saying it, this is the sort of racism that white people, especially me, don’t even know they have.  This is the sort of racism that allows us to sit in our air-conditioned 2000 square foot homes on a quiet street with trees and grass and a golden retriever, and say, “You know what?  If they really wanted to, they could get out.”  It’s the type of racism that 99% of white America has, and they don’t even know it.  They don’t know a thing about black culture, and they don’t know what they’re missing.  Everyone knows that ignorance breeds prejudice, and so does fear.  It is fear that drives this ignorance.

Ghettoes are something that most of this country fears.  We are bombarded by images and stories of violence, crime, and degenerate lifestyles.  While admittedly disturbing things happen in inner cities and their dense, poverty stricken  populations, those of us that fear the area most have developed our sense of fear not from experience, but from those who profit most be instilling that fear.  News agencies, lobbyists, and politicians, all of whom do not have to live in these areas, speak endlessly of the dangerous of the inner city, and the tragedy of the black world.  Violence and despair are sensationalized, and used to sell commercials and secure elections.  Not only are blacks further segregated by this orchestrated fear, but whites are led to believe that the quid pro quo of suburban life is the standard that we should uphold, never realizing that this lifestyle is built on perverted isolationism.  The saddest fact of all is that blacks are used by the powers that be to maintain this image of America.

Bomb the Suburbs ends with a call for a plan, an institution worth supporting.  According to Upski, this revolution wouldn’t be “the whole anarchist fuck-society routine” that is what he calls, “an insincere pose, or a naïve copout.”  He is looking for “something a little more sensible, a little more universal, a little more practical and down-to-earth,” something that can bring unity, something that “brings out the good side in all people, be it warring crews; toys or masters; Folks or Brothers; Bloods or Crips; criminals or the police; pro-life or pro-choice; liberals or conservative; so-called revolutionaries or the so-called government.”  It is this general conclusion of Upski that leads to what I term the Upski Equation.

This book is exciting and inspiring because it calls for a revolution by the people, and it points out, using race, that the enemy of the people is fear.  I submit that the greatest antidote to fear is individual responsibility. If that is true, than the Upski Equation should read something like this:  When Fear of X is greater than Individual Will, then Y will be used by self-interested authority to replace the Individual.  In Bomb the Suburbs, ‘Y’ is racism, and the continued oppression of black Americans.  In Nazi Germany, the Fear was of a subversive, un-German population, and the Y was fascism.  We’ll apply the equation to our modern issues in another paragraph.

Fritz Lang made a movie in the early ’30s titled M.  This film is about city that is searching for serial killer of children.  This vicious murderer constantly outwits the police force, and the populace is so frightened that they begin to call on the police to work in more extreme ways.  Curfews, and massive stings begin, but they fail.  Frustrated by the increasing police action, the organized criminals of the city decide that they need to find the killer, if only to relax police scrutiny.  The mob catches the killer, and after torture, decides to execute him.  While Lang denied any political motivation in making this film, he recognized in later interviews that this film paralleled the rise of the Nazis shortly after the film’s release.  The lesson to be learned is that fear does not simply lead to ignorance, or a dull society, but that fear will lead to totalitarianism.  The dictatorships of Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao were built on fear.  Aldous Huxley reminds us in A Brave New World that for the propagandist, there is no great message than fear.  Machievelli said that for a ruler who could not gain the love of his subjects, their fear was a close second.

These are relevant lessons.  In the late 1960s, the Fear of a successful counter-culture was used to create a War on Drugs.  Simply paraphrased, the concept was: counter-culture included some communists, and some drug users.  Counter culture was a threat to the authority, use fear of drugs to create a prohibition, thereby creating criminals out of dissidents.  Thirty years later, we allow heinous violations of property and privacy rights to continue, all excused but the War on Drugs.

At times, the fear is subtle.  There is much public discussion surrounding the phenomenon of responsible individuals.  While the public cries out for accountability in the face of irrational tragedies, such as school shootings, mothers killing babies and others, the authority finds an opportunity to use fear.  The media capitalizes on gore, violence, and tragedy because the blood sells.  An uncommonly cited fact is that murders make up less than 20% of all crime, yet is reporting of murders make up more than 60% of journalist’s reports on crime.  Bombarded by these images we determine that individuals in our society are dangerous, and the authority goes to work to exploit our fears.  The right-wing of this country insists that a more vigilant police force, and the death penalty, is desperately needed; the left-wing calls for gun control, a precursor to the elimination of the second amendment.  Note that both of these responses grant the authority more power, illustrating that government is self-interested.  Note also the irony in the gun control tactic:  James Madison said that only governments who fear their citizens would control weapons.  In the past decade we have witnessed the increasing use of the fear being used by the authority; issues such as abortion, the environment, national defense, censorship, and market control have been harnessed by authorities and subjected to the propaganda of fear.  These officials manipulate our emotional response to remove from debate any semblance of logic or honesty.  As they promise to assuage our fears, they take our freedoms.

A personal anecdote before concluding:  During my four years at Anonymous White High School, we experienced a drastic change of administration.  Gone were the department heads and class principals who knew each student by name; in were scores of psychologists, counselors, and a principal who answered my “Hi, Ms. W” with “Take off that hat.”  I have been out of that school for three years now, but I recently tried to visit some old teachers.  The authority keeping watch refused to let me in the building during school hours.  From younger siblings I have learned of hidden cameras, random searches, and a myriad of policing policies aimed at crowd control.  The official reply to concerns over this Gestapo-like treatment of students is that the policies are in response to the growing trend of school violence.  Considering that millions of children peacefully attend hundreds of thousands of schools a day, the dozen or so school killings a year are, while tragic, an extremely small fraction of the school aged population.  Still, television and our very concerned leaders have been quick to show us the gruesome and frightening result of being less than vigilant.  Children are disruptive, teachers are scared, they say.  Now my former high school treats the children as potential Klebolds instead of students.  They teach kids how to be victims, and how to spot “a troubled youth.”  The tension sowed by this policy boiled over, when the senior prank, which began with silly string, turned into a miniature riot, with the on-duty police officer being pummeled by bottles, and the lobby being spray painted.  How can we accept students to be respectful of the school when the school does not earn respect by showing it?  How can citizens of this country respect an authority which has so little respect for us, that it will use our emotions and our fears to tighten its authoritarian grip?

I love Upski’s book.  He gave me the chance to see the issue of race for more than a petty argument between Democrats and Republicans.  It showed me that blacks are used by our authority as an excuse for them to take more power.  It also showed me how easily hypocrisy takes hold.  Hasn’t this entire essay simply used blacks to scare you into listening to me?  If I must find myself in this contradicting position, with a voice of even minuscule authority, then I must say:  Beware of anyone who says they know the answer.  Beware of anyone who says they’ll fix the problem for you.  Give up nothing.  And read Bomb the Suburbs.