More on Nihilism: White Neighbors, Crime, Community, and Black Youth Violence in Memphis

In a casual conversation in what was meant to welcome me to my new city, a white neighbor uncomfortably reminded of me the racial challenges that remain very much intact in the South between white folk and people of color, when he candidly referenced the degree of crime in the city as being the province of the ignorant, uneducated and low income “blacks” in the neighborhood. 

No code words were necessary. He expressed concern regarding the racial “other” moving into the white-dominated communities, causing a shifting of geography (white flight) within the city and surrounding areas of Memphis. (Amazingly, he openly discussed these issues with me, as he conveyed that I was an “exception” to other blacks he encounters on a day-to-day basis.)

Dr. Darron Smith, writing over at the Grio, has a nice piece on race and crime as experienced in Memphis, Tennessee that is worth reading.

I appreciate the sincerity of his argument and concerns about black youth violence.

Inspired by Cornel West's essay some years ago, I have written about the problem of black nihilism and its toxic impact on young people several times. I am no closer to a solution or any particularly brilliant insight on the matter.

Perhaps, there is no easy answer to a problem that was centuries in the making. However, I have come to one qualifier in my thinking on these matters: the nihilism of the ghetto youthocracy and their Chief Keef heroes that kill dozens (if not hundreds) of other black people every week across the country are a symptom of a larger crisis in American cultural values.

The United States has one of the highest rates of inter-personal violence in the world. Americans worship the gun and donate their children to its cult of death. The United States is an imperialist power that kills abroad at will. The United States is a society typified by consumerism, media spectacle, Facebook narcissism, a reality TV show culture that promises that anyone can be famous for doing nothing, and gross wealth and wage inequality. Together those elements (and others) have created a national crisis of meaning wherein human life is equated with ability to buy things and hurt others without consequence.

The nihilism of many black ghetto underclass youth is a function of a debased type of biopolitics that reflects the values of the neo liberal national security corporate democratic surveillance State.

A question. How do we take the macro-level and institutional analysis of these dynamics as described by Darron below and apply it to actionable interventions on the day-to-day?

Memphis is ranked as the tenth deadliest city in the nation. Since I arrived here, not a week has gone by when a young black male under the age of 25 has not been injured or killed as a result of interpersonal conflict within predominately black spaces and, subsequently, reported on the nightly news. The face of crime is young, black and male, and those young men are typecast as angry, overly violent, aggressive and a general menace to society. 

That image pervades our thinking, informing our manufactured understanding that all black men are to be feared and are, thus, potential suspects in a police lineup. Inequality in society makes crime more likely as populations must find ways to cope with despair. Having few socially acceptable coping skills, black men often lash out, defending what little they may possess in the form of manhood and pride.

What my neighbor failed to realize, like most white Americans, is that these circumstances are realities that create the conditions that give rise to crime and deviance and can fuel society’s perceptions of crime that lead to unjust characterizations.

I am left confused and spent by these conversations about how institutions intersect with personal behavior and choices. My response is as follows: all of what Dr. Smith may have written here is true. But, so what?

And where do we go from here?