As the streets of Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard laid smoldering after one of the deadliest riots in history, Governor Otto Kerner of Chicago was given an assignment. He was to evaluate the violence that had taken place, indicate its triggers, and plot out a concise explanation of how the nation would move forward. The Kerner Report commission, though not given much light in contemporary politics and academia, is one of the most interesting and ominous investigations regarding race and policy in American history. This report drafted in the late 1960’s basically found that violence sparked in inner cities across the nation was not caused by savage-like Black people, or even looting, yet by the manifestation of two separate and unequal societies. Black society was urban, and White society was suburban. One was nurtured by national policy, the other kicked to the preverbal curb.

The most interesting finding of the report was the policies put in place by the government in the decades preceding it. Since the Great Negro Migration to northern cities, White Americans desperately sought a way out. Though suburban life was seen as an American right by Jeffersonian thinkers, Whites, informed solely by their racist assumptions of Blacks, decided that the 1920’s was the perfect time. Loans for homeownership began to take shape as the American economy picked up from the First World War. Thanks to transportation, the outskirts of cities were desired and recommended as a safe haven from the darkening city. The Federal government favored Whites in their FHA programs, giving them 5000 dollars in order to set up lavish properties. Meanwhile, Blacks, and other non-whites for that matter, were intentionally kept out, or denied when applying. Discrimination against Blacks from owning property got so bad that it led to a massive emptying of the White population from every major city in the US. Even as the Second World War came and went, Blacks purchased less than 2 percent of all the housing financed with FHA assistance.

      Without a proper opportunity to grasp the optimal prize in American capitalism, property, Blacks were unfairly cramped onto blighted and forgotten properties in the city centers. These centers would later be primed for urban renewal initiatives enacted by the Federal Government. Like other policies, the pushes for Urban Renewal only led to the displacement of Black citizens. 66 percent of people displaced by renewal programs were Black, leaving thousands of people without homes, or proper shelter. The 1960’s urban reality was one that characterized Blacks as a nomadic people, having to travel from slum to slum to sleep and raise a family.

Blacks having to stay one step ahead of a bulldozer were enough for the federal government to realize something had to be done about the cities. However, housing projects only made matters worse. Cramped hallways, blight, no access, substandard facilities became the instant symptoms of the American Housing Projects. These conditions only led to Black anger, resentment, and rage.

So, after decades of failed policy, and racial nepotism, the riots began popping up everywhere: Harlem, Cleveland, Chicago, Newark, Watts, and Detroit. Kerner’s finding was that the violence and despair found in these burning cities were the result of the flourishing and spatial suburbs that existed outside of them.  

One existence, though not equal, was implicated in the other. Whites resting in their safe homes that lay behind perfect fences were in direct result to Black youth dying disproportionately in the ghettos. Kerner’s report was one of culpability with which the banks, White America, and most ironically, the US government refused to recognize.

An Album Critique by:

Alexandra Rachel Silversmith

Our society is far from perfect, and Lupe does not shy away from elucidating this fact.  “Friend of the People” is a mixtape unlike any other. Though I have yet to find out when Lupe recorded the album, it seems to have occurred in the past couple of months, with numerous references to current events including the Occupy Movement, Steve Jobs and war in general. Fiasco is assessing the state of our country and world from many perspectives and provides his commentary on it all.  To start off, he poses the question, why do we have to be a military superpower, why can’t we be a humanitarian superpower? The mixtape uses dub step, jazz, alternative, rock and other beats, demonstrating his eclectic taste and genius. 

The journey is unique, and many times I felt an enigma was being unwrapped before my eyes.  With each listen, the comprehension just deepens.  Few times have I felt so many opinions and politics thrown in my face.  The first decision that Lupe made was to put the name Jesus of the front of the mixtape, which evokes the idea that society need salvation and Fiasco is trying to enlighten listeners.

Thus, we descend into Lupe’s mind; opinions and ideals unlike we’ve been permitted to hear in any of his other work.  He does not censor himself, and speaks of musicians uniting to fight for their rights as a unit and having artistic freedom in “Lupe Back”. This song is only the beginning, though.

“Double Burger w/ Cheese” holds a specific place in American history.  Lupe runs through the most popular movies in the black community during the early 90s, movies that he explains “raised a generation”.  The geography is concentrated on the West Coast but the story speaks to every black American.  There are key moments in the song where it is clear that Fiasco is calling for a stop to the glorification of violence in the black community.  Rather than continuing black on black crime, Lupe pleads for black men to see past materialistic desires and ideas of masculinity that constrain them; he asks to stop the divisiveness among them.

A commentary on the youth of today is apparent in “WWJD He’d Prolly LOL like WTF!” The decision to make this the title of the song illustrates Lupe’s belief in the degenerative nature of youth culture today and that there is a loss in society overall with a focus on consumerism.  Not only does he criticize the obsession and creation of a cult like following of Apple products, but also takes aim at Nike and McDonald’s 

For work or home, a revolutionary way of being alone

I mean, should we really get a loan?

Hey what’s the manager…just tell it to your phone

Cupertino heart with Chinese parts

Built by the poor, but designed by the smart

The ridiculousness of waiting in line, and trying to get the latest gadgets all boil down to one question, “Siri, can igod really hear me?” As Fiasco links this obsession with that of McDonald’s and its harm to health, its clear that the critique is not too different from that in “Double Burger w/ Cheese”.  The role of corporations is, Lupe suggests, one of the biggest detriments to our common good.  As the poorest of the world make these items we desire, we forget in our fascination that people are working in terrible conditions and we are condoning such treatment.  What other rapper regularly speaks about such issues? 

There is much to be learned, and though I don’t have the time to delve into each individual song, it is a must listen for all.  Lupe does not shy away from the controversy and ultimately sums up his opinion of all of those who criticize him in this way: “Funny how I’m only sick/if you never catch a thing”.  Lupe does not fail to impress with this mixtape and I believe he raises the standards above and beyond what many other rappers have even attempted to achieve.

Geneticist David Goldstein said “race for prescription is only an interim solution to carry us through a period of ignorance until we find the underlying causes”. His words could be applicable for so many issues we have in this country regarding race, yet in reference to science, this quote speaks loudly.

With the deregulated drug and medical industry making money hand over fist in this country, race has seem to become a new way for private medicine to remain relevant in the United States. The way money is being made now is under a racial guise of health and better access to medicine. And though the idea of prescribing a medicine to a person specifically because of their race, and the possibility they may be more susceptible to certain ailments, may seem like a great idea, we need to be very careful when blurring the lines between science and race.

When reading Troy Dusters work on “Race and Reification in Science”, it is clear to see that there are pluses and minuses to having race and ethnic specific drugs on the shelves. After all, the numbers don’t lie: African Americans between 45 and 64 years of age are almost three times more likely to be afflicted by heart disease than that of their White counter parts. It would be considered a great breakthrough to have a drug to help African Americans live better and longer lives in their later years, however this viewpoint ignores very obvious and pressing realities.

External factors weigh heavily in the diseases and health risks that face Black folks. No access to good medicine, or medical care, or doctors who care, or food that sustains health, or information about sustaining health was to be found in many Black communities across the nation. These external factors I just mentioned play an even stronger role in making Blacks unhealthier than Whites in their later years. In sum, the minuses are greater than the pluses.

Moreover, science is something that can also facilitate animosities and hatred harbored by one group toward the other. Unfortunately, New Zealand serves as a great example of this. In 2003, a new scientific theory charging the Maori people of the island as genetically more violent and prone to crime, spread throughout the medical community, as well as society at large.Caucasians, seemingly oblivious to the reality they created through conquest of New Zealand, wondered why crimes seemed to be plentiful in the Maori community. They wondered why there was so much violence, theft and turmoil, and then, at their convenience, a “scientific” theory was formed. Apparently the Maoris of New Zealand had the “Warrior Gene”. Interestingly enough, the warrior gene was not found in Caucasian, who violently usurped the former land of Aotearoa (today, New Zealand) from the native population. No, this wasn’t a “White” science issue; this was just a Maori problem.

In these instances, we have science trying to take the place of sociology. This is very dangerous because, as we have seen in the past, science has been coveted and exploited by those who are violently in power. Sociology is something that can responsibly examine behaviors, and more importantly, the system in which inhabitants must behave. Sociology can make up for the places science and medicine fall short. Sociology is not a replacement; it is a synergy that can explain social conditions, giving medicine a change to heal ailments caused by those social conditions.

Yet, when science itself blurs the line between itself and race, it becomes aninstrument of self-fulfilling prophecies, pre-conceived notions and a victim-blaming culture that has existed in Nazi-Germany, Rwanda, and The United States of America.

As writer Amy Harmon wrote in the New York Times, “one of the first commercial products to emerge from the genetic revolution, are spurring a thorough exploration of the question, what is in it for me?” In the case of a nation that seeks power on arbitrary differences, such as race, a lot may be to gain from genetics as ascribing the racial inferiority of some and the superiority of others.

The laws regarding race in the United States seem to be as problematic and intentional as racism itself. Historically, especially after the Civil War brought a host of ulterior and biased motives in order to insure the political and economic betterment of the White population. Unfortunately, one of the most effective instruments used in subduing the possibility of Black equality was law. It was law that kept race relevant, despite the many people who fought and died in America’s bloodiest war in hopes of thwarting it. Law is what continued the fight and resentment within Blacks throughout the past two centuries. Law was the golden ticket given to the beneficiaries of the American social order, even if that meant changing the laws time and time again.

Miscegenation serves as the best and constant reminder of the inherently flawed legal response to race. As Davis crystallizes in his work “The Rule Becomes Firm”, the idea of racial purity was not only contradicted by coercive race mixing from White men upon Black women, it also strengthened the idea into law. The one-drop rule completely ignored the malicious and intentional predatory actions of White men, because it allowed White men to rape and create “mixed” babies with Black women without the threat of injecting equality. What took place was a huge influx of the “mulatto” population throughout the American south, all of who had to assume the race and social stance of their mothers. So, if the mother of a mulatto child was Black, that child was considered legally Black, which kept those considered legally White in the racial majority, maintaining political and economic control while satisfying their sexual appetites.

Law has been used to perpetuate a system of White supremacy over Blacks, as mentioned previously, but also has had a profoundly negative affect on other minority groups. As Professor, Clara Rodriguez explains in her work “Redefining Race in 2000”, groups such as Arab Americans were legally classified as White in the United States. Problematically, Arab-Americans have many different cultural and racial values that are not shared by Whites commonly associated with the American majority, leaving them legally underrepresented and invisible. Rodriguez further explains in her work “Changing Race” that the allowance of Arabs to be considered their own legally recognized racial category could possibly bring light to “certain cultural disadvantages that Arab Americans might experience and possibly greater affirmative-action benefits and protections to be gained as a result of identifying as a minority” (Rodriguez, 156). However, a legal system that has historically revolved around the whims of a White majority wouldn’t stand to benefit from Arabs getting more legal assurance, thus keeping Arabs from joining other voices of dissent. Whites gain from this because they get to lend their category, without fulfilling it’s benefits to outsiders.

Though all of this historical evidence proves race law to be advantageous for Whites in America, it is interesting to note that aspects of racial categorization have historically confounded Whites as well. In Ian F. Haney Lopez’s work, “White by Law”, early in the 20^th century, South Asian peoples made their pitch at Whiteness by concluding they were of Caucasian stock. Race science at the time had validated South Asian claims of whiteness both geographically and historically. Yet, in a racist court of law, White interest in being supreme over dark peoples, politically and economically, strengthened the contradiction. So, because South Asians didn’t look “White” they couldn’t legally become “White”, even if they shared a common ancestry of the Caucasian lineage. In the end, the White dominated courts were divided on the issue of race, and scientific investigation was at the mercy of biased interests and external perception. “This person doesn’t look White, so they aren’t White.”

What I pondered after doing this research was the many ways race law may continue in “deracialized” America. I often wonder what my perception of Obama, Adam Clayton Powell, or X would be if they chose to make their pitch at Whiteness? How would the laws have changed if those considered “White” wanted to all be considered another category? What if White folks blew up the Towers? And what future is there for a nation where a group of people implements something so necessary, as law, into something so arbitrary, as race, as their sole means of control and wealth?