The “Ghetto,” as we know it today, is a sham - a fabrication
similar to the world created inThe Matrix. The contemporary
ghetto is a virtual reality (or more accurately: an actual
surreality) that its inhabitants have accepted, without question,
as the actual reality of Black folks. When the marketing power of
the ghetto was realized, it was quickly decided that it must be
harnessed. It happened quietly. First, was the development of a
cleaner cousin named “Urban.” Then, almost overnight all the old
style, long-term measures employed to control the ghetto like drugs
and violence and the new immediacy of popular culture and instant
sex were coalesced into the creation of the “ghetto matrix,” a new
way of reining in the population and generating revenue
simultaneously.
Manipulating the generational rift that exists in all
communities, the inhabitants of the ghetto matrix were split from
their elders. The elders, alive before the creation of the ghetto
matrix can perceive its existence, but don’t have the power to
define it. The last two generations born within the ghetto matrix
can’t imagine living without it. These last two generations, and
all those to follow, have been born and bred solely to be harnessed
for their power as producers and consumers of ghetto commodities,
like the previous generations were born and bred to be slaves, then
sharecroppers, then low wage service and factory workers, then…now.
They are just like the crops of human beings that were powering
The Matrix.
The inhabitants, in return for their output, get to live in a
fantasy, a world of no personal responsibility. It’s a world ruled
by the primacy of emotion, of action and not comprehension, where
you can do anything you want to anybody you want (except leave).
But in this matrix, like the one in the movie, all consequences
ripple invisibly back to reality. The repercussions, although
invisible, always hit the unsuspecting inhabitants hard. The
ghetto is a profitable commodity. Its stifling poverty and
artificially limited opportunities are a fertilizer for its
inhabitants’ ability to produce and consume. The ghetto must be
maintained in order to continue and increase the revenue it
generates. The inhabitants are simply batteries charging the
revenue machine.
Well, how can a place of often extreme poverty be worth so much
money? If the cracked asphalt is the soil, and poverty the
fertilizer, what grows in these conditions are the cash crop. The
inhabitants are the crops, the commodity. Their physical
bodies are the commodities. Their bodies generate income in
the obvious way through the drugs or bullets that get pumped into
them. Their bodies generate income through the satellite industries
based around violence and the illusion of its prevention. Their
bodies are the test subjects for pharmaceutical companies, looking
for chemical solutions to the highly profitable market of crime
control.
Their bodies generate income in the spaces they occupy
whether in an overpriced slumlord’s apartment or a cell owned and
operated by the rapidly growing private prison industry. Or a spot
in the rapidly growing privatization of the public school systems,
or a spot in a parochial school subsidized by voucher programs.
Their bodies generate income by the imagesthey create
for the welfare verification ID card manufacturers or for the
producers of low budgeted “reality-based” TV programs
likeCopsorWorld’s Scariest Police Chases.Or the gun
manufacturers who use these images to sell their products to the
suburbs. Their images sell newspapers, books and magazines. Their
bodies generate income by how they areadorned, whether it’s
with the purchase of extreme jewelry or designer fashions, or by
the development of fashion and cultural trends for the future, to
be emulated and distributed by the outside world, then sold back to
the inhabitants of the ghetto matrix. Their bodies are the crops
and the fuel for new revenue streams. As long as the fertilizer of
poverty is rich, the soil will always produce new and innovative
industries.
When the battery is used up (or dies prematurely), the ghetto
matrix is so well designed, it has already encouraged the
inhabitants to reproduce, creating more batteries to replace the
ones that have burned out. They are all of course, expendable.
Companies are encouraged to use as many as they need to create
greater and greater margins of profit. Like the Matrix in
the movie, the ghetto matrix was developed to protect, maintain and
enrich itself. It has evolved to be self-perpetuating, requiring
little upkeep to stay functioning. It is not in the creators
interest for the people to escape. The inhabitants are discouraged
from leaving both physically and mentally. Substandard public
education combined with an availability of guns, drugs, and sex and
a omnipresent popular “urban” culture, beamed into the matrix that
urges indulgence in all three, prevents the inhabitants from even
looking for an exit. The inhabitants have no idea that the world
they live in has been manufactured from the outside, and that their
dreams and desires have been given to them.
The ghetto matrix’s deftest maneuver is convincing the
inhabitants to believe in the unreality so strongly, that they
exhort their fellow inhabitants to “keep it real,” to uphold the
codes and subsystems necessary to maintain the matrix. Its
influence is so powerful that those whose parents escaped before
the ghetto matrix’s creation find themselves clamoring to get back
in for fear of losing out on some authentic Black experience. Those
who fail to “keep it real” are punished, by threats of violence or
far worse, by being denied authenticity in the highly commodified
(and profitable) realms of blackness. The tragic irony is that the
so-called authenticity the inhabitants fight so dearly for has been
designed and programmed into them by the creators of the ghetto
matrix.
This has spawned an industry of well paid pundits - people who
do not live in the ghetto matrix, but report on it, theorize on it,
analyze it and philosophize on it. There are two types only: Those
that attack the inhabitants and those that defend the inhabitants.
Neither group has expressed any interest in the ghetto matrix
itself. Both groups maintain the ghetto matrix in their heads. They
have to, for fear of losing their authenticity. If authenticity is
lost, then so is profitability.
Some “Pro-matrix” commentators, ambassadors to the realer
world, even urge the outsiders to see the ghetto matrix as a “new”
reality, that the inhabitants are actually pioneers in a
rebellious, anti-mainstream, alternative lifestyle. While stopping
short of beseeching the outside world to enter (that might be too
dangerous) they do urge the purchasing of products that represent
the lifestyle associated with the ghetto matrix. The ghetto matrix
provides a fantasy in which outsiders can participate vicariously
without risking the requisite dangers the inhabitants face every
day. What else could explain the fact that 72% of the consumers of
ghetto matrix music are from the outside? The distributors of
ghetto matrix music know their consumers don’t want stories of
ghetto love but stories of ghetto tragedy. It’s thrilling and they
provide new and innovative artists to satisfy the demand. Outsiders
are often overheard saying, “Human beings couldn’t really live that
way,” while their children who are purchasing the CD’s and baggy
jeans say; “I wish I could live that way.” All watch with
unblinking fascination. A few brave souls actually enter the ghetto
matrix on safari tours to interact with the inhabitants in their
artificial environment knowing that they can leave whenever they
wish. The inhabitants, programmed to perform, unknowingly give a
great show day after day, thus completing the circle and
maintaining the matrix.