Justice and Peace Studies Program (Georgetown Summer Courses)

JUPS 200-01

Professor McCarthy

No Man’s Land

My life has changed drastically in the brief six months I have lived in the District of Columbia as I have been able to set out alone – have new experiences, meet new people, learn life lessons – the typical clichés of the urban college student. Coming from Moline, a small urban enclave in rural downstate Illinois, I arrived at Georgetown University with a feeling of my own ignorance and naivety, seeing that my fellow peers have all maintained the best grades at the best schools while working on numerous humanitarian projects, playing three sports, and trekking across Europe in their free time. Thus, I have spent my time here catching up on experiences, trying to become worldly and enlightened. Recently, I had an encounter from which I have learned so much; I encountered the DC Metropolitan Police in Anacostia, a neighborhood that perhaps is the best example of urban decay in the District.

I had recently taken a job as a tutor at the Heads Up middle school program in Anacostia. On the first day of tutoring, I was worried about my safety, recalling the horrors that everyone had told me about Anacostia and Southeast DC in general. But meeting the Anacostian children reassured me of my own safety. They were just people after all. After tutoring one day, the Heads Up director, who is African-American; another tutor, who is white; and I were walking back to the Anacostia metro stop when we saw a police car traveling in the opposite direction of us. The car turned behind us into the parking lot of Birney Elementary School while we continued walking. A few seconds later, two DC Metro police officers were chasing after us and yelling for us to stop.

One of the police officers stayed back while the other proceeded in harshly grabbing the other tutor and pushing him against a wall. The officer reminded me of a Marine – he had buzzed hair and yelled often. The Heads Up director and I watched as the officer yelled at and interrogated the other tutor. He first asked of him, “What are you guys doing here?” in a very accusatory manner. The director explained why we were there, and the officer responded, “You guys were running away from me. Since y’all don’t look like people from around here, I thought you were getting drugs or something. Now you guys know where you’re going, right.” We responded we did. He then said, “I know this doesn’t apply to you [points to the director]. I’m not trying to be racist but you two [the other tutor and I], because you are white, if you walk down any of these streets, the people WILL shoot or rob you. I’m not trying to be racist, but it’s the truth. Y’all get out of here quickly and safely. I’m just concerned about you two’s safety.” He left and we left.

While the three of us walked back to Anacostia Station, we talked about how awful that incident was. I do not think I have ever been so appalled. None of us had seen such a violent show of power. The director was upset that the officer did not even acknowledge that he too was in danger if we two tutors were. It was like the officer was protecting us two white boys from the black people everywhere around us. I thought that it was terrible how he demeaned and dehumanized the black people of Anacostia; to him they were animals – untamable, savage beasts. He made it sound as if they all were drug dealing, violent, evil people, not the hard-working people barely surviving paycheck to paycheck under constant threat of eviction and bankruptcy. I guarantee that the latter version is more applicable than the officer’s version. Never having seen this form of overt institutional racism, I now understand why urban black people feel indignant towards the police.

I went home wondering how the police officer can get away with feeling such sentiments towards the people of Anacostia, but then I thought of how people around me viewed Anacostia. Although hardly any of them have ever been there, the students of Georgetown University “know” that Anacostia (always referred to as Southeast) is a place where you get robbed and shot, the same statement as the police officer. I honestly think that many here believe that when one crosses the border from Northeast or Southwest into Southeast that one will be engulfed in a world of prostitutes, drugs, and violence, which is simply false. As residents of the city, most of us fear our brethren in that neighborhood. They are inhuman savages thirsty for blood. We know this without ever having met an Anacostian. But how do we know? All we know of the neighborhood comes from hearsay or the media. One of these forces must promote the negative viewpoints of the black urbanites.

Much like war-torn, arid, hopeless Iraq, Anacostia is a foreign, mysterious land full of evil criminals and degenerates – a place where Americans should not enter for fear of their lives. At least the media chooses to show it this way. Each night on the local news, when one hears the word “Southeast,” without fail the next words will be “murder,” “rape,” “homicide,” “robbery,” or similar words. People who never have entered that quadrant of the city probably base their reality of it from the news. Crime and violence become the reality of Southeast for the person never having been there. It is understandable why people view it with such contempt. However, my experiences have always been positive aside from my encounter with the police, contrary to what the average Northwest DC resident would think. In Anacostia, I fear the police more than I do the people.

But the media can convince one of almost anything. I had a discussion with a friend recently about how the American media negatively portrayed Communism during the Cold War. Obviously, the media spoke against human rights abuses and the like in those countries, but what intrigued me more was that it used subliminal negative images to fight Communism. When I think about movies that have scenes in Eastern Europe, the skies of Eastern Europe are always cloudy, more often than not it is raining, and the harsh languages and cold grey stone façades of the buildings create the sense of intense loneliness and destitution. In reality, these myths of Eastern Europe are false. Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia all have world renowned beaches (thus, it probably is fairly sunny) and border Greece and Italy, Western nations known for temperate weather. Although the Iron Curtain divided the West from the East on ideological grounds, the boundary remained just that – ideological. Ideology cannot alter weather patterns although the American media implied this through its portrayals of Eastern Europe. It played on the fear of Communism. By making Communist nations appear to be dark, cloudy wastelands void of emotion, the media created a more detestable vision of Communism. They lied to the American people to advance the agenda against Communism.

But then why does the media create fear of black neighborhoods and poor people. I believe the fear of the urban poor minorities stems from our system of capitalism. Stemmed in the ideals of meritocracy and equal opportunity, capitalism cannot meet its own ideals and goals. Due to many factors (racism, inheritance, sexism, equality in education, etc.), there is not equal opportunity. The rich inherit wealth from their parents while the poor inherit poverty. Those who run the country, the capitalists (who are our congresspeople or who buy our congresspeople) do not want the system which they played so well to be tarnished. With the increasing mobility of our country, the affluent whites flee from the cities as fast as possible, leaving their run down remnants for the poor to take. Capitalism takes advantage of this. The suburbanites do not have to see the poor suffering anymore. They do not see the single mothers caring for multiple children while working two jobs. They do not see the schools that cannot afford textbooks or basic supplies or even teachers. They do not see the inhumane run down tenements in which the poor are forced to live. In the place of those images, a barrage of media from television to radio, entertainment to news, tells us that the poor choose to be poor, that they must be not ambitious to choose to live in the ghetto. We dehumanize them and turn them into savages so that we will not feel guilty for their plight. In the capitalist system, someone has to be at the bottom. Our media reassures us that the poor deserve to be poor because they did not pursue their ambitions, not because they were royally screwed by the system for being born into the bottom. The meritocracy never existed; it is all an illusion. The lies that the media feeds us solidify our belief in it but more importantly show the consequences of not playing the system. Thus, while the poor suffer poverty, the middle class happily makes themselves corporate slaves, knowing at least they are not poor. The rich control everybody. This is what we call freedom. God bless America.

“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers,

immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.”

-Noam Chomsky