From ghetto to ghetto

[imomus]

Yesterday I regaled you with a relatively dilettantish complaint about America: that the world's richest country contains some surprisingly poor textures. I wrote that piece very much in the role of a privileged international creative nomad, the kind of person Richard Florida describes in his new book The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent. Florida's thesis is that America's recent rightward swing—bringing with it hostility to intellectuals, gays, foreigners, widening income divide, social conservatism—endangers the single most important source of U.S. power: its ability to attract global talent. But Florida doesn't just blame the neocons for their neglect of both the metropolitan cultural elites and the poor. He also points a finger of blame at the bunker mentality of the "creative class" itself — a class he estimates constitutes about 30% of the workforce, yet which is able to accumulate a disproportionate share of wages and wealth. America's recent denigration of these people has done nothing to diminish their power: everything is going their way. But it may have distributed them around the world a bit: now, rather than being concentrated in New York and San Francisco, these people are as likely to be found in Bangalore, Melbourne, Madrid.

Wealth-creating hotspots like these have become growth areas thanks to creative workers: scientists, engineers, arts and culture workers, entertainers, writers. Meanwhile, people who live by selling their physical labour, or work in service industries, are seeing their income decline and their surroundings deteriorate. Florida sees the rightward swing in America as a vote fuelled by class resentment, as the red staters vote against their own economic interests to punish the hated blue state metrosexuals, the ones who seem to be profiting from the new creatively-oriented economic template of advanced capitalism. "On average," says Florida, "people who work in the creative sector of the economy make double people in the manufacturing, triple people in the service sector."

If yesterday's dilettantish question was "Why does the richest country in the world have some of the poorest textures?", today's is a much bigger one: "Why does the richest country in the world have some of the poorest people?" Why is inequality increasing? Are creative knowledge workers partly to blame? (They're often blamed for adding value, and therefore pushing up rents, in the poor areas they colonize.) In an interesting interview in The Tyee magazine, Florida outlines his vision of a world whose economy is driven by knowledge and culture workers operating in "creative ghettos linked by capital, creating almost an alternative universe":

"The world of globally connected nomads is made up of my 150 million members of the creative class — that's only in 45 countries that we looked at. Okay, how many people are there in the world? How many billion? So the people participating at the forefront of this are maybe less than 10 percent of the world's population. That's where the real issue is." The challenge and the promise for the future, thinks Florida, is to make as many people as possible part of the creative class, to call forth untapped potential and share the rewards creativity brings. (Sometimes Florida sounds a bit like Josef Beuys, who said "everyone is an artist".)

Now I'm almost a parody of the kind of creative nomad Florida describes. I trot from one "creative ghetto" to another, comparing notes. I write design journalism, make pop records, sit in an art gallery gabbling away, demonstrating my amazing fluency, my ability to improvize. I work in the "creative ghetto" Florida describes. But the other side of the coin is that I'm tremendously poor myself. The other kind of "ghetto", the poor, racially monolithic one, is also a part of my daily experience. It's where I'm living right now.

I'm staying in Harlem. Every night I take the subway home from the gallery and see the white faces disappear from the train one by one as the "elevator" rises above Central Park, above the city's 110th floor. Soon I'm the only non-black left. Last night I sat opposite a solitary, fierce-looking man listening to an iPod, rapping along loudly to the lyrics he was hearing. It sounded like he was improvising and adding a few of his own. I changed at 125th Street, and on the platform stood next to a deranged homeless man uttering a Tourette's litany concerning money, fucking this and that, "them", the station manager, and time. It sounded angry one minute, hysterically funny (at least to him) the next. I felt a mixture of things. First of all, personally insecure, unsafe. Even in the middle of the day here I have gangs of marauding unemployed youths shouting after me "Hey, yo! Hey, YO! HEY YO!" I don't want to feel like I'm living in Resident Evil or Grand Theft Auto, especially when I'm carrying the most valuable thing I own, my iBook, in my bag. I stayed here in 2003 too, and was chased down the street by kids on BMX bikes. It was a terrifying experience. Why can't I feel as safe here as I feel in Tokyo? I want there to be a flatness to the society I'm in, a gentleness, a sense of safety and inclusion which allows everyone to move around feeling playful and experimental, not cagey, cautious or just plain scared. Is that really such a utopian scenario, is it terribly spoilt and unrealistic of me to want that, even in America?

Little changes, changes in context, can make a huge difference. Even while I'm reacting with insecurity, I'm also aware that the man rapping along to his iPod and the man mumbling on the platform are doing something essentially similar to what I do every day in the gallery. We're all doing what Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk also did: improvising, creating something out of nothing. It would be nice to say that the only difference is that I'm doing it for money and they aren't, but it's not true: nothing in the gallery is for sale, I'm also improvising for nothing, and I'm sure I have as little money on my person as the Harlemites, and pay a similar rent on my apartment. The big difference is really just context, and my feeling that, although poor, I'm very much included in some kind of global creative class. If I wanted I could hustle for work and earn quite a bit because of my "cultural capital". I could take my place in a metropolitan bourgeoisie of some kind, in some city, some "creative ghetto" rather than be dossing on someone's couch here in Harlem. That option isn't available to the people I see on the street. I wonder what it would be like, the world in which they could be part of that other ghetto, and therefore make both ghettos erase each other?

It certainly wouldn't be a world led by George W. Bush. I see no policies forthcoming from the current US administration, and no mood evident in the US population, that suggest that the widening class gap is going to be narrowed any time soon, nor the "spikes" of inequality flattened. The two ghettos, the privileged and increasingly affluent creative one and the non-metaphorical, depressed and increasingly dangerous one, will continue to follow different courses. The polarity, the class gap (and with it life expectancy, health and lifestyle outcomes) will keep widening. But it's increasingly clear to me that we can't be individually secure unless everyone is secure, we can't feel free until everyone feels free, and we can't feel safe until everyone feels safe. It's going to be a lot better to be a creator when everyone is a creator. The evidence of that potential is everywhere, even in the scariest places. Even those Resident Evil moments on the subway platform might, in another context, be the most amazing piano improvisation, just as my gallery performance might, in another context, be murder.

Comments

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

Would you say that the creative class, because of their nomadic lifestyle, are not inclined to work to improve whichever country/city/state they make their home?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think they do improve environments, but that improvement then makes life more expensive in the areas they move to, thus enhancing class divides and fostering resentment (eg what happened in San Francisco). So inclusiveness and social equality have to be part of the process, and for that you need politicians who don't stir up minor difference class resentments between the poor and the creative class (in order to hide the real class divide, which is this one (http://www.faireconomy.org/images/image008.jpg).

[pintele.livejournal.com]

'lo Momus. Just wanted to say, I'm going to Israel for 10 days and probably won't have internet access, and am going to miss reading your entries in the meantime. I'll have a lot of catching up to do when I get back. I've been finding your most recent ones very interesting because I live somewhat near NYC and agree with a lot of the things you've said.

Okay, thus ends my incredibly vague and unintelligent comment.

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

...and you didn't even mention the millions in the U.S. without healthcare insurance, for whom a hospital visit would mean financial disaster.

return to feudalism

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure many here have seen the A train syndrome, too.

Go to Atlantic City if you want to see postmodern feudalism: drugs, poverty and prostitution in the shadow of garish, laser-spouting fiberglas pleasuredomes that live off the pensions of the elderly.

American life has indeed become even more precarious: many people are existing in a sort of middle-class poverty, living only one accident or two paychecks away from ruin, while the stress makes them fatter and older. Granted, many bring such hardships upon themselves by their high levels of consumption and debt, but others are just trying to get by.

And now it turns out that the courts will allow corporations to take the homes working-class people kill themselves to afford and build over them. Two hundred years ago, Americans would be out in the streets over this--and they should be now, but too many of them can't afford to take a day from work to make waves. They're scared, harried and resigned to their lot, it seems.

Watch your back, Nick.

Unconfirmed

[duke-v.livejournal.com]

I heared the other day that half of all US bankruptcies are caused by lack of adequate health insurance during sickness. I can't confirm the veracity of that claim but if it is true I am sure glad I don't live Stateside, being too poor to afford insurace myself.

[saintpeg.livejournal.com]

a privileged international creative nomad

You're a 21st-century flaneur.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

It is also somewhat problematic that being part of the creative class often entails being cynical and nihilistic about progress, or at least a certain feeling of powerlessness

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, Melbourne probably will follow the US's creative hubs in decline. Australia is ruled by a paternalistic culture-war administration who are into things such as restrictive censorship (Australia's censorship regime is the most severe of any non-totalitarian state outside of the Islamic and Confucian worlds) and legislating "values" (a key part of the federal government taking over state school systems) and faith-based programmes, not to mention a closeness to the Bush administration that makes Tony Blair look like a Guardian columnist and a Thatcherite monetarist zeal. Since they came to power, art films like Baise-Moi and Nine Songs have been banned and international avant-garde artists have started to avoid Australia (where they used to go regularly).

[trayce.livejournal.com]

You do Australia an extreme disservice with a post like that acb! Baisemoi was banned but it also got a good showing before that happened. We don't have anywhere near the levels of religious interference (or even religious interest) in this country as somewhere like the US does, despite what the media thinks (how many fundamentalists do you know? I dont know any). And our health system, although being diminished, is still better than the UKs - I can choose to go to whatever GP I want in Melbourne at any time, many bulk bill, I dont have to wait 6 months for a specialist or for outpatient surgery, etc.

I think London's warping your view of backhome ;)

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

hmm... when I was staying in Harlem I never got hassled, and I'm the whitest whitey that ever whiteyed.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah, but you probably don't wear amusing hats and bubble wrap dresses.

[transient-poet.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with Saul WIlliam's Slam? It deals with these 'two ghettos' you outline in this piece. Is the problem the projects. Government sponsored social science projects. Or is the problem rather the ghetto of the mind. One's own internal prison. Of course America's innercities are so radically today than they were pre-80's due to the crack epidemic that questions of the internal space are bound up with social reality in a very direct way.
The creative class inhabits the same physical space as anyone else. The difference is the psycho-social space we carve out for ourselves. Downtown Oakland, where I am currently residing, is in no way an attractive neighborhood. After 5pm, all the white collar types go off in cars to their respective homes and the city center becomes a shell inhabited by workers and homeless who travel on city busses or by foot. There are very few cars on the roads. The new modern office buildings take on an almost mocking quality.
The residents who should be screaming and rioting are weighted down with fast foods and hypnotized by cheap advertising laden television. The creative types scream and rail against this, passed over as just another crazy artist. The real success of the American Right Wing is its controll over the mindspace of the public. Fox News has greater mindshare than Marx. As John Lennon Said, "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."

I empathize, Momus...

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

I really do. I am poor myself. I've been one of those guys that moves around into neighborhoods I "had no right to be in".

One thing that helped me was finding a couple good joes from the area and befriending them, sparking up a spliff, chewing the fat on occasion sans discourse, dogma, or pontification.

I was known as the quiet one. No one knew I was observing. I got credit by showing respect and reaching out as a mensch rather than as a colonist. Maybe now that I'm gone they're all whispering after me, but I doubt it.

Anything beyond that is just theory and spin. The world is ever changing, always built on the same pushes and pulls and I'm waaaay too small and impoverished to do much more than smile and pray that more people will get what they really need.

[simasima.livejournal.com]

Isn't it ironic that Richard Florida shares his last name with one of the reddest and most polarizing U.S. states, one of the better examples of rightwing swing? When you began that sentence with just 'Florida,' at first I thought you were referring to the battleground of Bush's first election where of course his brother is governor.

reddest?

[(Anonymous)]

The last two presidential elections have shown pretty clearly that Florida is one of the purplest states.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

I don't want to feel like I'm living in Resident Evil or Grand Theft Auto

hah i frequently compare my life to a survival horror game. i usually feel closest to "silent hill" when i'm frightened, or to "fatal frame" when i have my camera out...my "resident evil" moments are mostly reserved for attacking invisible-digital zombies in my modeling gig. :)

...going back into my box now.

[unverifiable.livejournal.com]

I think there's a cultural disdain for education that is rampant in many parts of this society. It takes work and parenting and discipline and it's too easy to do other things. Who's fault is this? Is it really a politician or any government's fault? Or is it the desire to have, get, or take regardless of the concept of earning, or does earning even mean something any more? These are earnest questions.

[(Anonymous)]

Right right right! cultural disdain for education. Tis badly true.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Although I think your analysis on the lack of "texture" in the U.S. (and NYC) is largely bullshit, this post is spot on. I dislike nebulous claims about cultural superiority or inferiority (e.g., the lack or possession of texture), and would rather talk about who is on top and figure out why. (On the flip side, I love talking about what I love and why, which is a different conversation totally.)

I wholly agree with this post and think it is grounded in constantly repeated and lived experience.

By almost all accounts, social mobility is declining and has been for some time. Why? No one is sure, but our government's larger policy probably has something to do with it. I don't really believe that "creative workers" have that much to do with the decline in social mobility, but it's probably one aspect.

There has been a power shift in the U.S. which started in the early 70s and continues to this day, which is moving the U.S. to a model that closely resembles the turn of the century control by the robber barons / captains of industry. It was a horrible time to be anything other than rich, and I think the U.S. is hell bound to repeat it.

Lastly, yes, you are complicit simply because you have an "out" and you know it. So do I. We can trade our cultural capital for fiscal capital very easily (I sort of have). But what to do? Taken from one perspective you/we are simply living embodiments of pressure valves for the society's discontents. Simplisitc, but true, no?

[(Anonymous)]

Are you really that poor? What about your inheritance?

[kojapan.livejournal.com]

This entry is dead on.

[queersolitude.livejournal.com]

"Florida's thesis is that America's recent rightward swing—bringing with it hostility to intellectuals, gays, foreigners, widening income divide, social conservatism—endangers the single most important source of U.S. power: its ability to attract global talent."

given the way the country is right now, and even the rightward swing... it is STILL attracting a lot of scientific talent from all over the globe, predominantly asia and europe.

as long as america has a lot of the top scientific institutions in the world, we'll still be getting talented applicants from all over the place.

now, giving them visas is another issue.

Well..

[godfreygoode.livejournal.com]

If America's shift rightward has the effect of alienating liberal artistic types, that's hardly going to have a negative effect on the country.

Does a country want people who work for a living? Or people who DON'T work for a living?

What would America lose if someone like Momus, who goes sight-seeing and tours galleries for a living, were to pack up and leave? Or the folks in Williamsburg, who refuse to take a job because they, as artists, are above the rest of society and are entitled to be, only naturally, compensated for their life of recreation?

These "mobility studies" fail to capture the main point about America. The MERE FACT that someone in the bottom 10% can reach the top 10% is what makes the country great. The opportunity is there, if the person wants it. But of course, when a program like welfare encourages people to stay out of work, it's easy to see why so many poor people won't even allow themselves the chance to move up.

Re: Well..

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha, you got that right Mr. Goode!

The fact that so many of us work so hard allows a shiftless minority to live a life of recreation, develop a firm sense of intellectual superiority and entitlement while ensconcing themselves in the mantle of art. "Life without Art isn't worth living...so I MUST be supported by any means necessary!"


Heh heh. Awesome.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for the post, Momus - I feel this has been stewing beneath the surface of many of your recent entries. I find that many of my arty friends stew in a pot of cynicism and inaction; "well, I don't have any money, so I am free from being blamed for any poor person's misery" is the unstated rule. I'm afraid I don't agree. I guess they believe it's a far higher calling to argue over what record is cool this week than to ever have contact with someone from a different background.

I am very lucky in that I am able to trade my cultural capital for a good income at a relaxed pace; however, rather than move to the hippest overpriced creative ghetto, I do feel it is my responsibility to give $$$ and goods to charity and fit in a bit of volunteering now and then. Although I certainly wish that my US government cared for its vulnerable citizens and persons abroad, I can't wait for it to do so - it is morally imperative that I do it now, especially if they insist on sending me preposterous tax refunds.

What do you think of our older textures, Momus? We have amazing Victorian buildings and Art Deco structures - the haphazard race towards crap urban planning is mostly a post WWII, automotive phenomenon. Unfortunately this makes some of our hipsters swoon in a love affair
with the past; it's the same sort of detatchment as outlined above. "all the good stuff happened in the past; I'm not going to participate in anything now." Come to think of it, it's just a bit of rockish fundamentalism, similar to a group of Christian folk purchasing a Thomas Kinkade painting (or a Thomas Kinkade housing development!) A need to be safe, a need to avoid the unpredicatable and the unknown...

Your wonderful bubble wrap caftan suggests an African collaboration in the future!

[(Anonymous)]

I was poking harmless fun about the bubble wrap dress thing I posted earlier up this thread. But I have to blow my cover, as it strikes me that "I am very lucky in that I am able to trade my cultural capital for a good income at a relaxed pace" is the best thing I have heard anyone say for a very long time.

Rob

[(Anonymous)]

"Why can't I feel as safe here as I feel in Tokyo? I want there to be a flatness to the society I'm in, a gentleness, a sense of safety and inclusion which allows everyone to move around feeling playful and experimental, not cagey, cautious or just plain scared."

I can't tell if you're just really naive or wiilfully ignorant. Have you ever spoken to Japanese Burakamin living in the ghettos of Tokyo, or ethnic Koreans working for shit pay in the manufacturing industry and going home to neighborhoods where they don't even have proper sewage systems?

Yoichi Shimatsu on the Nagata Ward ghetto in Kobe:

"Since boyhood, I have seen poverty, misery, and overcrowding in many parts of the world, but nothing compares to my memories of that nightmarish netherworld. If there is such a thing as hell on Earth, it was Nagata Ward."

How is this possible in the second richest country in the world? It couldn't possibly be that there is abject poverty and hopelessness, not to mention bigotry and exclusiveness, in any country. No, never in Japan.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I'll testify to that. I've seen some ROUGH neighborhoods in Japan where the air is almost suffocating.


But none of that matters as long as tourists get to see a tiny Zen garden or a temple or a camera store. As long as that stuff is there, Japan is still the mystical land of milk and honey and magic that imparts an instant aura of hipness to anyone who throws his stock in with it.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, you're getting better and better. You're providing some very interesting perspectives for me to think about as i'm getting my phd proposal sorted out (in social anthropology, looking at the generation and class of people who are soon going to come into cultural prominence - young affluent westerners - and their mentalities regarding privilege, consumerism, individualism, social responsibility, inequality and justice). Rare that any so-called creatives have not only social awareness but critical self-awareness too.

You're being fucking interesting, basically. Thankyou!!

The Restaurant chain effect

[avondalejani.livejournal.com]

As more and more people are exposed to one thing in order to make it palatable... the jagged edge and uniqueness is smoothed away.. like people touch some religious icon.... their touch when new was filled with reverence and awe(spritual connection) but as time passes as the spot that these millions touch becomes smooth and eroded the surface loses it uniquesness its line smothed... as is the experience... million before you have touch and probed and millions after you will.. no new ground broken just the same old rut.... kinda xplaines to me why taco bell has no flavor.