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?

[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.

[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).

[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).

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.

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

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

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

It's a real paradox that the people who are most likely to colonize a depressed neighborhood (and therefore improve it), are the people who (due to their low incomes) are least likely to stick around once the neighborhood becomes popular. They improve it and are forced to move on because they can't afford to live there any more.

Which also begs the question ... is the neighborhood truly in need of "improvement" in the first place? Does colonization by artists really "improve" things, or does making a neighborhood fashionable ulitmately have to make it inaccessible to its former inhabitants?

Does maintaining diversity while improving the quality of life mean that one needs to change from "artist" to "activist"?

Re: return to feudalism

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

As far as us having the poorst people, I'd reserve that unfortunate distinction to the kids in Africa begging for pens, marveling over ice cubes and fighting over a carrot I gave them.

[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.

Re: return to feudalism

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

There's also a country even closer to the U.S., Haiti, the poorest in the western hemisphere. When W promised continued support for Iraq yesterday, I was wondering what happened to Haiti. Since Aristide's government fell out of favor with the U.S., financial support for that country has dwindled...Oh, I forgot, they have no oil, do they?

Re: return to feudalism

[transient-poet.livejournal.com]

No oil and they speak French. A double no-no.

Re: return to feudalism

[(Anonymous)]

Not to mention the third world pockets we have within our own borders: urban ghettos, or impoverished rural areas like reservations, Western Mississippi or Appalachia.

[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.

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

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

[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.

[relaxing.livejournal.com]

essentially, yes. if neighborhoods were not run-down, they wouldn't be low-rent. by bringing in money and repairs, the neighborhood is improved, and rents go up.

the real question is, how can you instill a sense of civic pride and responsibility in people when nobody feels any pride or resonsibility towards them?

chased by hooligans on bmx bikes... oh for fuck's sake...

[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?

Re: return to feudalism

[relaxing.livejournal.com]

ah, someone near my neck of the woods.

as I understand it, the casinos are heavily taxed and that at least some of that money makes the a.c. public schools very well funded. So why doesn't the local government do more to improve the poor communities?

Re: return to feudalism

[(Anonymous)]

I'd ask James Usry!

Re: return to feudalism

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I will consult The Oracle on this matter.