Brotherly Love

This week in North Philly Notes, Nico Slate, author of Brothers, writes about his brother’s death and Philadelphia.

In 1994, my older brother was the victim of a racially-charged attack. A White man smashed a beer bottle into his face, crushing his right eye. I used to call it a hate crime but the truth is more complicated. On July 4, 2003, my brother died in a car crash he might have avoided if he still had both of his eyes. About ten years ago, I began investigating my brother’s death and its relationship to the night he lost his eye. I decided to write a book, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race,

Neither my brother nor I ever lived in Philadelphia. He was attacked in Los Angeles, the city in which we were born and in which he lived most of his life. In 1960, my brother’s father, a Nigerian man named Chukwudi Osakwe, came to study at the renowned HBCU, Lincoln University, located not far from Philadelphia. In Brothers, I describe how Chukwudi played on the soccer team, was elected president of his freshmen class, and was known as “the new African with the fancy British accent.” I wish my brother and I had visited Lincoln together. He and I were in Philadelphia together only once—during a cross-country trip that occurred just a few years after he lost his eye. In my book, I describe how that trip revealed many of the challenges my brother faced after losing his eye—not just how to cope with his disability, but how to respond to the fact that he was now seen by others as disabled. I also discuss the way we were treated as a mixed-race family as we drove through different regions of the country.

While I chose not to write about our brief time in Philadelphia, I could have described our touristy decision to visit the Liberty Bell. I could have expounded on the cliché of “brotherly love,” a cliché that always meant more to me than it should have given that I spent so little time in the city. Even as kids in LA, my brother and I knew that Philadelphia was not an urban utopia that embodied its moniker. Like the Liberty Bell, that cracked symbol of a deeply-flawed freedom, a freedom that was not extended to the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans at the time of independence, the idea of a “city of brotherly love” is more a dream than a reality.

But my brother was a dreamer, like his father, and I still find hope in the promise of brotherly love, the promise of the love my brother shared for me. This is one of the reasons I wrote Brothers.

Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’ among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs

This week in North Philly Notes, John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani, coauthors of Before Crips, provide a historical analysis of South Los Angeles juvenile gang life as revealed by those who were there.

Before Crips is the first book on juvenile street gangs with co-authorship by a Black and a White author. One of us never left the streets, the other never let the streets leave him, and we both found refuge in professional careers and academia where we met. Over the almost forty years we have known each other we have developed profound respect and trust, forming a bond that permitted us to go places and do things that neither could have done alone. We have fussed, cussed, and discussed with one another during this time over more issues than we can recall, deepening our understanding, strengthening our analysis, and clarifying our resolve of doing what needed to be done to fill a vast hole in the academic literature on street gangs.

We recognized that unless we knew where we’d been, we were limited in knowing where we are. By using broad-based first-person interviews with key street figures, we gave voice to the unheard and space for their extensive narratives. We spoke to them in their neighborhoods, where they were comfortable, encouraging them to expound on what they knew. We augmented our written imagery with unique period photos of pre-Crip and Blood street group members and an artfully constructed map of 1950s South Los Angeles.

A major critique of gang research has been the spin put on the analysis by the use of data, which when infused with accepted or unrecognized political ideologies can result in the creation of “facts” when, in the wisdom of Otto Lindenmeyer, actual history has been “lost, stolen, or strayed.” Say it often enough and loud enough, leave it unchallenged, and myths become transmogrified into facts.

This is what happened with Crip and Blood gangs: they appeared to drop from the sky into the “hellhole” identified as South-Central Los Angeles, then spread like a virus to other “innocent” cities around the planet. Their formation was often simplistically associated with the Black Power movements of the 1960s. Ignored by these analyses was the powerful role played by racism, social class, power imbalances, and the differences between adult and juvenile gangs. Crip and Blood became symbolic with danger, giving any group that adopted these names their 20 minutes of fame – immediately. All communities, we hypothesize, with so-named juvenile gangs in most cases adopted the name.

Since 1946, Carey McWilliams noted, the population of Los Angeles has contained “important elements of every racial strain that has gone into the making of the American people.” Its wide-open spaces permitted various groups to remain invisible when their numbers were small. This was especially the case for Black people, whose presence was unproblematic until the demographic landscape was reconfigured by World War II. Hangout street groups of Black juveniles soon became targets for official opprobrium, following most notably in the path established by Mexican street groups, whose recognition preceded them. Similar to the Mexican groups, they were transformed into gangs. Gangs became an acronym for Grab Another Non-White Group.

By describing the street groups existent before the infamous Crips and Bloods, we show that they, while no angels, were also not the devils justice agencies and the media wanted voters to believe they were. Male juveniles fought, primarily with their fists, over jealousy and honor because of a comin’-from-the-shoulders ethic that eschewed the use of guns. Female juveniles hung-out with them and were involved in their escapades, but female behavior was more mediated by traditional values. Limited resources and legitimate opportunities contributed to theft among both genders, while Illegal drugs, which were available in limited quantities, but were of weak pecuniary value, were used and sold infrequently.

We concur with Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, who write, “Americans have always been given to a kind of historical amnesia that masks much of their turbulent path.” This amnesia has also characterized our understanding of juvenile groups, and allowed us to perceive them as a foreign other, permitting the imposition of an unwarranted contempt. We note that the clichéd question, often raised by juvenile justice proponents, of why would juveniles join gangs is more answerable when turned around: why wouldn’t they?

Juveniles have been involved in same-sexed peer groups—with names—since before the dawn of capitalism. It is only over the past hundred or so years that these groups have become termed gangs. In Los Angeles pre-Crip and Blood street groups were not the essence of evil as is so often depicted, and imposed on us from an alien world—they were made in America. If they have gotten worse, it is because our society has gotten worse.

Identity Politics and Racialized Gang Conflict

This week in North Philly Notes, Robert Weide, author of Divide & Conquer, writes about growing up surrounded by racial division and sectarian conflict.

Since I was a child, racial divisions and gang conflicts have permeated my experience. I grew up in Los Angeles, the reputed “gang capitol” of the United States, during the peak years of the violent crime rate in the late 1980s and 1990s. I was 15 years old in the peak year of violent crime in Los Angeles (and the nation) in 1993. Like many children my age, I joined a neighborhood crew that could be described as a gang at the age of 13. The principle draw for my associations and affiliations was that that I was of mixed-race heritage. Having always been excluded from every category in America’s racial taxonomy, I found a sense of belonging and camaraderie with my homeboys.

Ours was a sort of junior gang known colloquially as “tagbangers”, associated by friendships and family with the two predominantly Latino Sureño affiliated gangs in our community, Culver City 13 and 18 Street, each of whom were embroiled in racialized conflicts with African American Crip and Blood affiliated gangs respectively. While gang violence was endemic to our existence at the time and funerals for boys and young men were a regularly occurring ritual in our world, one particular murder, that occurred less than a month after my 18^th birthday, had an indelible impact on me. I recount the narrative of my friend Eddie’s murder at the hand of an African American Blood affiliated gang member in the opening stanza of my book. At the time we took for granted the presumption that predominantly Latino Sureño and predominantly African American Crip and Blood affiliated gangs were natural enemies and the animosity that carried over both gang and racial lines seemed as inevitable to us as the sky is blue.

I wasn’t until I became educated that I began to question how and why we had found ourselves in those racialized gang identities and how those oppositional identities served to orient us in conflict with one another across racialized gang lines. After reading about the history of capitalism, the race concept, and nationalist ideology, I realized that our fratricidal blood feuds only served to insulate the real cause of our frustration and anger, the ruling classes whose wealth and privilege only exist at our expense. That epiphany melted away decades of racial resentment and sectarian hostility I had harbored compelling me to finally realize that there is no them and us, there’s just us. That is the epiphany that I hope this book brings to many other young men like me both in the U.S. context and around the world—that we have been used for generations as the instruments of our own oppression, fighting one another instead of defending one another in the face of skyrocketing wealth stratification, burgeoning neo-fascist movements, and impending ecological collapse.

As a result of my education I also realized that the race concept, nationalist ideology, and the contemporary identity politics so pervasive in academia and the media are the conceptual tools that American oligarchy uses to compel us to oppose one another, just as white supremacy did for generations before us (and in many ways still does today). That is why I wrote this book, not just to examine racialized gang conflict, but, moreover, to expose the conceptual foundations of racialized sectarian conflict in contemporary America and the modern world at large. The foundations of these conflicts are predicated on and continue to be perpetuated by purveyors of identity politics in academia and the media. This book is an attempt to challenge those who perpetuate identity division and sectarian conflict.

Only by understanding the history of how we have been divided can we discard our oppositional identities and instead join in solidarity to resist our collective oppression. While I harbor little hope of dissuading the contemporary purveyors of identity politics in academia and the media who are personally and professionally invested in perpetuating identity divisions in our society, my ambition is that the book I have written will trigger the same epiphany I had in scholars who have not staked their careers on promoting division and conflict, and most importantly, provoke that epiphany in the parties to sectarian conflicts themselves, particularly gang members. Facing unprecedented wealth stratification, burgeoning neo-fascist movements, and ecological calamity the likes of which the human race has never known, we cannot miss the opportunity to put our differences aside and join in solidarity to save our children’s future before it’s too late.

Celebrating LGBT History Month

This week in North Philly Notes, in celebration of LGBT History Month, we showcase eight Temple University Press titles that chronicle LGBT History.

Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America by Miriam Frank 

Out in the Union tells the continuous story of queer American workers from the mid-1960s through 2013. Miriam Frank shrewdly chronicles the evolution of labor politics with queer activism and identity formation, showing how unions began affirming the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in the 1970s and 1980s. She documents coming out on the job and in the union as well as issues of discrimination and harassment, and the creation of alliances between unions and LGBT communities.

Featuring in-depth interviews with LGBT and labor activists, Frank provides an inclusive history of the convergence of labor and LGBT interests. She carefully details how queer caucuses in local unions introduced domestic partner benefits and union-based AIDS education for health care workers-innovations that have been influential across the U.S. workforce. Out in the Union also examines organizing drives at queer workplaces, campaigns for marriage equality, and other gay civil rights issues to show the enduring power of LGBT workers.

The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture by Heike Bauer

Influential sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld founded Berlin’s Institute of Sexual Sciences in 1919 as a home and workplace to study homosexual rights activism and support transgender people. It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. This episode in history prompted Heike Bauer to ask, Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? The Hirschfeld Archives answers this critical question by examining the violence that shaped queer existence in the first part of the twentieth century.
Hirschfeld himself escaped the Nazis, and many of his papers and publications survived. Bauer examines his accounts of same-sex life from published and unpublished writings, as well as books, articles, diaries, films, photographs and other visual materials, to scrutinize how violence—including persecution, death and suicide—shaped the development of homosexual rights and political activism.
The Hirschfeld Archives brings these fragments of queer experience together to reveal many unknown and interesting accounts of LGBTQ life in the early twentieth century, but also to illuminate the fact that homosexual rights politics were haunted from the beginning by racism, colonial brutality, and gender violence.

Modern American Queer History edited by Allida M. Black

In the twentieth century, countless Americans claimed gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender identities, forming a movement to secure social as well as political equality. This collection of essays considers the history as well as the historiography of the queer identities and struggles that developed in the United States in the midst of widespread upheaval and change.

Whether the subject is an individual life story, a community study, or an aspect of public policy, these essays illuminate the ways in which individuals in various locales understood the nature of their desires and the possibilities of resisting dominant views of normality and deviance. Theoretically informed, but accessible, the essays shed light too on the difficulties of writing history when documentary evidence is sparse or “coded.” Taken together these essays suggest that while some individuals and social networks might never emerge from the shadows, the persistent exploration of the past for their traces is an integral part of the on-going struggle for queer rights.

Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America, by Colin R. Johnson

Most studies of lesbian and gay history focus on urban environments. Yet gender and sexual diversity were anything but rare in nonmetropolitan areas in the first half of the twentieth century. Just Queer Folks explores the seldom-discussed history of same-sex intimacy and gender nonconformity in rural and small-town America during a period when the now familiar concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality were just beginning to take shape.

Eschewing the notion that identity is always the best measure of what can be known about gender and sexuality, Colin R. Johnson argues instead for a queer historicist approach. In so doing, he uncovers a startlingly unruly rural past in which small-town eccentrics, “mannish” farm women, and cross-dressing Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees were often just queer folks so far as their neighbors were concerned. Written with wit and verve, Just Queer Folks upsets a whole host of contemporary commonplaces, including the notion that queer history is always urban history.

Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics by Moira Rachel Kenney

In this book, Moira Kenney makes the case that Los Angeles better represents the spectrum of gay and lesbian community activism and culture than cities with a higher gay profile. Owing to its sprawling geography and fragmented politics, Los Angeles lacks a single enclave like the Castro in San Francisco or landmarks as prominent as the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, but it has a long and instructive history of community building.

By tracking the terrain of the movement since the beginnings of gay liberation in 1960’s Los Angeles, Kenney shows how activists lay claim to streets, buildings, neighborhoods, and, in the example of West Hollywood, an entire city. Exploiting the area’s lack of cohesion, they created a movement that maintained a remarkable flexibility and built support networks stretching from Venice Beach to East LA. Taking a different path from San Francisco and New York, gays and lesbians in Los Angeles emphasized social services, decentralized communities (usually within ethnic neighborhoods), and local as well as national politics. Kenney’s grounded reading of this history celebrates the public and private forms of activism that shaped a visible and vibrant community.

Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice, by Ryan Patrick Murphy

In 1975, National Airlines was shut down for 127 days when flight attendants went on strike to protest long hours and low pay. Activists at National and many other U.S. airlines sought to win political power and material resources for people who live beyond the boundary of the traditional family. In Deregulating Desire, Ryan Patrick Murphy, a former flight attendant himself, chronicles the efforts of single women, unmarried parents, lesbians and gay men, as well as same-sex couples to make the airline industry a crucible for social change in the decades after 1970.
Murphy situates the flight attendant union movement in the history of debates about family and work. Each chapter offers an economic and a cultural analysis to show how the workplace has been the primary venue to enact feminist and LGBTQ politics.
From the political economic consequences of activism to the dynamics that facilitated the rise of what Murphy calls the “family values economy” to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Deregulating Desire emphasizes the enduring importance of social justice for flight attendants in the twenty-first century.

Making Modern Love: Sexual Narratives and Identities in Interwar Britain by Lisa Z. Sigel

After the Great War, British men and women grappled with their ignorance about sexuality and desire. Seeking advice and information from doctors, magazines, and each other, they wrote tens of thousands of letters about themselves as sexual subjects. In these letters, they disclosed their uncertainties, their behaviors, and the role of sexuality in their lives. Their fascinating narratives tell how people sought to unleash their imaginations and fashion new identities.

Making Modern Love shows how readers embraced popular media—self-help books, fetish magazines, and advice columns—as a source of information about sexuality and a means for telling their own stories. From longings for transcendent marital union to fantasies of fetish-wear, cross-dressing, and whipping, men and women revealed a surprising range of desires and behaviors (queer and otherwise) that have been largely disregarded until now.

Lisa Sigel mines these provocative narratives to understand how they contributed to new subjectivities and the development of modern sexualities.

City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972, by Marc Stein

Marc Stein’s City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves is refreshing for at least two reasons: it centers on a city that is not generally associated with a vibrant gay and lesbian culture, and it shows that a community was forming long before the Stonewall rebellion. In this lively and well received book, Marc Stein brings to life the neighborhood bars and clubs where people gathered and the political issues that rallied the community. He reminds us that Philadelphians were leaders in the national gay and lesbian movement and, in doing so, suggests that New York and San Francisco have for too long obscured the contributions of other cities to gay culture.