Bianca Berger
As
discussed in class and throughout several readings, the most notable event to
trigger the birth of Hip Hop culture in New York is the building of the
Expressway in 1970’s. However, the factors leading up to this decision are
equally as important to the birth of Hip Hop culture. The integration of the
growing telecommunication networks and corporate America combined with the
quickly diminishing federal funds in the 1970’s in New York City created a
housing crisis, widened the economic divide essentially destroying the
“relatively well-off white blue collar city;” ultimately leading to
corporations and telecommunications taking over the government’s role. Deindustrialization
led to the building of the Expressway, leaving a city and people in ruins.
The 1970’s
in New York, the rapidly growing multinational telecommunications network
alongside corporate power set the stage for a decrease in job opportunity for
the already discriminated minorities, as well as, contributed to corporate
control over market conditions. These factors ultimately caused shifts in the
occupational structure- from high-wage, high-employment economy to a low-wage,
low-employment economy. The blue-collar workers of the Bronx were being quickly
pushed out of the job market due to quickly advancing technology and corporate
power. As Tricia Rose mentions in her book, Black
Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, a country once
“grounded in manufacturing, trucking, warehousing and wholesale trade…[was now
moving toward] producer services” (Tricia Rose 28-29). It was out with the old,
in with the new, previously valued legitimate jobs that people in minority’s
went to school for and were trained in, became essentially obsolete. With
information processing and communication technology at the heart of corporate
America, there was a strain on the flow of information; therefore, completely
cutting off the blue-collar workers from shared information and the job market.
With New
York’s federal funds diminishing, social services began disappearing as well.
The state was in despair, but finally came to an agreement for a federal loan;
however, with a whole set of specific rules and regulations on what to do with
the money. With these new regulations, Daniel Walkowitz recalls, “60,000 city
employees went off the payroll, and social and public services suffered drastic
cuts” (Tricia Rose 28). This too, largely affected the unequal wealth
distribution and with that, a housing crisis. With corporations buying out real
estate allover the city to build luxury homes, it provided a limited
availability of affordable housing. Tricia Rose tells that at this period,
low-income housing continued disappearing, leaving Blacks and Hispanics
disproportionately occupying the poverty line.
This all
meant that new immigrant populations and the city’s poorest residents “paid the
highest price for deindustrialization and economic restructuring” (Tricia Rose
30). Due to the very strict and specific regulations and rules accompanied by
the federal loan, the bottom 20% of the income scale felt an absolute decline,
while the top 20% reveled in economic growth. Corporate takeover and frayed
local communication patterns highly contributed to the relocation of the
“fragile people of color” into the South Bronx, while the federal loan enabled
the white-collar workers to relocate to the suburbs. The city’s politically
motivated “urban renewal” project is what lit the match to the fire that is,
Hip Hop culture. Robert Moses, legendary
city urban planner, designed an Expressway to better accommodate those
white-collar workers with a faster commute to their corporate jobs in the city.
The immigrants, unemployed, now unimportant blue-collar workers occupied the
densely populated “slums” of the South Bronx. These people were literally being
pushed out of the city, pushed out of the job market, and even pushed out of
the sharing of information. They were the rejects of the city, pushed into a
place that an entire city disregarded and saw as a viable spot to build
through. Marshall Berman paints a devastating picture of the aftermath; he describes,
“Miles of streets alongside the road were choked with dust and fumes and
deafening noise…” (Tricia Rose 31). Now a city in ruins, the city
administration still refused to admit the wreckage left from the previously
functioning South Bronx. The building of the Expressway benefited the upper
class and so, the poor were overlooked as well as the entire South Bronx.
Deindustrialization-
the consolidation of corporate power with multinational telecommunications at
the heart of its operations combined with the harsh rules and regulations of
the federal loan created the housing crises, widened the labor gap, pushed
minorities into the “slums” and then all together, declared those people and
their land as ‘nothing.’ Hip Hop arose as so many artists, writers, poets, and
people acknowledge as a voice, expressing the “tensions and contradictions in
the public urban landscape,” with a disregarded people, buildings and city all
screaming out that “We are here! We will be heard!” Tricia Rose says it
perfectly, “these abandoned parts, people, and social institutions were welded
and then spliced together, not only as sources of survival but as sources of
pleasure” (Tricia Rose 22). Hip Hop culture including gangs, graffiti, and
music were all developed as a result of this isolation from mainstream society.
Gangs were formed as another form of a family, a crew of rejects from society
who came together to create their own society. Graffiti the literal physical
expression of “we are here! We will be heard!” used as a way to force
mainstream society to look at the people they shunned and pushed out of their
city. Music, assembled through using resources, basically trash to create their
own music and beat to express their anger and suppression for so long- they
created their own genre. Mainstream society wanted so badly to ignore them, to
shun them from their society, the South Bronx retaliated with Hip Hop culture.
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