Capital Reinvestment

This chapter focuses on the uprisings following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and their aftermath of urban renewal and commercial redevelopment. This chapter also maps changes to the built environment on H Street onto changes in how blackness and capital intersected. The chapter charts the unique history of the H Street NE corridor to illustrate the ways in which the meaning of blackness shifted over time as well as the development and designation of H Street as a Black space. The chapter explains how the devaluation of H Street, as a Black space, and the strategic deployment of visual rhetoric depicting the space as a “blighted,” “slum,” “ghetto” prepared the space for its eventual re-valuation and re-elevation for neoliberal times. Ultimately, this first chapter tracks the long march of blackness to become diversity and considers the ways in which blackness became synonymous with the urban ghetto.

Wicked Overseers

In recent times, several tragic events have brought attention to the relationship between policing and racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. Scholars, activists, and pundits have clamored to explain tensions that have arisen from these police-related deaths. The authors contribute to the discussion by asserting that contemporary policing in America, and its relationship to racial inequality, is only the latest chapter in a broader historical narrative in which the police constitute the front line of a race- and class-stratified social order. In other words, contemporary criminal justice and race struggles are a legacy of colonialism. This essay begins with a brief overview of colonialism before turning toward dissecting the contemporary colonial character of policing African American urban ghetto communities in four parts. First, the emergence of ghettos as internal colonies is described. Second, mechanisms are given that propelled the mass entry of police into ghetto spaces, with particular attention given to the war on drugs, broken-windows and order-maintenance policing, and police militarization. Third, the authors explore how contemporary policing acts to manage the colonized through police stops, searches, and other practices. Finally, the relationship between American policing practices and cultural denigration of African Americans is described.

A Systematic Review on the Functions of Rap Among Gangs

Although the field of gangs is well studied, information regarding the way gangs may use or misuse music for different needs is sparse. The aim of this systematic review is to gather descriptive and empirical information to ascertain the important roles rap music possesses within gang life. This review suggests five main functions of rap used within gangs with an emphasis on the subgenre of gangsta rap. First, rap facilitates antisocial behavior by reinforcing such messages in its lyrics. Second, its deviant lyrics serve as a reflection of the violent reality experienced in many urban ghetto communities. Third, it operates as a means for constructing individual and collective identity, as well as resistance identity. Fourth, it functions as an educating force by teaching its members how to act and respond in the urban ghetto. Finally, rap glorifies gang norms among newcomers and successfully spreads its values to the general population.

Quantity or Quality Evaluation of Open Space in the Urban Ghetto of Downtown, Vancouver

The revitalization of urban ghettos, the most unique part of the downtown area, has already become the most difficult issue for almost all the international metropolises because it is often occupied by poor, homeless people, where crime and drug use remains at a relatively high level. The common approach in renewal projects focus on increasing the quantity of the open space, instead of ensuring quality aspects, since more open space could attract more visitors, thereby transforming the unsafe atmosphere of the area. Therefore, this research chose the Gastown and Chinatown areas in the downtown east side of Vancouver, Canada, which is a typical urban ghetto with high density and crime rates, in addition to their multiple cultural and ethnic makeup and further examined the relationships between the quality/quantity of the open space and overall living conditions and illustrated that quality plays a rather more significant role than quantity in the urban renewal process. The result would make urban designers, architects rethink the role of open space created buildings in the urban built environment by stating that enhancing the quality of existing open space would be a more practical and economic way than increasing its quantity.