Racial Blending in the Unnatural, Urban Habitat

The ghetto, urban settings of both The Wire and Ghost Dog display the unnatural habitat in which middle and lower class blacks, whites, and Hispanics live in.  This way of story telling is described in Linda Williams article as progressing past the white supremacy swing of story-telling where both “anti-Tom” narratives and “Tom” narratives continued to keep “white supremacy” in motion.  Linda Williams describes in her article that, “race matters enormously in the lives of every character- but because it is no longer part of the black and white, tat-for-tat scorekeeping of racial injury.” (188) The Wire and Ghost Dog both use an urban setting to showcase the unnatural effects of living in a ghetto, without separating races into competing teams.

Linda Williams believes The Wire is able to comment on racial issues and display race, without showcasing racial differences as betting points. In the episode we watched in class, I believe this can be seen during the scene when the cops on the stake out jump a car that received drugs and guns. The Wire is able to comment on racial and social-class lifestyles during that scene without creating a separation between races. There are both white and black cops that are doing there job swiftly, but abiding the order of the law. The people who got caught had clearly broken the law and were working with a black gang promoting drugs. In no way can this scene be taken as black=good, black=bad, white=good, or white=bad. The show is commenting on the social structures which different races are placed, and how people survive, or attempt ascending past them through justices or injustices.

I believe the ghetto, unnatural setting of Ghost Dog allows for story-telling similar to the mode used in The Wire. Instead of focusing on creating an anti-Tom or Tom narrative, the focus is shifted to an unnatural environment in which people try to survive within. Ghost Dog blends a variety of cultures and races into one urban environment that further enforces the ideas of perceiving and commenting on race without judgment. When people do begin to die, it is due to miscommunication about race. An Italian saves Ghost Dog’s life when the Italian shoots at a bunch of white people ganging up on him. The act is perceived as racial violence, and a life is taken. Later in the movie, Ghost Dog retaliates and kills the Italian mob when the Italians begin raiding and shooting any black man that owns a pigeon house. These deaths were all initiated by a racial judgment. However, during the majority of the movie when these judgments weren’t made, the film showed a blend of races surviving together against the city which they live in. The unnatural, ghetto settings of both films attempt to show how people survive in the environment they live. The films do not focus on race, but they do utilize race to comment on social structures. They also explore the injustices and justices taken by the characters living in these worlds without separating the characters racially.