# Punk communities in the hood stay isolated- you agree?



## wokofshame (Apr 15, 2017)

Anybody else notice that when groups of (almost exclusively) young, white punks move into black neighborhoods, the young white punks only hang out with each other and almost never with the majority of their neighbors?
The three places that immediately come to my mind are KC, NOLA, and Oakland. Punks move into majority african-american hoods for the cheap rent and loosely enforced zoning laws, are surrounded by a very different culture, then do almost nothing to interact with the culture surrounding them. 
Sure, one might take a photo of the scene outside the liquor store and post it on their tumblr. "Look at me, i live in the ghetto!" How many locals have you ever seen at any party or house show in one of these punk houses in the hood?
Thoughts? Disagree? How to fix this?


----------



## MolotovMocktail (Apr 15, 2017)

Relevant satirical article: "West Oakland Punks Hold Vegan Bake Sale to End Gentrification"


----------



## Shwhiskey Gumimaci (Apr 15, 2017)

Don't most people stay pretty exclusive to their own sub-culture? People want to be around people they can relate to. Just a thought......


----------



## Beegod Santana (Apr 16, 2017)

I'd say it has a lot to do with how local the punk's are. In cities that aren't very desirable to live in there's normally more diversity and community. Places like Oakland or NOLA have young college people migrating there constantly and in my experience at least, the punk scenes are more run by college kids from outta town than the locals. NYC hipsters took over my home area years ago and now all our "local" bands are just rich kids from the city who moved up to suck Thurston Moore's dick.


----------



## Multifaceted (Apr 16, 2017)

Where are the punks in KC? I've yet to find them... 

Shwhiskey is right. Subcultures tend to stick with their own.. And while that isn't a universal rule, it is what I'd typically expect. The human condition causes us to desire acceptance and positive human interactions. As a member of a subculture you're more prone to negative reactions from people outside your group, thus causing you to isolate. Who wants to be asked "Why the patches" or "Why the shaved head?" (I get this a lot.) all day? It gets tiresome having to explain yourself to people that practically choose to not understand..

I don't know.. Maybe I'm rambling.


----------



## sd40chef (Apr 16, 2017)

To be honest, to me, I cannot connect with this punk/dirtykid/crust whatever you wish to call it, subculture that exists in the north american vagabond/traveling/homeless community, whatever you wish to perceive that as. Before I left north america to travel in different regions, I was super into looking like a "punk" (patched carharts, dread mullet, etc). Being away from this for an extended period of time really changed my perspective on this and made me question why I dressed like this and used this certain slang and adopted whatever customs that come along with this. Deep down I feel that it was out of insecurity and that I did desire acceptance amongst a subculture. What is cool/respectable about it, I thought? Having that hairstyle, wearing that patched shit, doesnt help anyone in any way, sure its artistic expression in some way, but i feel its your actions/compassion etc. that help, or make a real difference. And most punks I met embarassed me to carry the stereotype of the subculture with the trend I noticed of self-entitlement, nihilistic habits and apathy. For this reason, I abandoned the idea or grew out of my punk phase. I still love traveling, riding freight, sleeping outside, dumpster diving, meeting new people, things people would likely associate into the subculture. However, I'm pretty embarassed to be associated with that subculture by the attitude of most punks, if that makes any sense.
Part of the reason perhaps, I feel like north america is too lucky. If people don't work or provide for themselves, they generally still get their basic needs met (food,shelter,water), with welfare, or whatever social services exist to them (I've never had experience with this). Other than british colonies and europe, I haven't seen this anywhere. I feel many people don't realize this priveledge or fully appreciate their situation, and choose to focus on whatever is wrong in their eyes, blaming governments/politicians, and taking no action other than picking up a needle or a bottle, instead of focusing on what they truly feel passionate about changing and slowly working towards that. dividing classes/people as well, which i find subcultures are definitely guilty of making it easier to do. I lost interest in belonging to a scene. It seems like a waste of time and energy, unless its something that resonates with me deep down and i feel its the right choice, with a group of people very passionate about a common goal.


----------



## Matt Derrick (Apr 16, 2017)

i've seen people ask this question many times, yet i've never heard anyone offer a solution (especially to gentrification in general).


----------



## sd40chef (Apr 16, 2017)

Matt Derrick said:


> i've seen people ask this question many times, yet i've never heard anyone offer a solution (especially to gentrification in general).


In my own opinion, I feel the change has to come from within the people who are buying property in the areas they wanna live in because of the culture/feeling they enjoy in that particular area, and because its cheaper. As citizens of that area they chose to inhabit, they need to make an effort to preserve that awesome stuff that is going on, or whatever is driving people to migrate to that area, driving the real estate way up, instead of doing nothing interesting/alternative, and also by slowly pushing that area to become a boring depressing suburbia where people are seperated and hide in their homes. I dont know. I think being less judgemental and accepting and open towards peoples flaws and different perspectives can make people more comfortable in occupying the streets and creating a really good feeling in an area, everyone accepted.
Also, maybe gentrification its just an inevitable part of the system we live in. What really is gentrification?


----------



## FrumpyWatkins (Apr 16, 2017)

Depends where you go honestly. Part of that seperation in super shitty neighbors is due to the drug game. "He's not from here, only reason people come here is to buy drugs, must be a customer, I sell the drugs I don't do the drugs, I don't associate with customers, I just do business with them."

So in that situation it doesn't matter how much you try and open up to your neighbors if they look down on you as being a fiend or a cop. 

I would say its on a city by city basis though living in southwest or north philadelphia versus living in east st louis are two totally different situations. But Ive stooped it with the locals in both. It's totally how you approach people plus most places have gentrified so much there just isnt the same kind of neighborhoods in cities there used to be. Lower income peoples are forced further away from city centers as young people flock to urban living. It is reverse white flight.


----------



## Hillbilly Castro (Apr 17, 2017)

Matt Derrick said:


> i've seen people ask this question many times, yet i've never heard anyone offer a solution (especially to gentrification in general).



I mean, I feel like from what I can glean of the history of ska and SHARPs that a lot of these motherfuckers managed to address these issues pretty well. 
anyway, let me rant, because I think about this shit a lot:
The idea of becoming a race traitor seems to be fucking crucial. Noel Ignatiev wrote a couple of books (Race Traitor and How the Irish Became White) about how whiteness is not really a culture or an ethnicity, it is the _absence_ of culture. "White" people were once Irish, English, German, Czech, Jewish, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, etc etc, and each had their own local cultural customs, many of which were sanitized or sacrificed in the name of assimilation, in order to obtain the financial and power-based benefits of inclusion in white supremacy. The creation of the white identity was a move made on the part of the American bourgeoisie to reduce worker solidarity and multi-racial slave revolts (yes, there were white "slaves" - indentured servants forcibly ejected from Europe, many of whom escaped to become what we know today as Hillbillies, and often interbred with and aided rebel slaves of other races). 

The reason we see the problem described in OP, I am thinking, is that many punks fail to think more deeply on the nature of whiteness and to move forward with creative responses to it. I say "creative" to distinguish it from what I'd call "reactive" responses to whiteness: White guilt, PC language policing, becoming a well-mannered ideologue such as the colleges crank out en masse. I think most of that shit is pretty bunk and mostly just thinking white people not managing to overcome Christian mores. Punks seem to think that because they've dropped out, or because they look different and get fucked up alot, that they have revolted and that's that. But the truth is that when one ceases to keep rethinking themselves, and to keep creating new ways and means to freedom, they cease to be rebels and have just formed a new status quo. Thus describes most "punks", "dirty kids", "hardcore kids", etc etc. I don't say that to spit hate, but to say step it up motherfuckers! 

For me, and it might be something of a digression, carrying this revolt into the realm of race has made me go back to my country roots. When I was a kid if you called me "hillbilly" I would have fucking tackled you. But when I left home I found I didn't fucking fit in anywhere because I always bore the "I give no fucks // broke dirty drunk" mark of poor white kid from the woods. Where WASP motherfuckers get quiet and well-mannered, I get fired up and cast my aspersions and curse like a wildman and it gets real lit up real fast. Come to crack a book on the subject and I find that all that old country shit that I always got annoyed at was what remained of all the "old ways" of my rebel ancestors, but the message coming to me was: Either hate yourself or accept the Wal-Mart, Tractor Supply Co, Toby Keith and Mountain Dew corporate-sponsored version of myself. Fuck that, I'm not doing either of those, and I sure as shit am not going to become a yupped-out city lib. Tried that shit and it sucked. So I re-learn my history. (Great spoonerism: "My history" is a "high mystery" if you change the first letters of those two words around and sound them out) I find that there are fucktons of elements of that history that, if brought into the light, force "whiteness" and the coalescence with power it demands to corrode and die. The term "redneck" is partially from sunburned necks from field work, but it's also from The Battle of Blair Mountain wherein a bunch of hillbilly miner fucks from West Virginia put red bandanas (red for COMMUNISM) on and fought the national guard because they were anarchists fed up with the bosses. They ran moonshine because they hated paying taxes. They say "we don't call 9-11 around here" and have tons of guns and hunt for a living sometimes, grow their own fucking weed, and if the Shit Hit the Fan, they'd be doing just fine - at least, the ones who are real-deal hillbillies and not drive-thru suburbanite Fox News screwballs.

ANYWAY, I bring all this bullshit up because what I find remains hidden in the pop-country blaring lights neon trailerpark ghetto are scraps of a working culture that was once multi-ethnic and radically opposed to The System in all its forms. Punks don't have a working culture because a whole lot about what they're doing is based in Oedipal rebellion! They are simply rebelling against their parents and failing to CREATE a damn thing!! Where they go beyond rebellion against their folks, they only _react!_ 
I don't know about white people who aren't rednecks in any way, but for me, this is one point of departure I see: Creating cultures that are fusions based on what is similar. When I hang out in East New York or any ghetto, I find that I have tons of shit in common with black folks and latinos. We eat good, we party hard, we're fuckin poor, and the sensibilities of "high society" be damned. Once that's established, I find myself to be among friends anywhere. But I'm bringing something to the table; I have a culture from which I've descended, and people of other cultures have something to compare their world with, and from here, we can intersect. If Ignatiev is right, and whiteness is the absence of culture, then most white-skinned folks by default bring nothing to the table, nothing to fuse with, and just seem to be empty in the eyes of a lot of blacks, latinos, and country folks. They can counteract this by either reverting to whatever culture in their heritage was debased by whiteness, or by resisting both their history and the present by creating functional cultures (read: can support children, has customs, has a means of subsistence that ain't just the dumpster and EBT) to blend into their neighboring cultures. White people by default show up to the culture potluck with nothing to share and have to work hard to not just be cultural leeches. Time to envision what that work looks like!

tl;dr, Betray "whiteness", and _create_ something, and we might be a little closer to addressing the problem..
apologies if long and ranty and digressive


----------



## Deleted member 20975 (Feb 11, 2018)

sd40chef said:


> To be honest, to me, I cannot connect with this punk/dirtykid/crust whatever you wish to call it, subculture that exists in the north american vagabond/traveling/homeless community, whatever you wish to perceive that as. Before I left north america to travel in different regions, I was super into looking like a "punk" (patched carharts, dread mullet, etc). Being away from this for an extended period of time really changed my perspective on this and made me question why I dressed like this and used this certain slang and adopted whatever customs that come along with this. Deep down I feel that it was out of insecurity and that I did desire acceptance amongst a subculture. What is cool/respectable about it, I thought? Having that hairstyle, wearing that patched shit, doesnt help anyone in any way, sure its artistic expression in some way, but i feel its your actions/compassion etc. that help, or make a real difference. And most punks I met embarassed me to carry the stereotype of the subculture with the trend I noticed of self-entitlement, nihilistic habits and apathy. For this reason, I abandoned the idea or grew out of my punk phase. I still love traveling, riding freight, sleeping outside, dumpster diving, meeting new people, things people would likely associate into the subculture. However, I'm pretty embarassed to be associated with that subculture by the attitude of most punks, if that makes any sense.
> Part of the reason perhaps, I feel like north america is too lucky. If people don't work or provide for themselves, they generally still get their basic needs met (food,shelter,water), with welfare, or whatever social services exist to them (I've never had experience with this). Other than british colonies and europe, I haven't seen this anywhere. I feel many people don't realize this priveledge or fully appreciate their situation, and choose to focus on whatever is wrong in their eyes, blaming governments/politicians, and taking no action other than picking up a needle or a bottle, instead of focusing on what they truly feel passionate about changing and slowly working towards that. dividing classes/people as well, which i find subcultures are definitely guilty of making it easier to do. I lost interest in belonging to a scene. It seems like a waste of time and energy, unless its something that resonates with me deep down and i feel its the right choice, with a group of people very passionate about a common goal.


That was real. Too real. Im pretty dirty and patched and matted usually but i peraonally just like the way i look and like to look "different" from the status quo. If every regular fuck doing their sunday groceries looked like a traveller punk im pretty sure id start wearing golf shirts. But it does feel good to belong or fit in somewhere. At least sometimes. And also for me punk is an escape, it always has been. An escape and a cause, right? I buy my clothes second hand and wear them till they die to not spit in the face of every baby in africa and india that is dying from the leached poison of a million discarded t-shirts aswell. Just like id never work in an arms factory. In the end though we are single persons with selfish lives who cant change the system alone. But we can boycott the bullshit and spread the word. I hate elitist shit in any form though. Getting tired of posers and dummies questions is one thing but looking down on someone cause they arent as punk rock as you or as hardcore a traveller as you is just as fucking tiring.


----------



## Jerrell (Feb 18, 2018)

Hillbilly Castro said:


> If Ignatiev is right, and whiteness is the absence of culture, then most white-skinned folks by default bring nothing to the table, nothing to fuse with, and just seem to be empty in the eyes of a lot of blacks, latinos, and country folks.



My mom asked me the other day why I hated Iowa so much and I told her it had no soul. She raised my brother and I in ghettos and the country between California and OK/TX. I said these people don't have a culture. They have a common understanding of corn and soybeans, but that's about it. They're mostly catholic and methodist as well, so no catching the spirit or clapping while singing or whatever when they go to their churches. No community BBQs, no music scene, no cares about "outsiders" even if those outsiders are from a county or two over. I tried infusing some pieces of my cultural experiences, but to no avail. They don't want it. I didn't fuck their future wife back in high school. I didn't play football with them. Who am I to offer them some perspective? 
Seriously, just no soul or culture. 
I hadn't really thought deep about it, but you guys hit it on the head with whiteness being the absence of culture to be sure. I'm glad this thread was revived to so I could see it and read it.


----------

