Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia sociologist and author of “Gang Leader for a Day,” is back once again with his chronicle of watching “The Wire” with a group of gangland acquaintances. His past reports can be found here.
I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t.
The Thugs informed me that they were not interested in watching the last 2 episodes of season 5 of The Wire. I’ve been pleading with them to reconsider.
“We’ve seen this s–t already,” Shine told me. “This is fun if you work all day behind a desk, or you’re sitting in some suburb. But for us, it’s like watching somebody make a movie about you — someone who doesn’t really know all that much about your life.”
“We did this for you, Sudhir, if you want to know the truth,” Orlando barked at me through his cellphone. “I mean, we can walk out the door and see this stuff every day. And we thought you were going to make some money on this. But you’re doing it for nothing, so what’s the point?”
I appealed to their need to entertain and educate the public, and perhaps even to enjoy themselves while frightening the public.
“No, I don’t get off on making a bunch of white folk nervous. Obama’s already doing that,” laughed Tony-T. “And anyway, Flavor‘s not here, and we ain’t heard from him. So, it’s…”
Tony’s voice trailed off, but I understood. The Thugs were worried about Flavor, and watching the show made them nervous. (Readers will recall from the last posting that Flavor got himself in trouble with a rival gang leader). Whether they admitted it or not, commenting on the show was akin to weighing the likelihood of Flavor’s demise.
I was hoping that they’d change their minds before Sunday evening. But while I still had their attention, I posed this question to them: “If there was another season of the show, and you were directing it, what would you focus on?” Here are their top four answers.
1. “I’d let a black man write it, first of all,” said Shine. “That way, you’d have real winners and losers. Like I said, white folk want you to believe that everyone is screwed up, everyone is getting their piece [of the action]. True, but it’s different if you’re white. It’s never as bad as it is when you’re black.”
2. “Sex,” said Orlando. “They missed out on the prostitution game and all the people making money selling their bodies. That’s a huge part of making money. And it brings white folk and black folk together.”
3. “Women,” said Tony-T. “Where I come from, women run most of the things [that the show] talks about. It’s the women that have the power in the ghetto. This show totally got it wrong when they made it all about men. Women are the politicians; they can get you a gun, they got the cash, they can get you land to build something on.”
4. Kool J sighed and answered the question in somber fashion. “Death. But not like how they do it. You don’t see none of these n—rs suffer. And I bet a lot of white people think we run around killing each other all the time. I mean, it’s not like we like seeing all these people die on our streets. It’s hard, man, and a lot of us get scared off. We leave the game. Suicide, man. People don’t want to talk about it, but we’re killing ourselves. Slowly.”
I asked each Thug if he had any final comments. To my surprise, they all said that they enjoyed reading the comments on the Freakonomics blog.
“I don’t know how,” said Shine, “but if people want to know about us, if they have questions, I’m cool with answering anything people want to know.”
“It’s weird,” Tony-T said. “I don’t talk to a lot of people outside my ‘hood, so I liked the questions and the things they were telling us. For me, I got to learn about ‘those’ people. You know, the ones who drink Budweiser and have trouble getting it up.”
Orlando felt particularly gracious. “Maybe I’ll throw a party and everyone can come over. I live in Harlem. Do you think they know where that is?”
Touché.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I am also disappointed, but this feels oddly appropriate considering the uncertain lives these guys must live. You can’t count on tomorrow. There is a similarity, no matter how stretched, between readers getting a taste of a good thing and expecting more, and a gang member getting a taste of the life and expecting it to last. This must be why blog readers still live with their mothers.
For better or worse, Orlando, white folks are finding Harlem more and more. Gentrification has crept to 125th St.
sudhir, get them back! i can’t believe they pulled out, and with only a week to go. they must return, this blog has been the highlight of my weekly reading for nine weeks now.
my thoughts are with flavor, let’s hope he gets through this unfortunate spell.
I live in Europe and The Wire has yet to be broadcasted over here. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Sudhir’s blogs a lot -they’re refreshing, down-to-earth, insightful and fun to read.
What I like especially is the fact that the ghetto guys have the same curiosity about the rest of the world as it appears vice versa. It seems to me they try to be right up there in Maslov’s pyramid as well; being self-reflective and all.
What I am curious to learn, especially after reading about the financial situation and foresight of the majority of gang members in Freakonomics, is how Shine, Orlando, Tony-T and all those others feel about improving their lives; i.e. what is or would be, to them, the single most important thing to improve their chances on a safer, healthier and more prosperous life? Is it education, employment or something else? And how would they play their part in it?
All the best!
jim d — I have a book for you that you might be interested in that might help explain the phenomenon — and other kinds of personalities — it’s Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. Interesting psychosocial theory. I would guess that all the thugs, and probably even your client, are all heroic individualists (in the spiral dynamics hierarchy of psychosocial development).
I wanna thank the guys for giving what they did.
I’m a 30 year old white guy from the burbs.
BUT I taught at a school in Cincinnati that had the richest and the poorest (black and white) of public school kids. They taught me a lot that I didn’t get in the burbs.
Now that I teach in Korea I feel like some things are missing. I was thankful for Tony T and the boys and their honesty in LIFE.
I don’t even watch The Wire so I won’t miss it.
But I’ll miss this.
Thanks
Sounds like a whole new blog possibility: Street freakonomics. NYT or some other outlet hosts Sudhir or others like him orchestrating ongoing street commentary on the issues of the day. Could be a huge hit as it unveils a whole side of American thinking that the mainstream media never touch. I’d read it faithfully.
Sudhir,
I want to thanks you and the guys for the insight shared through this blog. I have watched every season of the wire, but the experience has been greatly enhanced by this blog. When the the blog was not online Friday, I figured something was wrong. While I was right I am sad that this is the case. None the less job well by all parties involved.
One note how can someone(Jay B) who watch the wire and read this blog, demand that you furnish a picture of the guys. That just strike me as very very strange. Kind of wonder why Chris and Snoop did not take picture with all of their victims and put them on their myspace pages, or why Clay Davis did not record all his illicit dealings, or why Omar did not send evite as a courtesy before he robbed a stash house, or etc, etc….