On the Corner

II On the Corner TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 110505 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:06:40:06 AAMM TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 110606 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:08:40:08 AAMM 7 Corner-Boy Masculinity: Intersections of Inner-City Manhood James Braxton Peterson In Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature, Houston Baker analyzes the intersecting matrices of lack and desire for the enigmatic blues- man. ese crossroads of lack and desire, according to Baker, became a foundational intersection for the formulation of African American identity. Fast forward to the postindustrial economic conditions of the twenty-! rst-century inner city and this foundational intersection ! nds an extraordinary consistency with the lack of economic opportunity available to generations of inner-city youth who are (through various media) exposed to many of the most desirable outposts of capitalist society, and the corollary to this desire-producing exposure: an utter absence of the structural and civic resources necessary to transcend abject poverty. e spectacle of this society notwithstanding, various verbal and visual discourses generated in popular media seek to construct original models of masculinity for these generational constituents. In this chapter I engage emerging theoretical conceptions of black masculinity (à la Mark Anthony Neal and others) and juxtapose these ideas with several speci! c constructions of black masculinity articulated and visualized and exempli! ed through the characters of e Wire. Of signi! cance to this discussion is a collaboration between the rapper Common and the Last Poets, aptly entitled, “ e Corner,” which bril- liantly articulates the urban corner as a master site for the both the 107 TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 110707 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:08:40:08 AAMM 108 THE WIRE: URBAN DECAY AND AMERICAN TELEVISION production and representations of black masculinity. “ e Corner” in many ways re1 ects the complex intersections of black male identities depicted on the corners of the television version of Baltimore, Maryland. My focus then is on the proliferation of various complex representations of urban black masculinity detailed in e Wire. e Wire reveals a dramatically realistic Baltimore where corner boys formulate an inner-city ‘juvenocracy’ based on the unchecked drug trade.1 Yet even within this hyperviolent world of man-children, extraordinary models of black masculinity emerge. “[M]asculinity is a social fact produced through a set of both educational and social practices that function to regulate and circumscribe the lives of young men, as well as reinforce dominant social norms at a time of transition and uncertainty” (Davis 292): the models of masculinity in e Wire (most notably here in Seasons Four and Five) intersect and/or converge on the proverbial corners of the inner-city experience. Preston “Bodie” Broadus is raised, comes of age, thrives, and dies on the corner. Omar Little makes his name in the street by terrorizing those same corners, even though his sexual identity should preclude him from the legendary street status he attains. e various types of masculinity performed in e Wire pro- vide incisive depictions of a wide range of black male being. e corner is merely the nexus through which this cornucopia of black manhood is expressed. I e opening epigraph for the “Corner Boys” episode of e Wire cites Zenobia as saying: “We got our thing, but it’s just part of the big thing” (4.08). Corner boys are the youngest initiates or entrants into the illicit drug “game.” From Avon Barksdale to Marlo Stan! eld, drug bosses on e Wire exploit their allure with the youngest denizens of inner-city neighborhoods in order to compel them to work the corners. e drug lord thereby accomplishes (at least) two objectives: ! rst, since the majority of the corner boys are younger than the age of legal responsibil- ity they function as buB ers for the bosses, automatically circumventing the criminal justice system; and second, by recruiting the youngest of the youth, the drug organization indoctrinates them into the central TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 110808 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:08:40:08 AAMM Corner-Boy Masculinity: Intersections of Inner-City Manhood 109 “code of the street”. In his ethnographic research conducted in inner-city Philadelphia, Elijah Anderson draws the following conclusions: It must be continually underscored that much of this violence and drug activity is a re1 ection of the dislocations brought about by economic transformations . [W]here the wider economy is not receptive to these dislocated people, the underground economy is. [T]he facts of race relations, unemployment, dislocation, and destitution create alienation, and alienation allows for certain receptivity to overtures made by people seeking youthful new recruits for the drug trade. (Anderson, Code of the Street 120) us Zenobia’s words take on powerful meanings in the context of the classroom scenario in which she makes this claim. Although Zenobia is an African American girl, she is, in the context of this episode and from the viewpoint of her alternative educators, a corner boy.2 is status is marked by her posture, attitude, and vocal outbursts in class. She, like several other junior-high school students, is forced into a program where they are studied and in some ways further alienated from their classmates and traditional classrooms. As a group they face extraordinary challenges that include neglect, abuse, violence, and their resultant psycho-social trauma. Over the course of the “Corner Boys” episode, the researchers, mostly led by former police oF cer Howard “Bunny” Colvin, make what is termed a “breakthrough.” ey have been trying for weeks to establish a genuine connection with the students in this recently isolated research project. eir work will eventually fall under the scrutiny of various political interests, but in this episode they are still relatively free to explore the possibilities of an educational experiment that removes the most troubled and trouble- some youth from the traditional classroom—so that students in those classrooms can work relatively free from distraction—and uses nontraditional pedagogies to harness the dysfunctional social attitudes common among the corner-boy students. e “breakthrough” occurs in this episode when Colvin intercedes during one of the other researchers’ exercises. Colvin has become some- what 1 ustered with their eB orts to have a genuine interaction with the TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 110909 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:08:40:08 AAMM 110 THE WIRE: URBAN DECAY AND AMERICAN TELEVISION corner-boy students and it dawns on him suddenly that even in this nontraditional, less school-like setting, the corner-boy students are consistently trying to get over on their teachers and the researchers. Colvin then confronts the class on this fact. He unveils their in-school hustle as a mere training ground for the streets—where they are the corner boys and the teachers, administrators, and researchers are the police. Here Zenobia (through body language, visage, and subtle commentary) underscores the fact that this is true in less metaphorical ways since Colvin actually has been a police oF cer. Ultimately Colvin gives them various opportunities to re1 ect on, discuss, and write about their lives as corner boys. He even invites them to develop a code for corner-boy life, lists of rules, the do’s and don’ts of corner-boy livelihood. ese scenes are powerful moments for educators who watch e Wire and know the challenges, possibilities, and failures of inner-city classrooms overrun by children of the drug trade. As James E. Davis notes, [t]he interaction of school context and masculine identities and socialization is important to consider . ese performances of masculinity are not necessarily linked to troublemaking but to how teachers and other adults interpret these performances. (Davis 298) Davis’s insight sheds light on the interaction that ensues in the corner-boy classroom aJ er Colvin radically reinterprets the educational proceedings. Once the corner-boy students accept the interpretation of their classroom as a training ground for their involvement in the illegal drug trade—as well as their own limited life experiences and truncated opportunities on the mean streets of Baltimore—they become willing participants in the educational process. e idea that masculinity is directly linked to economic prowess (and possibility) is especially relevant and particularly compelling to dispossessed African American youth (Davis 296). erefore the corner-boy students almost instantly become excited and engaged in their classroom. ey participate in discussions, work together in groups to construct the code of streets from the corner-boy perspective, and even talk about their learning with peers outside of the classroom. TTPotter_07_Rev.inddPotter_07_Rev.indd 111010 66/5/2009/5/2009 99:40:09:40:09 AAMM Corner-Boy Masculinity: Intersections of Inner-City Manhood 111 Zenobia’s claim, “We got our thing, but it’s just a part of the big thing,” is delivered in the midst of one of these engaging dialogues. Essentially, she situates the drug trade within the context of the dislocating power of the global economy. From the corner-boy perspective, at the crossroads of lack and desire, selling drugs is no diB erent from selling cigarettes or alcohol except that some trades are arbitrarily deemed legal and others are not. is suggestion and these scenes unveil an abiding intersection- ality with respect to how black masculinity is conceptualized and operationalized on e Wire. at girls can be corner boys is important to recognize here, but the youths’ acknowledgment of the relationship between aspirational masculinity, global capital, arbitrary illegality, and the possibility of public education as a means to overcome socioeco- nomic and violent challenges are also powerful intersecting messages in these scenes. Alycee J.

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