Economic Subjugation and Crime in a Capitalist Context: Using the Irw E to Understand the Contemporary American City Ellis Obrien Bates College, [email protected]
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Bates College SCARAB Honors Theses Capstone Projects 5-2019 Economic Subjugation and Crime in a Capitalist Context: Using The irW e to Understand the Contemporary American City Ellis Obrien Bates College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses Recommended Citation Obrien, Ellis, "Economic Subjugation and Crime in a Capitalist Context: Using The irW e to Understand the Contemporary American City" (2019). Honors Theses. 305. https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/305 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Capstone Projects at SCARAB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of SCARAB. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Economic Subjugation and Crime in a Capitalist Context: Using The Wire to Understand the Contemporary American City An Honors Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Program in African American Studies Bates College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts By Ellis Obrien Lewiston, Maine March 20th 2019 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 2 Acknowledgements Finding the words to express my gratitude for Bates College Professor of African American Studies Sue Houchins is the most challenging aspect of this paper. Taking Introduction to African American Studies with Dr. Houchins my freshmen year sparked my interest in the economics of race and had an immeasurable impact on my academic career. Studying The Wire subsequently with Dr. Houchins provided the framework for this paper. Professor Houchins soaring intellect is matched only by her kindness, and I could not ask for a more accommodating and supportive advisor. I have learned more from her than any other figure in my time at Bates. I would also like to thank my economics advisor, Bates College Professor of Economics Jonathan Kurzfeld, who has been exceedingly helpful through every step of the thesis writing process. Professor Kurzfeld has been there for me and has taught me an immense amount about conducting economics research. Additionally, I would like to thank my classmate and friend since kindergarten, Zofia Ahmad ‘19, who was instrumental in teaching me the ArcGIS geographic coding techniques necessary for my economic analysis. I also thank my housemates Dylan Metsch-Ampel ‘19 and Josh Caldwell ‘19. We have enjoyed a shared process of writing our honors theses, and their support through the late nights and early mornings has been crucial. They never fail to put a smile on my face and have been the best friends I could have asked for through my four years at Bates. Finally, I would like to thank my mother and father for always encouraging me to explore issues of justice and equality. CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 2 Table of Contents 3 List of Figures 5 List of Tables 7 Abstract 8 Introduction 10 Chapter 1: Empirically Examining the Impact of Redlining in Baltimore 21 Introduction 21 The History of Redlining and the Demographics of Baltimore 25 Redlining and the Economic Geography of Baltimore 29 Correlation Between Geography and Life Outcomes for Earnings and Incarceration 35 Confronting the Causation Challenge 39 Empirical Methods for Causal Analysis 43 Empirical Results from Causal Analysis 45 Conclusion 48 Chapter 2: Structural Differences: Housing and Class Stratification In The Wire 50 Wealth, Housing, and the New Deal 50 Public Housing in The Wire 53 Private Black Homeownership and the Black Middle Class 57 White Home Ownership 65 The Dual Economy: Property Ownerships and Class Divides 67 Conclusion 70 Chapter 3: It’s All In The Game: Neoliberalism and Destruction In The Wire 72 Trickle-Down Economics and the War On Drugs 72 It’s Just Business: The Economics of the Drug Trade 79 The Game is the Game: The Violence of the Drug Trade 84 The Bottom of the Bottom: Mobility in the Drug Trade 94 The Politics of Policing: Baltimore's Legal System 96 Race or Class? What We can Learn from the Ports 102 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 4 Who Really Profits Off the Drug Trade 106 Conclusion 109 Chap 4: Every Child Left Behind: Reinforcing Cycles of Poverty and Trauma Through the Baltimore School System 112 No Child Left Behind 112 Bigger than Edward Tilghman Middle School 114 Introducing the Boys of Tilghman 115 The Boys’ Fates 120 Conclusion 124 Conclusion 128 Works Cited 134 Appendix 147 Section 1: Geocoding Methods 147 Section 2: Regression Methods 148 Section 3: Regression Variables and Results 149 Section 4: Regression Tables 152 Section 5: The Wire Character List 158 Section 6: The Wire Images 161 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 5 List of Figures Figure 1: HOLC Redline of Baltimore 31 Figure 2: Baltimore Opportunity Atlas Map 32 Figure 3: Baltimore Opportunity Atlas Map with HOLC district overlay 34 Figure 4: The Wire Wallace and Bodie 161 Figure 5: The Wire Bunny Colvin 161 Figure 6: The Wire The Towers 162 Figure 7: The Wire Omar Testifying 162 Figure 8: The Wire Avon wants his corners 163 Figure 9: The Wire Bodie and Poot 163 Figure 10: The Wire Stringer the businessman 164 Figure 11: The Wire Chicken Nuggets in the Pit 164 Figure 12: The Wire Avon and D talk Violence 165 Figure 13: The Wire Marla and Cedric talk careers 165 Figure 14: The Wire Stringer and Prop Joe 166 Figure 15: The Wire Stringer in economics Class 166 Figure 16: The Wire Sobatka and The Greeks 167 Figure 17: The Wire Clay Davis 167 Figure 18: The Wire Randy, Dukie, Namond, and Michael 168 Figure 19: The Wire Marlo 168 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 6 Figure 20: The Wire McNulty and Bunk 169 Figure 21: The Wire Prez 169 Figure 22: The Wire Carcetti 170 Figure 23: The Wire Bubbles Depo 170 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 7 List of Tables Table 1a: Baltimore Summary Statistics 37 Table 1b: OLS Regression for Baltimore 37 Table 2a: Redlining Effects on Income in Baltimore 45 Table 2b: Redlining Effects on Incarceration Rates in Baltimore 46 Table 3a: Non-fixed Effect Baltimore Income Regressions 153 Table 3b: Non-fixed Effect Baltimore Incarceration Rate Regressions 154 Table 4a: HOLC Red-Yellow Border Effects on Income in Baltimore 155 Table 4b: HOLC Yellow-Blue Border Effects on Income in Baltimore 156 Table 4c: HOLC Blue-Green Border Effects on Income in Baltimore 157 CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 8 Abstract This paper conducts a detailed economic examination of certain key neighborhoods in the city of Baltimore to understand the forces at play in the television series, The Wire, and also to use The Wire to better understand those neighborhoods. Lauding its realism, critics and scholars widely regard The Wire as popular culture’s most accurate depiction of the post-industrial American City. In an effort to describe the impacts of the economic landscape of Baltimore on human experience, this paper provides the first known empirical analysis of the effects of redlining on contemporary income and incarceration rates using rigorous statistical methods. Because it disproportionately disenfranchised black communities, redlining had a profound effect on the economic and social life of those communities. Using this analysis as a framework, this thesis describes the economic milieu of The Wire in an historical context and shows how specific economic policies and political dynamics lead to the poverty and violence portrayed in the show. This study demonstrates that deliberately enacted policies forced African Americans into specific metropolitan areas and that, simultaneously, public and private entities made concerted efforts to limit economic resources and opportunity in these areas. The Wire reveals the effects of this subjugation through multiple aspects of its narrative. The television series vividly represents inaccessible housing, the collapsing school system, the high crime rate, and the shortage of legal forms of industry—all of which are consequences of redlining. This thesis argues that the crime depicted in The Wire is a practical response to a lack of access to formal economic institutions. Broadly, it uses The Wire and detailed economic analysis to CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 9 uncover how America’s inequitable policies have led to the Dickensian state of the contemporary American city. CAPITALIST ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION IN THE WIRE 10 Introduction I recently attended my fourth Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates college. Professors and panelists from around the country led nuanced discussions on topics ranging from sexual violence to freedom of speech that illuminated the day’s theme, “Lifting Every Voice: Intersectionality and Activism.” While the array of topics nibbled at the edges of addressing racialized economic inequality, overt discussion of the economic landscape of the U.S was notably absent from the MLK Day commemoration. Law professor and American civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw originally coined the term “intersectionality” to address hiring discrimination by American firms (Crenshaw, 1989). So, by restricting our MLK Day discussions to social issues, the economic impacts of intersectionality was lost. This failure to address the intersection of race and economics directly is emblematic of the national discourse surrounding Martin Luther King Jr.’s work and, ultimately, problematic to the discourse surrounding racism in the U.S. While the vast majority of Americans believe racism is a serious problem in America (Neal, 2017), too frequently Americans discuss racism as a social issue—fundamentally a problem in the way people relate to one another. Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. is widely regarded as a unifying civil rights activist who helped achieve equality between white and black America. He is infrequently discussed as a radical economic thinker who developed innovative methods to harness the forces of capitalism and cripple supremacist mechanisms of control.