9:40 a.m.||||2001-12-19

And his mama cried...

I have written of this ghetto in the past as if I might think I am above it. This is, unequivocally, not the case. I love all the ghettoes in this city and in every city. I am proud to have lived in this diverse neighborhood, in a city where if you're making money at all, you're living in a suburb. What is ugly about the ghetto is just that it is a ghetto, a region ghettoized, a real estate marking of undesirables, a crime of demography.

That there should be ghettoes in the wealthiest country on earth is incredibly offensive. That is all.

I want, simply, to live in a place where I can take my tiny son for a walk and not have to step around glass, and litter, and used condoms, and the occasional syringe. I don't want him growing up thinking that becoming a gangster is noble because at least you aren't the man. This is what my sister thinks. And so, she lowers her standards. It's a weird and modern phenomenon. When has the ghetto ever been popular before, culturally speaking? Ghetto culture? Is this the first step toward a real culture if democracy? My anarchist friend would say the encroaching, inevitable, worker's revolution is evident in this somehow.