I’ve seen The Wire brought up lately and I don’t mean to waste a lot of brain activity on it – I like doing this thing where I just ignore superfluous, gratuitous, uninvited, racist, fascist, imperialist media thereby extinguishing its existence/influence in at least my mind garden – but it is so shockingly bad and obviously being churned back up for Reasons. I don’t think anyone should waste a lot of words on it as a piece of media unto itself. It’s a distillation of some of the worst crimes against humanity and the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Formerly enslaved within our present, collective lifetimes. There is still no bigger taboo in modern times than to bring this up on the platforms we still have some form of access to in the age of woke point whatever, DEI demonization, “critical race theory” pearl clutching, and media filled with this shit.
I only became aware of the show by way of a communications class circa 2010 in which a so-called “fellow” classmate used a clip for a presentation we were assigned. I don’t even recall the exact theme now; this exposure was enough to block out other memories. But I’m sure it was just a show and tell kind of thing about the “nuances” of some form of media speaking to us for some fucking reason or another. He was a young man from a suburban Kansas City county which boasts one of the highest median incomes in the US. “Public schools” with endless resources, marvelous tree-lined winding streets that move traffic quickly to decent downtown hangs. I don’t know how that’s changed in the time since I lived there, and god knows I only visited that part, but I will say it’s a template I’ve seen across the continent developers look like they’re emulating but they are really not. The copies are fugazi – not to say such a thing is aspirational due to its original purpose, but there are people who live in comfort you know – badly built bullshit in most cases that does nothing to enrich the surrounding areas or even the lives of those who purchase or rent in these developments beyond having a thing to call a roof and a piece of property.
This area in Kansas and Missouri is representative of what lies just below the surface of every USian metro. Up until the early 1970s, I think 1972 to be exact, Black Americans were legally barred from owning property in the growing and more affluent counties that comprise Kansas City. They were segregated to counties further to the west and south on the Kansas side, notably Jackson and Wyandotte. This was enforced at the federal level by agencies and organizations that inevitably resulted in the HUD we have today. This segregation and apartheid was not limited the KC metro side in Kansas which should come as no surprise: my friend who bought a lovely late ’60s – early ’70s smallish ranch style 20+ years ago (plenty of stucco on frame baby with the perfectly molded archways that develop that lovely lived-in patina) in the southeast of the state realized that if she had been her father trying to buy it at her same age, he had no chance per the gov. The original deed read “shall not be sold to one of negro blood”.
Why is this type of thing not discussed every day among the precious discourse makers? Look at just that and apply it seriously to every other stark condition and situation that exists right now. You are on your way! You can finally quit fucking around with meeting people where they’re at or whatever, or calling workers fat, lazy, and stupid but like, wokely and dysgenically, because you have the truth on your side and you want nothing less than liberation. Oh wait, it is! Silly me. It’s like lack of generational wealth and the cost of living crisis, or something. WHEW. Well thank our lucky stars we have The Wire to give it to us the way it really is! Also the way it has to be according to everyone in on this pile of shit.
As I was saying, the suburbs I described are where my classmate hailed from. His father is East Asian, his mother is African American. He felt his suburban upbringing masked the reality that The Wire represented in some way he really wasn’t sure of, but since it was unfamiliar and his mother is Black, there must be some truth in one way or another because, I guess, privilege? Which apparently automatically turns off one’s sense-making abilities including notions of object permanence and the existence of other people stitching their clothes, killing their cows, picking their berries.
So up next on screen we have a 2-3 minute long clip of a fat Black woman in curlers shouting everything you would expect every Reaganite to shout at a young Black man. It was shocking, I really couldn’t believe such an insulting, deleterious thing existed and this guy was showcasing it. I cannot recall my presentation now, but I know it was not television related as I was actively trying to end TV then. I know it’s a lofty goal and I failed, but this is what I mean by shocking. I hadn’t had any kind of reference point for years or maybe at all with regard to what it has become. As a child, I remember how icky it felt to have those few corny network sitcoms aimed at us in the ’90s especially.
I caught another terrible clip earlier in my timeline of its initial opening scene. Pure trash. Young Black men are murdered yesterday, last week, a year ago, 12 years ago, 65 years ago for the “crime” of appearing to be a person who cannot be easily pushed around. The only people who enjoy this show or find any redeeming qualities in it desire that situation in one way or another; there is something in it that speaks to them. Not everything that costs a lot of money and has “production value” is something that is worthy of our energy or resources. Remember when it was okay to destroy confederate statues? Can we do that part again? Because this shit is worthy of being jettisoned into the sun, discussed only for educational purposes of a different sort to understand what our mistakes were so we quit making them and fall into the traps of capital and finance.





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