In her research paper The Making of Space, Race and Place, the author Maggie Dickinson examines the war on graffiti in NYC over the decades and provides a historical context to explain how the practice of graffiti became criminalized in NYC. She explains that the war on graffiti started in the 1970’s during a time when the New York City was experiencing a fiscal financial crisis. The business community saw it as an opportunity to take control of the city’s finances and government and sought to restructure the city as a neoliberal and corporate capital. The author argues that the war on graffiti was one of their efforts to achieve their goal to restructure the city. She argues that in order to justify the expense and violent tactics used to stop graffiti practitioners, the city racialized the war on graffiti by reinforcing the negative stereotypes of young people of color as criminals and threats. This research paper on the war on graffiti relates to my own research paper on the opioid crisis because like the war on graffiti, the war on drugs in the 1980’s was also racialized and primarily targeted people of color, especially African Americans, by reinforcing the negative stereotypes of African Americans. The war on graffiti and the difference in the government’s response to the crack epidemic in the 1980’s compared to their response to the current opioid crisis illustrates that the justice system serves as a form of social control that primarily targets the disadvantaged people of color to structurally exclude them from American democracy.
In Dickinson’s research paper, she argues the city’s violent response to the practice of graffiti was driven by the business community’s goal to restructure the city as a corporate capital. The practice of graffiti was antithetical to the neoliberal vision of the city that sought to privatize the city, including its public spheres. As majority of graffiti practitioners came from poor communities of color, graffiti represented the voice of the poor youth of color and the city wanted to disassociate itself with them to fulfill their neoliberal vision. The city criminalized graffiti not only to get rid of the graffiti, but also to drive out the practitioners out the urban center. In order to justify the violent tactics used to stop the practitioners, the city reinforced the negative stereotypical portrayal of young men of color as violent criminals and drug-dealers to justify the brutal and violent attacks against them. Dickinson mentions that the initial media portrayal of graffiti before the war on graffiti was positive. However, after the city criminalized and racialized graffiti, the media and public perception changed as graffiti became linked to crime and violence. A claim that Dickinson makes that stood out to me was, “Graffiti speaks to the ways positionality – one’s race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. – can determine how one’s creative labor is interpreted.” She is suggesting that the city’s interpretation of graffiti as vandalism and destruction, instead of art, was largely due to the fact that it came from poor youth of color. If the majority of the practitioners were young white people, the city might have taken a completely different approach to stop them or they might have even celebrated it as an art form. The city claimed that they were getting rid of graffiti for public safety and to avoid destruction to public property, however the walls of subway platforms and interior of the subway trains are plastered with advertisements that aren’t much different from graffiti. Both graffiti and those advertisements essentially have a similar purpose, which is to attract the attention of the public. Why is it acceptable for big corporations and companies to display their advertisements throughout subway platforms and the city, but not for young people of color who are from the city to communicate their messages through a nonviolent form of art?. The war on graffiti shows how the government uses the penal system as a tool of social control to shut down the voices of minorities by criminalizing and stigmatizing their work.
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Similar to how the war on graffiti relied on the negative stereotypes of people of color to justify the violent attacks to stop practitioners, the war on drugs in the 1980’s also relied on those same negative stereotypes of people of color, especially African Americans, to target urban communities of color. While the crack epidemic was tearing apart African American families, the government’s response was to greatly increase federal penalties and criminal punishment for use or possession of drugs, especially for crack cocaine, which was mostly used in black neighborhoods. As a result of the war on drugs, the incarceration rate skyrocketed in the U.S, especially among people of color. Although studies showed that the rate of using and selling drugs was similar within people of all colors, African Americans and other people of color were disproportionately targeted and incarcerated. (Alexander 7) In contrast to the government’s response to the crack epidemic, the government’s response to the current opioid crisis which started in the 1990’s and primarily affected white people, has been more focused on rehabilitation and saving lives. While the more sympathetic response to the opioid epidemic might be because of the increasing acceptance of addiction as a disease, the fact that the majority of the people affected were white also plays a role in the way the government responded to the opioid epidemic. The government’s highly punitive response to the crack epidemic compared to the sympathetic response to the current opioid epidemic shows that the American criminal justice system primarily targets people of color and holds stricter and punitive attitude towards people of color compared to white people in similar circumstances.
Overall, the war on graffiti and the war on drugs illustrates how the city or the government systematically targeted the disadvantaged people of color. The war on drugs and the war on graffiti was not just about the criminalization of drugs and graffiti, but also the criminalization of people of color and poverty. Through criminalization of people of color and poverty, the government suppress the poor and the people of color and maintain structural racism and social structure.
this article helped me see how the government and policies can be used cultural representations and norms can be shaped by social structure. The city criminalized graffiti and didn’t hesitate to use violent and cruel methods to attack graffiti practitioners because majority of them were young people of color. If the practitioners were young white people, the city might have taken a completely different approach to stop them or they might have even celebrated it as an art form. The war on graffiti shows how throughout history, the government and officials have used people of color, specifically African Americans as scapegoats to further their own agenda, from the war on graffiti to war on drugs.
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