HOME IS A DIRTY STREET

By Useni Eugene Perkins
Third World Press (original publication 1975 - reissued)
$9.95 187 pages
Reviewed by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

I read Useni Eugene Perkins' study of the effect of street life on inner city African American children for very personal reasons: I am a single father raising three pre-adolescent African-American daughters in the inner city of East Oakland, one of the most depressed areas of the country. I need help.

Along the main artery of East 14th Street, a block from our house, prostitutes and drug dealers casually and openly do their business. The nearest crack house is two blocks away; we consider ourselves lucky that it is not closer. At night we pay attention to the popping of semi-automatic gunfire only when we can also hear the accompanying sound of running footsteps. I do my best to insulate my children from the effects, but I know that it is impossible. Three days before this review was written, my daughters witnessed the mugging of a mother who was dropping off her child at the neighborhood after-school recreation center. What thoughts swim in the depths behind my children's dark eyes? I can only guess. And worry.

I read this book, therefore, not as an academic exercise, but in the hope of gaining a better understanding about the world my daughters are being brought up in, how to cope with that world, and, if possible, how to change it.

I came away disappointed.

Home Is A Dirty Street is a deeply flawed book, contradictory in its presentations, weak in its conclusions. Reading this book is something like shooting schoolyard hoops. There are some things to be learned, but only if you already have your game when you come in the gate. In the end, Dirty Street is not especially helpful in bringing some clarity to the problems of African American inner city children.

Although the book is subtitled "The Social Oppression of Black Children" and the terms "Black youth" or "Black child" are used throughout, this is actually only about male youth; female youth are only mentioned, in passing, in an ironic passage in an afterword that says "we should not ignore the fact that many young Black females are confronted with serious problems which also need to be addressed." But ignore them, he has. Nowhere does Perkins explain this discrepancy, or even acknowledge that he recognizes it. A minor oversight? You be the judge.

Dirty Street is actually the reissue of a 1975 study by Perkins of North Lawndale, an African American neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, and therein lies its greatest weakness. Despite an afterthought that accompanies the 1991 reprinting, there is no effort to update the study in the light of the dramatic and far-reaching changes of the last 15 years. Any book expected to be relevant to the inner city of the 1990's that does not mention the problem of drugs, for example, has got to be a little suspect, at the very least.

Perkins put in 25 years as a youth worker in North Lawndale and other communities, and that experience does show in his writing. He has a deep passion for his subject; it is clear that he cares about the children and what happens to them. He demonstrates a good knowledge of the political history of North Lawndale and the various forces and types of individuals that prowl those inner city streets. Portions of the chapter on youth gangs are valuable, as well as the descriptions of the relationship of inner city youth to the criminal justice system. Perkins' conclusion, that the public school system is inherently flawed and that African Americans need to form their own alternative school systems, certainly deserves further study and discussion.

The writing style can be both exhilarating and annoying, sometimes at the same time. Though couched in sociologist's language, the book often reads like an evening of Yo! MTV Raps, with jump-cut images flashing past you in rapid succession. This is self-confident, finger-pointing, in-your-face writing. Perkins throws opinions at you from every page and dares you to challenge: the primary purpose of inner city public schools is to indoctrinate African American children into white history and white mythology; Christianity has failed to use its resources to correct the wrongs done to African Americans and, in fact, has played a major role in that oppression; the law in America treats African Americans as if they had a bounty on their heads; the formation of street gangs is "inevitable;" there is no proof that there is widespread disruption among African American families; middle class African Americans generally refuse to provide leadership for the freeing of the inner city, and often participate in its oppression.

There are pages and pages of these conclusions, often unsupported, many times completely contradicting each other, all appearing to stem from the fact that Perkins has not yet decided how the problems of the inner cities should be solved. He seems to want to have it all ways at once.

In the chapter on the formation of alternative institutions, for example, Perkins' writes, "The main responsibility for rehabilitating North Lawndale still rest with those who control and manage the wealth in this country." But later in the same paragraph he says, "Oppression will never be severed by those who foster it but only when the oppressed are able to mount sufficient resources to contest it." Is the goal rehabilitation or the severing of oppression, and who should accomplish it? Perkins does not appear to have a clue.

African American inner city youth are suddenly a hot commodity in America. Rap and hip hop, their socio-musical creations, are a major driving force in American culture. The malt liquor and sneaker shoe industries are making several fortunes out of the use of their images. Depictions of their stories have helped to keep movie box office cash registers ringing.

There is good cause to suspect that the publishers at Third World Press sought to take advantage of this situation by reissuing a demonstrably bad book. I wish I could be convinced that such suspicions are wrong.