One of the best, and most unexpected, moments of my class thus far was when I showed this video:
One of my local students launched into a tirade against the piece (to be fair, another defended it), and it got me thinking; what are local perspectives on the national portrayals of Camden?
In New Orleans, I was pretty familiar with the national narrative and the way it was loathed locally. Locals were plenty aware of the way the national media was portraying their city. A visitor could do little worse than call Hurricane Katrina a “natural disaster” (locals most often referred to the city as a “man-made disaster” that came about because of a failed flood-protection system), but one worse thing was to adhere to the “blank slate theory,” which figured prominently everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. The blank slate theory declared that Hurricane Katrina had wiped away everything in the city, and so it was a blank slate for new ideas.
I was cornered in a bar more than once, as it was explained to me in painstaking detail that outsiders had no right to make New Orleans an experiment for their latest policy ideas. I agree with the sentiment.
But when I was sent this NPR piece on the new Camden County Police Force, I realized, I don’t have the same sense of Camden’s local reaction to their national portrayal. The story in this radio spot, one of decreasing crime in response to policy changes, is starting to take hold in some of the circles I swim in (NPR being a decent example). But in breakfast with an activist last week, I heard a different story. It was one of suspicion and accusations; specifically that the change from a city to a county police force was accompanied with delaying the implementation of policy changes that were expected to reduce crime, specifically the use of federal grant dollars, so that crime numbers could improve quickly when the new force took over.
Now that’s a big claim, one I’ll consider more gossip than truth until I can look into it, but it also speaks to something important. What rises to the level of newspapers or national media isn’t the same narrative that goes from street corner to street corner. There’s likely a national portrayal of Camden with its own “blank slate theories” and “natural disasters” that everyone but the folks in Camden would accept.
I’m not sure how widely this blog is read beyond campus, or how it’s thought of, but I’d love to have that local perspective here. So if you listen to that NPR piece and want to pull your hair out (or agree, and want to share that), let me know. Write something. Rant about Brian Williams (my students sure did). Local narratives needs to be shared even if (and especially when) they aren’t written up by national media syndicates. I hope you’ll give me the chance to share those perspectives with my readers and my students.
Share it!
