Justice
Disrupting the Cycle of Urban Violence With Arts and Culture
Hip-hop dialed down street violence in the Bronx. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Indian gangs made peace through craft. Why is culture such an underrated civic tool?
It’s not possible to write five words about the South Bronx without mentioning hip hop, given that is its birthplace. But recently, The American Prospect managed about 5,000 words without mentioning it once. It was a missed opportunity, because a peek into hip hop’s nativity story would have challenged the “Bronx Cheer” narrative, written by Harold Meyerson, about the New York City borough’s slow climb out of abject poverty.
“Like the rest of urban America,” writes Meyerson, “the Bronx cannot solve its most fundamental problems on its own.”