Donald Trump's Blaxploitation of 'Inner Cities'

The Netflix/Marvel hit TV series Luke Cage, which follows a bulletproof African-American superhero looking to save Harlem, portrays the historically black Manhattan neighborhood as a place flush with violent thugs and guns. That may have been true of the Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, during the era of Bumpy Johnson, or the Harlem of the 1960s and 1970s, under Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes. It could even describe the Harlem of the 1980s and 1990s, when gangsters like Alpo and Rich Porter and gangs like The Supreme Team were at their zenith. But it certainly would not neatly describe the Harlem of today, or even of the past 25 years.

Nevertheless, in one scene from the series, a group of thugs gathers before their gun-running crime leader, spitballing ideas on how to defeat Cage. One of the leader’s minions responds by offering up a short urban history on Robert Moses, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the white flight that both enabled, and the urban policy prescriptions touted by Daniel Moynihan in the 1970s.