In Defense of The Wire
Chaddha, Anmol & Wilson, William Julius & Venkatesh, Sudhir A.
ALTHOUGH WE agree that The Wire does not take on every issue relevant to life in the inner city, John Atlas and Peter Dreier do not sufficiently acknowledge its remarkable contributions. Quite...
...Indeed, one of the show's unique strengths was its refusal to engage a conventional plotline centered on a conflict between good and bad...
...Despite the show's critical acclaim, Atlas and Dreier fault it for four reasons: (1) The Wire's version of reality is only partly right because the show misses the positive aspects of changes brought about by collective activism...
...When the poor are isolated from mainstream institutions, folk understandings of their world and other misperceptions infuse even academic DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 85 ARGUMENTS thought...
...ANMOL CHADDHA is a doctoral student of sociology and social policy at Harvard University...
...Virtue and hope are not absent from the show, but are instead embodied in characters that cannot be placed in unambiguous moral categories...
...Instead, the characters were consistently drawn with sincere complexity—Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), the thug who physically flinches when his nephew rejects him...
...This list does not even take into account examples of individual, sometimes "renegade," efforts within and on behalf of the community, such as Cutty's boxing gym that effectively pulled youngsters off the streets...
...And SUDHIB A. VENKATESH is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor and Gang Leader for a Day...
...Bubbles (Andre Royo), the junkie who is often a better detective than the police he serves as an informant...
...In the face of these biases, The Wire effectively challenges such stereotypes by showing how the decisions people make are profoundly influenced by their environment or social circumstances—in other words, how they are constrained by structural barriers...
...whites (71 percent), a majority of Hispanics (59 percent), and even a slight majority of blacks (53 percent) "believe that blacks who have not gotten ahead in life are mainly responsible for their own situation...
...Nearly three quarters of U.S...
...To be clear, we are not taking anything away from the critical work of groups like BUILD and ACORN...
...the educational intervention devised by University of Maryland researchers and implemented in the Baltimore schools...
...According to Simon, the central and straightforward goal of The Wire was to show that the "system" is broken and that it fails individuals and families...
...Quite simply, The Wire—even with its too-modest viewership— has done more to enhance both the popular and the scholarly understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality than any other program in the media or academic publication we can think of...
...In Baltimore, one-third of the adult black male population is jobless, a figure that probably exceeds 50 percent in ghetto neighborhoods, and the urban high school graduation rate is only 34.6 percent, compared to a suburban graduation rate of 81.5 percent—a gap of 47 percentage points...
...In a sharp criticism, the show revealed how the constant pandering to "the ministers" by the politicians indicates how community leadership positions are too often exploited by vested interests who sometimes try to advance agendas at the expense of the most vulnerable members of the community...
...In a series of surveys conducted between 1969 and 1990, the most-often selected explanation for poverty was "lack of effort by the poor themselves...
...Some examples include then-City Councilmember Thomas Carcetti's (Aiden Gillen) guided tour through a troubled neighborhood by the residents themselves who were concerned about drug-dealing gangs and other problems the city had neglected...
...and the community meetings with police district commander Howard "Bunny" Colvin (Robert Wisdom), where the residents aired their grievances...
...Morality in The Wire is constructed with more subtlety and complexity...
...The show has contributed to an awareness of systemic urban inequality that has highlighted the incredible challenges inner-city residents face...
...There are undoubtedly many issues that Simon and his colleagues did not address...
...Indeed, Americans remain strongly disposed to the idea that individuals are largely responsible for their economic situations...
...We have been impressed with the dialogue this fictional drama has already generated among critics, commentators, and viewers...
...Anyone who watches Season Four will come away with a clear understanding of how the public school system has failed these students and why the atmosphere in these schools is so devastating...
...A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that "fully two-thirds of all Americans believe personal factors, rather than racial discrimination, explain why many African Americans have difficulty getting ahead in life...
...Each character in the five seasons—including police, gangsters, politicians, union officials, teachers, and journalists— serves the purpose of advancing these storylines with unequaled success and rare nuance...
...Russell "Stringer" Bell (Idris Elba), the coldblooded shot-caller who introduces Robert's Rules of Order into gang meetings...
...In criticizing the exclusion of activists and organizers who are indeed working to improve the conditions of the communities portrayed in The Wire, Atlas and Dreier seem to want characters that represent the forces of good against the evils that the show has accurately exposed...
...Bunny Colvin's "Hamsterdam" experiment to confine the selling of drugs in an isolated area...
...In a unique way, The Wire offers a new foundation to attack social isolation by making us aware of how scholars, policymakers, and the general public form opinions about the problems of urban inequality without a full appreciation of their complexity...
...The Wire exposes the systemic inequality that the activists and organizers are working tirelessly to challenge and reform...
...3) the show's characters are for the most part corrupt, cynical, and ineffective...
...Indeed, The Wire suggests that, since attempts to reform these institutions from within are doomed to failure, the only way to challenge failed systems is through independent action unsanctioned by these very institutions...
...We would argue that the message of the show and the work of the grassroots activists go hand in hand...
...Social scientists may not be quite sure how to deal with the show because it fundamentally challenges some previously accepted, yet overly simplistic, ideas of a dichotomy between "street" and "decent" people in the inner city...
...The Wire develops morally complex characters on each side of the law, and with its scrupulous exploration of the inner workings of various institutions, including drug-dealing gangs, the police, politicians, unions, public schools, and the print media, viewers become aware that individuals' decisions and behavior are often shaped by and indeed limited by— social, political, and economic forces beyond their control...
...According to its creator and chief writer, David Simon (previously a distinguished journalist at the Baltimore Sun), the show initially set out to expose the drug war as a fraudulent attack on the urban poor and communities of color...
...We also take issue with Atlas and Dreier's contention that the show promotes white, middle-class stereotypes of the inner city...
...just 19% blame discrimination...
...However, the community organizers they describe would presumably agree that the "system" has profoundly failed their communities...
...We very strongly disagree...
...Meanwhile, despite the real systemic challenges they face and The Wire's sometimes despairing representation of them, the communities that feel these problems most sharply will continue to build political power to demand reforms toward achieving true social justice...
...In fact, more than nine out of ten American adults thought that lack of effort was either very or somewhat important in terms of causing poverty...
...The Wire shows us part of the world of the urban poor that should be examined in its entirety and by a number of media...
...and Omar's Robin Hood ethic as a stickup artist...
...Atlas and Dreier argue that the show's seemingly bleak outlook will stifle or discourage efforts for social change...
...It is true that the grassroots organizations and activists highlighted by Atlas and Dreier are not present in full force in The Wire's depiction of modern-day Baltimore, and in general these organizers and activists do not get the attention and credit they deserve in the mainstream media...
...The portrayals in The Wire are anything but shallow caricatures of the urban poor...
...THE WEIGHT Americans give to individualistic factors persists today...
...and Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams), the shotgun-wielding stickup artist who robs drug dealers but pledges to never harm ordinary citizens and who brazenly works with the police to avenge the murder of his gay lover...
...In our view, an unflinching focus on these persisting crises is not irresponsible or gratuitously cynical...
...Fewer than 10 percent felt that it was not important...
...2) The Wire reinforces white, middle-class stereotypes of inner city life...
...Over the course of that season, The Wire combats the misguided ARGUMENTS belief that inner-city students themselves are largely responsible for their lack of educational achievement...
...and (4) The Wire misses what is hopeful, and therefore the show does not encourage America to change...
...Too often, this results in policy responses and debates that are inaccurate or unhelpful...
...WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard and author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor and the forthcoming More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City...
...Subsequent seasons sought to examine the role of other social institutions and social forces in creating and maintaining social inequality—the DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 83 ARGUMENTS disappearance of jobs and the devaluation of labor, the inner workings of urban politics, the troubled urban education system, and the negligence of mainstream media in its coverage of important local issues...
...The Wire is not a documentary but fiction...
...We would be wary, however, of overly optimistic portrayals that present the active involvement of community groups as sufficient counterweights to entrenched structural forces, when as the above figures so clearly reveal, a deepening crisis continues to mark ghetto neighborhoods across the United States The profound and widespread inability of media to adequately cover grassroots activism is a misguided premise for attacking The Wire and shortchanging its accomplishments...
...The problem, however, is not The Wire...
...The writers created characters and plotlines that advance the story they wished to tell...
...the Narcotics Anonymous meetings held in the church basement...
...Compared to the countless television shows and movies in which good triumphs over evil and cliched games of cops and robbers indulge us with a happy ending, in sharp contrast, The Wire has carefully depicted the ugly underbelly of urban inequality...
...But they also overlook real instances from the show of community-led efforts to confront dehumanizing systems...
...Those in the wider public respond as if they had no idea these conditions existed, much like the reaction to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina...
...With its sophisticated critique of the structure of urban inequality, the show drove this point home, although apparently with a "nihilism" that, for Atlas and Dreier, rendered the critique ineffective...
...However, the show is not remiss in focusing on the shocking inequality and injustice that persist despite the heroic efforts of these groups...
...AT THE SAME TIME, part of the success of the show is that it has in some ways confounded both academics and the general public...
...Quite unlike the Bush-era approach to the urban poor, which utilizes a simplistic delineation between good and bad and right and wrong and assigns blame in all the wrong places, the show disentangles the complex structure of urban inequality and exposes its systemic roots...
...In our view, The Wire can complement these efforts by serving as a valuable source of the necessary political education that must accompany any effective attempt at reform...
...The real problem is that only one hour a week was set aside to examine the pressing issues of social inequality for a few months each year on a single premium cable network...
...Western points out that if prison and jail inmates are included among those who are out of work, the true jobless rate for black men without a high school diploma would climb from 41 percent to 65 percent...
...According to Harvard sociologist Bruce Western, incarceration rates for black, male high school dropouts in their twenties and thirties are nearly fifty times the national average...
...the debate society through which Namond Brice (Julito McCullum) finds his way out of a drug gang...
...84 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 However, white, middle-class stereotypes of inner-city blacks often reflect the American belief system regarding poverty and welfare, namely, that people fail to succeed in life because of personal inadequacies...
...What is the story that The Wire sought to tell...
...The authors wish to thank Lauren Paremoer, Jessica Houston Su, and Abby Wolf, three enthusiastic fans of The Wire, for their helpful comments on a previous draft...
...They never really identify which characters reflect what stereotypes...
Vol. 55 • July 2008 • No. 3
