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Graffiti Takeover, Bombing, &
Racism
By Charles Chea
In the mainstream, and even in the
underground, graffiti is praised as the urban visual art
form. On MTV, Urban Outfitters’ t-shirts, and other mainstream
media outlets, graffiti has become a heavy commodity. In the
underground, people see graffiti as an important element of Hip
Hop and plaster it all over their parties and album covers.
Graffiti has also caused a lot of
controversy, predominately being attacked by city government and
right wing opponents, arguing that it is destructive and costly.
As a former writer, the proper reference for a graffiti
artist as opposed to “tagger”, I’ve thought a lot about
graffiti as both an urban art form and an outlet of destruction.
In many ways, through the revelations made in my own life, both
perspectives are very true.
It was either in the 6th or 7th
grade when I was first introduced to the graffiti scene. This
white kid named Tim from the Overbrook section of Philadelphia
moved into my hometown, Upper Darby, which happens to neighbor
West Philadelphia. I immediately became friends with him when he
moved to my town and I would end up becoming his protégé.
He taught me the trademark Philly graffiti
styles, how to distinguish crews and squads, and introduced me
to other writers. We would meet other writers while roaming
Philadelphia and while in school, some who happened to be the
most infamous writers and part of the most notorious crews in
Philadelphia. Most of the time, I was the only Asian kid.
Everyone else was black with a few token white boys from Philly.
99.9% of time, we were all males.
It would only be a matter of time until the
graffiti “bug” affected the rest of the town. Within a short
period of time since he moved to Upper Darby, he had built quite
a report with a lot of the white kids in town, and everyone was
carrying Sharpie markers now. Beginners and “toys” (an
offensive slang referring to corny writers) wrote all over the
town, but the more experienced and reputable writers were
bombing Philadelphia.
Going into the city and writing in different
sections of the city was considered a “takeover.” It was a
means of building credibility and it was an ecstatic way to
introduce suburban kids to the city ghettos. (Note: To briefly
describe Upper Darby, it is a town that’s predominately lower
to middle class, but the segregated dynamic has kept people of
color and lower-income whites on one side of town, while a
section called Drexel Hill is largely occupied by middle-upper
class whites)
Most of the fascinations for graffiti came
from the white kids, from all different class backgrounds, while
the Asian and black kids didn’t care for the “takeover” of
Philadelphia. The Asians in Upper Darby, predominately
Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians, were occupied with their
own scene. Some blacks, however, gave me a different perspective
as to why they had little interest with graffiti in
Philadelphia.
One night in high school, a white friend of
mine named Liam and I decided to go routing, a slang referring
to walking around solely to write graffiti. This was our first
time doing so in West Philadelphia. We walked down to 63rd
St and Market St, which happens to be a few blocks from my
neighborhood, looking for walls to write on.
When we reached 61st St, a black
teenager a bit older than us immediately approached, and asked
us if we had any change. I gave him what little I had on me, and
for some dubious reason, I asked him if he was a writer. He told
me he wasn’t. Liam and I started walking back to Upper Darby
because I started feeling uncomfortable. While we walked back,
from a distance, he yelled out words I will never forget:
“Don’t fuck up my neighborhood, ya’ hear?”
Graffiti is often glamorized by the media, by
whites and people of color (more often whites though), by
females and males, by suburban and urban people. For even the
most conscious of activists, graffiti is really an unfamiliar
subject that gets idealized as what they hope it to be, rather
than seeing what it really is at times. Likewise, conservatives
usually don’t know anything about it either and constitute it
as a grimy, pathological black product.
Everyone needs to understand what the
graffiti scene really is and who the writers are. Everyone needs
to listen to the voice of discontent from the black youth I met,
in a city rampant with institutional racism and poverty. Let us
question concepts like “takeover” in this case where race,
class, and gender issues intersect. Let us not make it so easy
for destructive forces to be ignored, and let’s continually
question what graffiti really means for impoverished
neighborhoods and all the people who live there.
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Charles Chea is a
Sociology student at UMass-Boston who is originally from
Philadelphia. chea@asiavists.org
- http://www.asiavists.org
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updated 3 October
2007 |
