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THE BIG CHEESE The Reagan era is not remembered favorably by many in urban America. He was the ill communicator, with a legacy of free cheese and neglect ~ By DENNIS ROMERO ~ June 10, 2004 for City Beat The Reagan era is not remembered favorably by many in urban America. He was the ill communicator, with a legacy of free cheese and neglect Okay people, ease on through/Rappin’ Ron Reagan got cheese for you! – From “Rap Master Ronnie” by the Doonesbury Break Crew. This week’s media memories of the late President Ronald Reagan gush with rosy praise and respect, but the nation as a whole takes a more black-or-white view of his tenure in the White House. Urban America tends to remember the dark underbelly of an ’80s marked by federal neglect. For inner-city dwellers, it was an age when the vitality of neighborhoods was sucked dry, with boarded-up storefronts and crack-based economies. The Reagan era was when a new wave of homeless roamed alleyways, crack cocaine wreaked havoc block by block, gang wars rocked peaceful neighborhoods, and civil rights were pushed against the ropes. In places like South Los Angeles, Pacoima, and San Diego’s City Heights, working-class neighborhoods once proud with brightly painted homes and manicured lawns fell into decay as crack-heads crawled through the night streets searching for sustenance, and drug dealers guarded street corners with automatic firepower. The first of the month brought less cash flow and food stamps, thanks to Reagan’s tough-on-welfare stance, but he did let them eat cheese – surplus government cheese, long, cold blocks of square, orange cheese. For many in the ’hoods of America, that’s how Reagan will be remembered – for his petty, patronizing dairy overstock that became the butt of a novelty rap hit called “Rap Master Ronnie.” “There was no middle ground with Ronald Reagan,” says Los Angeles author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson. “There was no shade of gray. You either loved him or hated him. When Reagan’s name comes up, I’m still hearing from African Americans that they couldn’t stand the guy. They remember all the damage that was done in the 1980s. They say, ‘We’re still suffering today from Reagan policies.’ A lot of African Americans do not have the fondest memories of the Reagan years, and those memories still carry on 20 years later.” Some of those memories are now institutionalized in ghetto culture, fostered by frustration, disillusion and idle time eating federally subsidized nachos. Hip-hop – rapping, DJing, break-dancing, and graffiti – flourished. Before the decade was over, Chuck D. urged listeners to “fight the power,” while Schoolly D. and N.W.A. put gang culture on cassette. From the streets, Reagan’s “Morning in America” was a nightmare. The rust belt rusted more and factories closed. Reagan’s star power and infectious jingoism pulled the upper half of the nation up from its bootstraps and out of the ’70s doldrums of stagflation and pessimism, but some felt his patriotic boot squarely on the back of urban America. He made social services an enemy, conjuring up racist stereotypes of ghetto leeches with his phrase, “welfare queens.” “He’s been the most destructive president in the last 60 or 70 years,” says Douglas Lasdon, executive director of the New York-based Urban Justice Center. “He made it okay to be hostile to – and blame – poor people.” Even before Reagan settled into the White House, he, perhaps inadvertently, opened the floodgates of homelessness in California by signing a law making it more difficult to institutionalize the state’s mental patients in 1967, when he was the state’s governor. As president, his cuts to social, welfare, and veterans’ programs only exacerbated the homeless problem. “He opened the doors and let the homeless people out,” says Hutchinson. “Many of these individuals were not just homeless, but had all kinds of addictions. It’s not rocket science to figure out that if you’re not treating people like that and you put them on the streets, these people are going to contribute to crime to supply their addictions. There was a direct correlation between the rise of addicted people on the streets and crime.” Indeed, crack took a terrible toll on the inner city, dismantling families hit by hit, and holding them hostage inside homes adorned with security bars. While some experts say Reagan just said no to dealing with crack as long as it stayed south of the metaphorical Santa Monica Freeway, others have accused his administration of helping to spark the “rock” craze. In 1996 the San Jose Mercury-News published a controversial three-part series by investigative reporter Gary Webb that linked the CIA-backed Contra fighting forces in Nicaragua with cocaine supply lines to the United States – lines that reportedly fed directly to a national crack cartel of street gangs in South Los Angeles. It was a revelation straight out of a gangsta rap song. “Drug trafficking flourished, and it’s all linked to conservative counter-revolutionary movements supported by the CIA and Reagan’s administration in Central America,” argues Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA). “That’s the nasty, ugly side of the legacy of the Reagan administration.” Gangs flourished in the ’80s as well, taking on a new dimension of the “ultra-violence” described in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange: It was the era of the drive-by shootings, murder by color, and deadly sneaker muggings. Lacking educational and job opportunities, young warriors took to the streets in a murderous game that pit minority against minority. Gang expert Alejandro Alonso says Reagan’s inner-city neglect, tracing back to his ’60s tenure as governor and his battles with the Black Panthers, and continuing during the cocaine influx under his presidency, contributed to Los Angeles’ reputation as the world’s gang capital. “Many believe that Reagan had a blind eye toward drug trafficking, and it was devastating,” says Alonso, a Ph.D. candidate at USC. Some minorities also think that Reagan was outright hostile to blacks, forging a new politics of shunning the poor and people of color, which resonated deeply in the vote-potent South. Hutchinson notes, in a recent op-ed piece, that “The Great Communicator” officially kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Neshoba, Mississippi, site of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” murders of three young civil rights activists. “I believe in state’s rights,” Reagan said to the mostly white crowd, in a land where “state’s rights” was once a euphemism for “pro-slavery.” “During the Reagan administration, we saw several signs of his hostility toward African Americans,” Hutchinson says. “He never met with the Congressional Black Caucus or the leadership of the NAACP. He pandered to the white South.” By the end of Reagan’s term and deep into that of his handpicked successor, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the ghettos of America were roiling with frustration. “There were major social spending cuts and the elimination of other programs,” Hutchinson says. “These were programs that benefited people of color, especially those in urban areas like Los Angeles.” It is also no stretch, he says, to connect Reagan’s urban policies to the conditions that fostered the Los Angeles riots four years after he left office, under Bush’s watch. “Bush Sr. was an extension of Ronald Reagan,” Hutchinson says. “So what you had was a situation where the cities were starving in terms of diminished funding for a range of programs. You had a rising unemployment rate, cutbacks in education, social services, and the rise of the homeless and addicted populations on the streets. You had this combustible element that contributed to the explosion of 1992. Police violence was only the trigger.” Still, Reagan is not loathed by all in the big cities. MAPA’s Lopez points out that Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1996, clearing the way for 3 million newcomers, a vast majority of them from Latin America, to attain legal status in the United States. And homeless advocate Ted Hayes says he doesn’t think the 40th president made homelessness much worse, adding, “I do believe he made our world safer.” His famous “Teflon coating” has brought out some rosy reflections this week, but for others who experienced the Reagan ’80s from urban America, his legacy is different: The cheese will stick. 06-10-04 News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards | Memorial | Migration | Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions Homicides | Maps | California Prisons | Contact

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