Sudhir Venkatesh Does Ali G, For Research Purposes

SUDHIR Venkatesh, a sociology student, has a question for residents of the Chicago housing projects. Question: “How does it feel to be black and poor?”

Mr. Venkatesh was “reared in the comfortable suburbs of Southern California by Indian parents”, notes the NY Times. He wants to know what it is to be in the Chicago Massive? Mr Venkatesh is Ali G with a clipboard.

His suggested answers: “very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good.” Actual answers: unprintable.

The paper reports that Venkatesh befriended a gang leader and for the next decade lived a “curious insider-outsider life”, all written up in his book “Gang Leader for a Day”.

Mr. Venkatesh styles himself a “rogue sociologist”. He now teaches at Colombia University.

Notes the paper: “When a rival gang sweeps by, guns blazing, he dodges bullets and helps drag a gang lieutenant to safety. When local squatters mete out street justice to a crackhead who has beaten a woman in the projects, he gets a boot in.”

He gets a boot in? Then: “Smitten, he never quite gets over his initial attraction, even when J. T. [gang leader] double-crosses him, ingeniously, by encouraging him to carry out a detailed study of the housing project’s economy, whose results he uses to tighten his hold on the residents.”

He kicks someone. He adds to the residents’ misery. But don’t worry - it’s all for research purposes. Now if poor blacks want to know how it feels to be poor and black they can read about it in a book…

Anorak

Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Anorak In New York Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink