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William Upski Wimsatt
interviewed by Anthony Qaiyum on 5 November, 1995
"The goal is not to live in the ghetto, the goal is to become a full human being."
William Wimsatt is a writer who hitchhiked across the country, city to city, with little in his wallet. He came back with both his money and real stories about American Urban life.
Tripod: This summer I happened to pick up a copy of "In These Times." On the back I saw an article you had written from the road concerning your "Bet With America." Can you explain this bet to me?
Upski: Well, Newt Gingrich made a Contract with America which basically involves him putting a bunch of other peoples' asses on the line with no personal risk to himself. So I thought I'd make a bet with America where I put my own ass on the line to get people to get over some of their fears about America.
So, I hitchhiked around the country and went to all these neighborhoods that people told me I shouldn't go to, or I'd get killed or something. I just walked around -- walked around the projects and stuff. When I was hitchhiking I got in everyone's car who wanted to pick me up. The deal was, if I get killed I lose the bet. If I win the bet, then hopefully people will start to examine where they got some of their fears from. Because I was sleeping on the sidewalk in South Central and North Philly, and nothing ever happened to me.
Tripod: When I saw the article, it said you had 15 more cities to go. Did you have any problems in the rest of the cities?
Upski: No. It was so easy that I got bored. I was like, "All right, here I am in Oakland. I guess I've got to stay here all night, so that when I do a book reading tomorrow, or when people interview me, it can be known that, I spent the night in the ghetto!" [laughs] The only thing that happened to me, was getting two diaries stolen from me by white girls. [laughing] That was the crime. One of them was from the suburbs, and the other was a junkie from San Francisco. It was just so easy.
People's fears of crime in America are based on poor statistical analysis of risk. They need to take a statistics class. People will see a murder on the news and be like, "Oh, it's so scary out there!" But that's one murder out of how many million people? I mean the whole idea that you're going to get killed because you're white is so ludicrous.
Tripod: Do you think this reflects poorly on the state of the media in this country? It seems like they are often a vehicle for spreading the fears.
Upski: Yes, there are definite biases in the media, but what's even more pernicious about it is that it's the consensus. If you talk to people in the ghetto, most of them will tell you the same thing. Part of that is because they're, a lot of times, inescapably wrapped up in it. Like, their cousin the drug dealer comes by the house, or something.
What's really bad about this, is that it's created a society where it's normal for people who come from my background to avoid most of the city, and half of the people who live there. And that's just normal. If you can take two steps back from it -- it's a really sick way to live. When you don't see others as human beings like yourself, where you can live with them, and they can live with you, then you're diminishing your own humanity. And there's all kinds of underlying costs. The goal is not to live in the ghetto, the goal is to become a full human being -- and so few people are in this country.
Tripod: Just for the record -- you said, "my background." How would you describe your background?
Upski: Spoiled, upper middle-class, white boy.
Tripod: Okay. In your book "Bomb the Suburbs," you talk about your good experience at a Farrakhan rally despite being one of the few white people there. In the wake of the Million Man March, I think many whites are fearful of Farrakhan and anyone who follows him...
Upski: Why?
Tripod: From your experience, what would you say to these people?
Upski: "What are you afraid of? They haven't so much as laid a finger on anybody. What's the basis of the fear?" The basis of the fear is that white America has built this incredible fake empire. This castle that we cannot justify. I don't deserve being born into the top one percent of wealth in the world because my dad makes $70,000 a year. I didn't earn that -- that's affirmative action. That's the biggest affirmative action program -- inheritance. And white people cry when they try to give black people a little tiny bit of that in return.
The metaphor I use is that we're like a biker with the wind at our backs. We've had the wind at our backs so long that if the bike is turned around even for a few seconds and we have to bike into a headwind for a minute we're like, "Oh my god, this is so terrible" -- without putting our feet in the shoes of the people who've been biking into the headwind the whole time.
Obviously, it doesn't divide neatly between black and white. I'm not some kind of racial essentialist. Everybody fits in a different place in the spectrum.
Tripod: You write a lot about your experiences writing graffiti. Why do you think graffiti is important?
Upski: For whoever is reading this?
Tripod: Yeah.
Upski: I don't. It's just another medium. And people tend to ascribe so many good or bad characteristics to graffiti. It's merely a medium. It depends where it's done, who's doing it, what it says, who's paying for it in the case of billboard graffiti or pollution graffiti, who it's harming exactly. I think the graffiti you see on walls is the smallest form of graffiti in our society. Nevermind the graffiti on nature and human lives. You've got to be suspicious when people are blaming people at the bottom, who have the least power to create any situation. I don't defend graffiti, but it's reflection of people going out for empty, cheap fame. That's an accepted thing to do in our society. Graffiti is merely urban youths' way of doing the same thing.
It's the same with welfare. Corporate welfare is greater -- I don't know -- by like a factor of ten or something like that. No one looks at that. Why are we having a debate about poor people on welfare in this country when, through tax breaks -- In 1950, corporations were paying like a third of the takes, and now they're paying like ten percent. Who's getting the welfare? I think we should have welfare for the suburbanites. I think it's cheaper to give them an aid check, than to allow the havoc they're wreaking on our civilization through cars, and social segregation, and the financial ravaging of the cities, which leads to so many other problems. And don't think they're not going to come out to the suburbs. It's the old game of running away from the problem makes it worse. And of course I use the term suburbs loosely -- mainly as a metaphor.
Tripod: Can you explain that metaphor a bit?
Upski: Anyone who tries to solve a problem by running away from it. The problem is dangerous cities and bad schools. Well, they weren't dangerous and bad until everybody with money left, so actually the suburbanites are the ones who made them dangerous and bad. I don't mean to tar all suburbanites the same. It's the developers. It's the people who left first. And of course, most inner-ring suburbs now find themselves in the same position as the cities they ran away from. They will continue increasingly to experience most of the same problems.
I'm not saying cities against suburbanites in any literal sense. I think that city people, suburbanites who are getting screwed, and the country people, who are getting screwed by the outward expansion of suburbia, need to get together and put some restriction on these freeloading developers.
Tripod: To finish up, most of the people who use the Internet are still white, upper-middle class males...
Upski: Oh. Well I have a lot in common with them.
Tripod: [laughs] Well, if you had one thing, from your experience, to say to them, what would it be?
Upski: Hmm. Well, it's a group that I have one foot in -- no, two feet in and half of my heart out of. And I think that the biggest myth is that getting up some of our power and learning about other people is a sacrifice. It's something that people do out of guilt, and people only look at what they're giving up. But for me, there was so much missing in my white upper-middle class life, that all the sacrifices I've made and the dangers I've gone through have been far outweighed by what I've learned and the people that I've met. I think I'm a lot more sane. Living in such a violently segregated society, our minds are segregated in ways that we take for granted -- that we just capitulate to. White people not developing full and honest relationships with black people is like men not developing full and honest relationships with women. It's that big a gap in our lives. Next time you have some uncomfortable racial thoughts, or get mad, or upset, or confused at black people, ask yourself if it's not a reflection of things you don't like about yourself.
Is that trite?
To order a copy of "Bomb the Suburbs" from anywhere in the world, send $7 to:
The Subway and Elevated Press Co.
PO Box 377653
Chicago, IL 60637
USA
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