WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE LIKE EMINEM?:

The Cross of Christ for 8 Mile Road (Megan Malony, Spring 2003, Religion & Liberty)

As anyone who lives in the Detroit Metropolitan area knows, the divisions between city and suburbs along race and class lines are deep and seemingly intractable. These divisions are what make a Catholic high school in Detroit—at one of which I am a teacher—so different from a Catholic high school in the suburbs. Like Rabbit, the protagonist in the recently debuted movie 8 Mile, my students hail from the south—commonly considered the “wrong”—side of 8 Mile Road. With an incessant barrage of profane language and bleak images, 8 Mile mercilessly depicts the living conditions of those who come from the south side of 8 Mile Road. The film’s depiction penetrates so pointedly that even the most callous person cannot help but gain a feel for the apparent hopelessness festering through these circumstances. This hopeless feel includes tasting the lower class existence in a trailer park in Detroit as seasoned by a missing father, a dysfunctional mother, a little sister traumatized by exposure to domestic violence, a low-wage job in a plant for drop-outs and ex-cons, and a neighborhood blighted by the abandoned houses that shelter rapists and drug dealers.

Although virtually all of Rabbit’s life and work throughout the film provide counter-examples of virtuous, or even laudable, activity, 8 Mile can offer something constructive to kids who find themselves in similar circumstances, to kids for whom poverty and a dysfunctional family are all too familiar, to kids who need to be reminded that they have “got to formulate a plot fore they end up in jail or shot” (lyrics rapped by Rabbit in the movie). If we accept the task of helping these kids make the distinction between Rabbit’s genuine virtues and vices, we can make constructive use of 8 Mile’s wild popularity1 as a story that can help others caught in Rabbit’s kind of world to “formulate a plot,” a plot where they envision themselves as the successful, justly rewarded stewards of their own talents rather than the powerless victims of a manifestly unequal initial distribution of gifts or resources.

Inner-city kids—surrounded day in and day out by the urban blight that is as relentlessly dreary in real life as it was on the screen—need to see that they can achieve their dreams through hard work. For myriad reasons, some of these kids will be more drawn to Rabbit than to the more wholesome role models we would prefer them to choose. It is obvious to me, as a teacher in Detroit, that such hard core, but hardworking role models can answer a real need so long as such role models’ virtues are clearly discerned and separated from their vices. My students’ lives often do not resemble that of the characters in nice, G-rated family flicks. The city vista alone presents a harsh reality—much harsher than in the suburbs—with its overabundance of abandoned buildings and of liquor stores, its dearth of more wholesome enterprises, its higher crime rates, and its lower functioning schools. Where every day life is harsher, the properly discerned hardcore hero simply makes more sense. However, the hardworking quality is just as crucial as the hardcore. Rabbit refuses to accept failure as an option. Without hard work, failure becomes an option for these inner-city kids, along with ending up in jail or shot. As problematic as generalizations like these may be, it seems safe to say that generally the student work ethic in our city schools lags seriously behind the standard in the suburban schools.

While causes of the phenomenon of these differing work ethic standards may be debated, the phenomenon itself powerfully illustrates the crucial link between virtue and liberty. Every day I am confounded by the incredible gap between my own high school experience (I attended a school in Grosse Pointe, one of the prosperous suburbs of Detroit) and my students’ classroom behavior and expectations. Every day spent in the classroom with students who are used to such a different ratio of work-to-play than the one that prevailed in my high school is an object lesson in the necessary relationship between self-discipline, delayed gratification, and the freedom for a person to develop his or her potential and master his or her environment through something other than brute force or unrestrained emotion. Students who lack virtue—who lack the fortitude, courage, and industriousness that would allow them to resist the temptation to opt for whatever is simply easier, more comfortable, and more fun—lack personal freedom in the most painfully obvious sense.

Because it neglects to emphasize the relationship between virtue and the blessings of prosperity, the standard way in which the Christian faith and ethics are taught in schools like mine fails my students. The propensity to integrate Christianity with economics in no other way but through the prism of personal charity or social justice leaves an entire lesson untaught. Charity and justice are essential, but Detroit (or any other city for that matter) needs citizens who understand that their faith should motivate them to be productive: “‘Lord, you gave me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five more.’ ‘Well done, you good and faithful servant! You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.’” (Matt. 25:20). Many of my students write journal reflections about how they want to be wealthy and successful someday so they can help the people in their own communities—the poor, the homeless, and other kids without hope—whom they encounter every day. They have a spirit of charity and justice. What they lack is a good work ethic, a spirit of entrepreneurship toward academic competition and personal responsibility for developing their talents.

Post-Christian/post-moral societies like those of Europe, with their bloated bureacracies and over-regulation, at least implicate the question of whether liberty can long endure where virtue is not widely inculcated and recognized as a universal value. If standards of good behavior are not dictated by the broad society and then internalized by the citizenry then an ever more powerful and intrusive government is required to establish rules governing even minutiae and punishing every transgression. And, if the Welfare State relieves citizens of responsibility for themselves, we can't be surprised when people behave irresponsibly. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2003 8:09 AM