As part of École Converse, in collaboration with the Saint-Michel Youth Forum, Ahmed asked to shine the spotlight on inspiring people from the neighborhoods. “Young people need people who come from the same places as them and who have succeeded in their lives in order to inspire them,” he said.
Recognizing yourself in a person's career is important for young people, who are associated with several stereotypes, including school dropout, violence, and delinquency. It is therefore in this spirit that La Converse is launching the series Hood Heroes, which highlights people from neighborhoods who inspire young people through their daily lives. Hood Heroes presents people whose backgrounds are very distinct from each other, but all equally inspiring. Before the launch of this series, it was essential for the team at Converse To define what is Hood.
To do this, we went to interview young people in order to find out their definition.
What is the Hood ?
“When I hear this word, I associate it with gangs, with a bad place, with something dangerous,” replies Laurence, a Cégep d'Ahuntsic student who arrived in Montreal just a week ago. To mark the start of the school year, La Converse went to the Cégeps de Maisonneuve and Ahuntsic to meet the greatest users of the word. Hood : young people from Montreal. We asked about thirty students on this subject, and the same words were often the same.
Micro-trotter on the definition of hood and its image with Montreal youth
The Hood From today
Initially, the term” Hood ” is the derivative of the English word” Neighborhood ”, which means neighborhood. It therefore refers to a place where we live, where we have lived, where we are. “Community”, “disadvantaged neighborhood”, “dangerous” — these are the words that the 18-25 year olds we interviewed associate with Hood. Whether they live there or not, they have a fairly negative image of the term.
When they talk about communities living in the Hood, it is often the black and Arab communities that are designated. However, many do not fall into generalization and thus mainly refer to the grouping of a community in the same neighborhood. “Each community represents a neighborhood. When we talk about Montreal North, we think of Haitians; in Saint-Léonard, it's the Italians; in the Little Maghreb, the Arab community, etc.” explains Wilson, who lives in Rosemont and who does not see this with a bad eye.
“Underprivileged neighborhood” is the expression we hear on everyone's lips when discussing the word” Hood ”, and this expression is often accompanied by numerous adjectives referring to violence. “Ah, the Hood, it's violent, it's not a quiet place! ” says a young person from Cégep de Maisonneuve even before being asked the question directly.
The words “gang”, “dangerous” or even “violence” are assimilated to the term” Hood ” for most young Montrealers.
Other students from Hood denounce the negative connotation of the term. “Beyond this popular image, it is a place where everyone feels at ease and feels they belong to a community,” says Djamel, a student from Ahuntsic. “Above all, it is a place where everyone can put themselves in the shoes of the other, of their neighbor for example. There is a lot of empathy, more so than in other neighborhoods in Montreal,” adds Michael, a young man from Saint-Michel.
Whose fault is it?
“I am thinking of neighborhoods in cities in the United States — violent neighborhoods where there are murders and shootings all the time,” says Maria, a resident of Saint-Michel and a student at Cégep de Maisonneuve, before concluding: “It's mostly what I see in movies.”
But how does the simple abbreviation of the word” Neighborhood ” can it be associated with such a negative image?
Social media, movies, music, and the media — all contribute to this phenomenon. One of the first examples of this is the movie Boyz n the Hood, released in 1991, whose action takes place in South Central, an underprivileged neighborhood in Los Angeles. The term was then used numerous times by rappers in the 1990s and 2000s, including Tupac and Fifty Cent. In 2005, the latter released the song In My Hood, in which he talks about the difficult experiences he had in certain neighborhoods.
Then came the explosion of social networks and digital platforms (YouTube, Dailymotion, etc.). “Whether on television or in songs, we are presented with the same image of people who come from Hood. So we, who don't come from Hood, we think that this is the reality; while this is not necessarily the case”, summarizes a young person from Laval. Over time, the image of the “ghetto” and that of the Hood ended up getting mixed up, so much so that the last took the place of the first.
The word “ghetto” refers to a neighborhood where conditions are precarious and where marginalized communities live. After collecting the words of our students, we can say that this definition applies today to the word” Hood ”. The image associated with it, reinforced by time and the use made of it by new generations, is therefore negative. But the reality of Hood Does it correspond to what everyone is saying about it?
An image that makes you forget the meaning
“There is this pejorative side that we associate with Hood, but when you look at immigrant neighborhoods, the poorest neighborhoods, you see that there is a sense of belonging, loyalty and mutual support,” explained Fahim Haque, co-founder of the Pour le Hood association, to La Presse in December 2020. Two years later, that quote is still relevant. La Converse contacted Mr. Haque to discuss this issue with him.
For those who grew up in Côte-des-Neiges, it is important to pay attention to the image of Hood, which is already quite degraded. “When we talk about the neighborhoods of Montréal-Nord, NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, editor's note) or Saint-Michel, we will use the word”Hood”. On the other hand, when it comes to Westmount or Plateau-Mont-Royal, we will refer to them as “neighborhoods” or “boroughs”, notes Mr. Haque.
According to the co-founder of Pour le Hood, it is not necessarily a question of improving the image of the word, but of using it in contexts of success. “Whether on social networks or in music, the Hood is seen as a negative thing. When you succeed, you have to be proud to say that you come from Hood to set a good example for young people in the neighborhood. If NBA players like Chris Boucher or Luguentz Dort, coming from the Saint-Michel district, tell you about their Hood, the word already evokes something that is very opposed to guns, violence and drugs.”
It is to go beyond this image of Hood, which is often pejorative, that the series Hood Heroes comes to highlight people who have managed to build themselves despite the stereotypes that surround their Hood original. This series also aims to inspire young people from Hood.
So who are YOUR Hood Heroes? We want to meet them! Do you have ideas? , write to us at info@laconverse.com