Code Of The Street Summary

In the book, Gang Leader for a Day, a rogue sociologist passionately dives into the lives of one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects in an attempt to develop an insight as to how the urban impoverished lived. Throughout the text it becomes clear that a conflict paradigm is being reflected. A conflict society is based on social inequality, in which some individuals benefit and thrive more than others, which tends to lead to conflict and thus change. This is evident both in the housing projects where a gang known as the “Black Kings” take over and also in the surrounding neighborhoods where the more elite citizens, including persons from the authors university, shy away from associating with the nearby poor black nearby public, thus

Chapter 1, “Intimate Apartheid”, introduces one to the group of homeless people living on Edgewater Blvd. It dives into the racialized micro-geography of homeless encampments and how segregation plays a key role within the lumpen. However, the authors do reveal moments where the racial hierarchy is trumped by the “moral economy” of street life.

Culture in urban communities, also referred to as inner-cities, are growing increasingly violent. In the article, The Code of the Streets by Elijah Anderson, he begins to take an in-depth look at the root of the evil. He deduces that economic factors, parenting and the troublesome environments largely influence the violent norms within this culture.

The theme of the book, We Beat the Streets, spins around collaboration and determination. The three characters, Sampson, Rameck, and George experienced childhood in a unpleasant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. Even at a young age they were confronted with risks. Some of these risks included prisons, gangs, and drugs. They needed to choose at a young age to stick together and make it out of the ruined neighborhood they grew up in.

The first example of society behavior is used through the story of a late thirties white man name Benhard Goetz who shoots four black youths on a subway cart in New York. This anecdote is significant to the novel because it takes place in the mid-80s where society is pointed by drugs, and violent brutality wreaks havoc through the city of New York. Leaving his Manhattan apartment, Goetz hops on the subway and notices four African American youths “horsing around,” and “acting rowdy.” According to the story, Troy Canty, one of the boys, asked Goetz for five dollars. Out of instinct James another one of the boys, “gestured toward a suspicious-looking bulge in his pocket, as if he had a gun in there.”

Chapters 11 and 12 in “Not in My Neighborhood” deal with Edmonson Village, a quaint, Catholic and mainly white section of Baltimore. Nothing was out of place in Edmonson Village, with TV’s running schedules and businesses thriving. But the families in the houses would stay put, being the only owners most of the time. This would mean the entire generation borne from the times of segregation did not take kindly to African Americans trying to settle in. See, black people were being vastly mistreated. Living in slums and segregated from sanitary and adequate living. But after the Civil Rights Act is passed and separation of blacks and whites is outlawed, African Americans begin earning enough to live in better quality homes, and looking to more upscale parts of

The Elijah Anderson’s article, “Code of the Streets” is a perfect illustration for cultural arguments because it involves environments that are susceptible to learning a criminal culture; even up to a point of promoting that type of criminal behavior as “normal”. It also has links to Differential Association and Social Learning theories of crime

South Street Philadelphia’s sidewalk’s safety is not determined by the strangers shuffling in and out of the area, but instead by the local residents and community members who live there. Based on my personal observations, the biggest asset to South Street in regard to safety and overall quality of the area are the locals who reside there. This idea of community investment relating to the safety of a street is presented in Jane Jacob’s novel The Death and Life of Great American Cities and is one of her ideas that is accurately displayed throughout South Street. By examining the various ways people interact in different areas and shops on South Street, I was able to evaluate what aspects of her writing proved to be beneficial to the overall safety of the area.

The greatest problem that the society faces in the inner city black community is the interpersonal violence and aggression created by the troubled youth in their society. By simply living in this kind of violent, innocent people are affected by crimes such as burglaries, carnapping and drug related incident and shootings.

In this paper, I plan to first describe the “Code of the Street” which is a term coined and a book written by Elijah Anderson. I would also summarize and describe two journal articles that test Anderson’s idea of the “Code of the Street” for a more definite explanation. I will tell how the two articles that I have chosen relates to some of the concepts that Anderson talked about in the book. I will then define general strain theory and social learning or differential association theory. Lastly, I will explain how general strain theory and social learning theory or differential association theory explain some of the behaviors that were seen by the individuals in the book published by Anderson. I will point out some of the individual’s behavior and demonstrate whether it may lead to crime or whether the behavior was learned in any way.

Segregation proved to be powerful in the city as to this day the South Side still shows remnants of the “Black Belt.” Figure [2] below shows racial demographics of a recent census of Chicago and the resemblance to the map of covenants in figure [1] can clearly be seen. Chicago’s role as a home for it’s residents proved positive for some but problematic for most. A system that always favored the wealthy and white was true for the city and while some areas were strong enough to fight this trend, as a whole Chicago was

As Anderson does a walking tour of Philadelphia, he sees the very divergent aspects of the city by observing the people, places and tension around him. Walking the readers through a very poor area of the city, to Center City and through an upper-middle-class area, he attempys to answer the question of how race is lived and considered in Philadelphia. Although he is most interested in the Cosmopolitan Canopies of the city, he shows that there are parts of the city that are not as diverse including the poor sections and upper-middle-class

The terms Bronzeville and Black Metropolis can be used interchangeably to signify the interdependence between the two as an emblematic space for blacks that attempted to construct a sustainable all black utopia in Chicago. The Black Metropolis began as a black community instituted from forced segregation that eventually cultivated the imagined neighborhood of Bronzeville, where black Chicagoans asserted their collective agency to legitimize their race for complete integration. The geographic imaginary of Bronzeville relied heavily on a unified [all black] community, but intr-racial antipathies stemming from cultural and socioeconomic class differences undermined true racial solidarity leaving a neighborhood and faction of the black population dispossessed.

All the people are well dressed and bear the markings of the wealthier echelons of society. Perhaps when the painter decided to capture the street such habitants of society just happened to be going about their days. Or perhaps on this street, real or imagined, one would usually only find this type of social class. However, either way in reality due to the public works reconstruction it would have been more common for certain districts and neighborhoods to become more hegemonic looking and distinct in relation to one another. Haussmann’s simplifications caused more segregation of class and function. Different parts of the city increasingly formed distinctive characters of dress, function, and wealth. Another motive for the reconstruction was to break up some of the poor and insurrectionary neighborhoods. Many were displaced and concentrated into a quarter on the periphery of the city, which became a close community tied by common resentments and shared experiences. This hegemony illustrates how class and function influence the physical evolution certain parts of cities that perpetuate the differences and distinctive forms that are even present

After the Industrial Revolution, the idea of family and home went through a significant transformation. Many businesses went from being very family-oriented and personal to anonymous and profit-oriented. Compounded with issues of institutional racism, poverty, and poor education, there was a growing controversy with the use of streets in the city. Jennifer Tilton, writer of Cruising Down the Boulevard discusses the rhetorical and institutional harms towards youth being in public and private property while Ulf Hannerz analyzes different subsets of Urban Studies and how they can be used to think about societal circumstances in the city. Privatization of urban spaces is both a predecessor and result of alienation of misunderstood persons. Concerned outsiders often use harmful language that redirects and distracts otherwise productive efforts to fix a neighborhood.