South Bronx Research Paper

In Randol Contreras’s The Stickup Kids, Contreras explores the South Bronx through the lens of a sociologist. He describes the lives of the stickup kids such as Gus, Pablo, and other teenagers living in the South Bronx. Contreras uses the research method of ethnography to provide a sociological analysis of the drug trade and business in the South Bronx. His research shows how social factors impact the lives of these stickup kids to become active in the drug trade. Through his field notes and interviews with the stickup kids, Contreras examines in depth of how social factors such as, socialization, social class, the thrill of crime, deviance, and culture affect the individual.

In the movie “Gangs of New York”, we see a city changed and reshaped through cultural influence of feuding individuals with different ideas. The movie is about a young man, Amsterdam Vance, who seeks to avenge his father, who was brutally murder in a gang dispute, against his adversary Bill the Butcher. On the surface the movie seems simple enough but in the back ground we see a cultural shift as immigrants come into America. Also we see political influences and material possession such as clothing and other belongings set people apart and define the social status of the

Phillipe Bourgois explores the struggle Puerto Rican residents of inner city Harlem face in surviving both economically and socially as they use selling crack as a vessel to find meaning and value in their lives. His ethnographic approach to understanding the culture and economy of the inner city in Spanish Harlem reveals the deeply entrenched values and ideologies in dealing drugs. Bourgois found that rather than simply an economic means of survival, selling crack had an impact upon dealers’ lives and identities. Far from simply a job, the crack trade was a way to gain respect and take a stand against the menial entry level jobs the residents of the inner city found offered to them – often with no opportunities to advance their careers, with racism rampant and employers found to be abusive and discriminatory. Compared to these conditions, partaking in the drug trade was seen to be an effective way to build a career and pursue the American Dream.

In Brooklyn the year of 1968. Three sisters, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are living with Big Ma and Pa. Then one day they are told they are flying to Oakland to visit someone who had left them for several years, their mother, Cecile. They fly hours to see their mother and do not expect what they expected to see for many reasons and truly have one crazy summer. They begin doing things they never thought they would and are making changes not only for the country, but for themselves as well. They join a summer program after Cecile doesn’t cook breakfast for them and then the changes begin.

Sarah Maslin Nir is a reporter who specializes in documenting nightlife, and culture in New York City. Maslin Nir has revisited the Jackson Heights-Corona corridor to write an accurate description of the activities that occur in the neighborhood. Maslin Nir has visited bars in the neighborhood where sex-crimes are hidden by dances that are legal and can be obtained for small sums of money. Maslin Nir documents that as the crimes are occur there is a thriving and diverse Latin American community present with “normal”, family run businesses that do not deviate from the cultural expectations in the Latino/a diaspora including bakeries, clothing stores, and restaurants these are places that one will find packed with Latin American immigrant families

As an assignment for a public radio station I volunteered at, my partner and I were assigned to get sound bites. The Ralph’s in Downtown L.A. was featuring Homegirl Industries mango salsa in their deli section (Hirsch, 2009). At the event, most of the news outlets there focused on getting quotes from mayor Villaraigosa. This made it easier for my partner and I to get quotes from young adults that were part of Homeboy Industries. Through this assignment, I learned about the non-profit group and its goal to transform the lives of former gang members. This paper focuses on the non-profit organization Homeboy Industries and its contributions to the cultural region. The beginning focuses on the brief history of gang activity in Los Angeles, and

“The Republic of East L.A. Stories” captures the heartbreaking experiences Mexican-American’s were forced to endure. Escaping poverty, alcohol abuse, drug use, and gang violence was an everyday struggle for many families during this time. African American and Latino gangs were initially created as a response to white racism. They were restricted as to what areas they could live in and where constantly harassed. As their populations increased, so did white gangs, in order to take control of their “territory”. African Americans and Latinos had no choice but to protect their families by fighting back. As time went on, the violence only continued. The Civil Rights Movement led many gang members to join organizations like the Black Panther Party, but the government quickly responded by breaking them up and soon enough, street gangs quickly returned. The violence escalated, alcohol,

Compton took its most critical hit when deindustrialization struck. Manufactures followed other industries in seeking to lower their tax burden, open new markets, and increase their plant size. With more than one-third of Compton’s population employed in manufacturing, the city broke its social and economic threshold. The backlash stemmed from an increase in gang and drug related activities. The aging middle-class was increasingly outnumbered by a troubled youth. Children, who were once encouraged by their parents’ success, were now hanging their heads. By 1970 the Bloods and the Crips were created right outside of Compton. The “crack explosion” of the 1980’s only intensified crime, violence, and murder rates. From middle-class to neighborhood terror, the prosperity relinquished by African Americans in Compton had promptly crumbled right in front of everyone’s eyes. The issues created during this

Bourgois’ ethnography delved deep into the everyday lives of a pocket of society situated in El Barrio (also commonly referred to as East Harlem). Through permanently situating himself and his family within the illicit underground culture, he developed a string of firm friendships with drug dealers, crack addicts, and individuals emotionally defeated through the corrupt employment chain of New York. Bourgois adopted a relatively humanistic anthropological approach to gathering fieldwork, being granted permission to freely record, photograph and observe the inner-workings of life amongst ‘The Game Room’ (an illegal hand-to-hand centre for crack distribution) and its patrons. A humanistic approach is defined by anthropologist John T. Omohundro as “striving to understand, engage with, and sometimes celebrate, defend, evaluate, or protect another way of life rather than to explain it” (2008, p.414). Such actions can be noted within Bourgois’ ethnography, as he seeks to shine light upon a culture largely shunned and ignored by its surrounding locale.

In Search of Respect is an ethnography written by Philippe Bourgois that explores the street culture of drugs in El Barrio, New York. After spending three years actively observing and participating in street life, Bourgois wrote about his own experiences in the crack house and the stories of his primary subjects. The book follows the story of Ray, the man who owned the crack house where Bourgois studied. Caesar, a crack seller and his manager Primo, who Bourgois became good friends with. Also, he wrote about Candy, one of the few female crack sellers who experienced the shift in gender roles on the streets. Through stories of violent childhoods, overcrowded housing projects, and struggling to make ends meet, Bourgois attempts to explain the street culture. Bourgois argued that drugs are not the cause of the poverty and marginalization in El Barrio, rather drugs are simply the effect of the structurally racist government failing the people of El Barrio. This ethnography is unique as it shows a much deep understanding of the hardships faced by the people. It looks past the obvious issues of drugs and looks into how history and inequality lead to the formation of El Barrio.

The collected data will be analyzed using thematic data analysis. The data analysis process will be to organize, code, categorize, and interpret. Each interview transcript, observation field note, and police or school record will be uploaded into Atlas.ti in order to store and manage the data, and later will be used to code and categorize. Organizing and memoing the data are significant steps because they encompass reading through, sorting, familiarizing with the material, making initial codes, and, more generally, comprehending the collected data in order to create a “detailed description of the case” (Creswell 2013, p. 101). The description will be thorough, in-depth, and will contextualize the case in the unique setting of the South Bronx, thereby serving as a validation strategy (Alley 2016). The description serves to depict the complexity of the case itself and allows the data to be analyzed sequentially based on the actual progression of the case. The next step is to identify emerging patterns, themes, similarities, and differences using categorical aggregation (Creswell, 2013). The themes and patterns will be directly interpreted to “develop naturalistic generalizations of what was “learned”” (Creswell 2013, p. 190). Direct interpretation is a unique method for the case study approach because it focuses on the information made explicit through the research and does not “generalize beyond the case” (p. 101). Ultimately, the objective is to distill

In the heart of this vibrant inner city times square where success will always live on, eternity

they took Williams to “cocaine bars, after hour spots, discos, restaurants, crack houses, on street corners, in their homes and at family gatherings and parties.” These areas are of high employment and fading resources, especially for young people. Illegal opportunities were emerging considerably

In this case the powder keg can be attributed to a continued systemic marginalization of the South Bronx minority community as well as the negative impacts of economic policy implemented to combat New York’s fiscal problems. The deterioration of the South Bronx community led by development projects like the Cross Bronx expressway, forced wealthier middle class families out of the community essentially ghettoizing the South Bronx. The loss of important revenue for the local government meant a major overhaul of the services offered to the community. These communities were further ravaged by budget cuts caused by New York City’s financial situation. The budget cuts ultimately led to a decrease in law enforcement and a rise in crimes and gangs. Within this spiral of decay and desperation the 1977 New York power outage was an outlet for pent up frustration felt within the community at the government’s negligence of their needs, and like the thunder strike that caused it, the outage would electrify the hip-hop world. Opportunistic DJ’s throughout the South Bronx took advantage of the disorder and headed to the stores to retrieve Technics 1200 turntables and Gemini 626 mixers.1 The equipment represented luxuries available to only a few successful DJ’s in the community, however, its availability to a greater audience following the

King of Rock n Roll, Elvis Presley, had a song in 1969 that took a drastic turn in theme from many of his other tunes relating to love, dancing and rock n roll. This song tells a tragic story which has very realistic connotations to the social problems of crime and poverty that were not only applicable to 1960s society but to our 21st century society. In this paper I will examine that song, titled “In the Ghetto”, highlight how the themes of the song relate to social disorganization, and further examine how the main character’s neighborhood takes the characteristics of a socially disorganized ecological environment perfectly.