The Centrality of Gender, Sexuality, Race, Sociability and Commercialized Leisure in Slumming by Chad Heap

The purpose for writing this essay is to demonstrate how gentrification is shaping the Culture and identity for Halrmites from the socio-economic perspective. Harlem has changed dramatically over the last two decades due to improvement in housing stock and outside investments into the community. However, in my essay, I articulated my ideas toward the economic aspect of gentrification because gentrification is driven by class, not race. My audience would be the lower income Harlem residents who have been displaced or on the verge of displacement because their wealth is not contributing to the economy. The people who have been preserving the cultural identity of Harlem for decades now forced to leave the community. I tried my best to connect a broader audience by explaining the deteriorated housing condition of Harlem and how it led to gentrification. This will help reader

Everyone wants to be a part of the streets but not everyone has the heart, dedication, or strength to live the lifestyle. There is a law of ethics when running around in the streets. There are rules that one always has to follow in order to survive. There is no love when dealing with those that follow the code, ones heart has to be made coal because anything can happen and anything goes. Out there in the streets you are a family that continuously looks out for each other and let nothing separate the bond that you have on the streets. In this paper I will discuss what the code of the street is and what is consist of, also residential segregation and how it hold those in the streets back from achieving success.

Throughout this paper I will be discussing the issue of homelessness and how it is steadily becoming a more serious problem as time progresses. I will discuss issues that surround homelessness such as the NIMBY, not in my backyard, issue and how it is causing the homeless to not receive the help that they need. This is an issue that needs to change, but due to NIMBYism, it is very difficult create such change.

Homelessness is a social problem that is prevalent around the world. Homelessness has existed for much of "civilized" human history. In the last two centuries, homelessness and changed and expanded. Sociologists who study and research homelessness have argued over its formal definition for decades, though for some, the definition of homelessness seems self explanatory and obvious. The paper will examine homelessness, particularly as a sociological issue, or a social issue seen from a sociological perspective. The paper will additionally reference sociological theory as a means of explanation for homelessness, such its causes, the demographics/populations, and other prominent known characteristics of homeless people. There are individuals and groups who choose to be, from a normative societal perspective, homeless, but for a great deal of the homeless population, it can be a treacherous and tragic lifestyle that is a result of a distinct set of social, societal, and individual factors.

Anderson notes that two groups coexist simultaneously in the inner-cities which he labels as the “decent” and the “streets.” Although both groups suffer economic difficulties, they differ in values mainly instilled through parenting and the home environment. The decent group seeks to adopt mainstream middle-class values, such as a love,

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

The development of the suburbs has been appointed to be the result of the “white flight” from the inner cities. In the 1950’s black Americans moved northward to cities to find industrial jobs that were within walking distance. Discrimination in cities worsened, crime rates increased and educational facilities’ credentials weakened or gained bad reputations. The upper-class families left the cities and mass migrated to the suburbs to escape the increasing crime rates and worsening conditions. This movement was later termed the “white flight”. Every American wanted to begin building the “ideal family”: two parents, two children and maybe a pet or two. This newly invented middle-class prospered as

Many of the families in Kozol’s book live in central Manhattan in drug-infested buildings, falling apart from the brick in, whereas in earlier periods of New York’s history were fine hotels. One of such buildings is the Martinique Hotel, where Kozol afforded much of his time to the families that dwelled there, as referenced in his book. Those who inhabit the Martinique Hotel are symbolically affected by New York’s renown valor in their conscious, further placing them in the class as “less-fortunate” within a city that does not afford them many opportunities. Many homeless neighborhoods find themselves victim to substandard medical and education facilities. The families, as Kozol describes were shipped by the masses to communities that already suffer from the city’s highest rates of HIV, drug addiction, pediatric asthma and psychiatric illness (Kozol 11). There is the idea, as Kozol says, that the homes that these families find themselves in are “closed systems”, “where rules of normal law and normal governance did not apply” (Kozol 8), whereas the people are detached from the rest of society, confined to the community all in itself. The families he works with are sectioned off by society because they live in poor areas and confined within a capitalistic economy, have nowhere to go. In a way, Kozol describes these areas as the capital of homeless people, surrounded by a city built for the wealthy, by

For far too long, African Americans have been neglected the rights to decent and fair housing. In “In Darkness and Confusion,” William Jones expresses his discontentment with the almost cruel living conditions of the ghettos in Harlem as he stated, “It ain’t a fit place to live, though” (Petry 261). William was especially motivated to move to a better home to protect his wife, Pink’s, ailing health. William and Pink searched high and low for more decent places to live – however, they simply could not afford decent. Though marketed to those with lower than average incomes, the ‘better’ housing for blacks were still deficient and extremely pricy. In

After the week she spended with her coworkers, she had gained information on how each one of them lives, “Gail is sharing a room in a well-known downtown flophouse for $250 a week, Claude…two room apartment he shares with his girlfriend and two other and unknown person, Annette…lives with her mother, a postal clerk, Marianne, … , and her boyfriend are paying $170 a week for a one-person trailer, Billy, … , lives in a trailer he owns, paying only $400-a-month lot free, Andy, lives on his dry-docked boat, Tina, … , and her husband are paying $60 a night for a room in the Days Inn, Joan, … , lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina’s motel room.”(pg. 20-21). The survey that was conducted by the author through her personal experience demonstrated that her coworkers try to split rent in order to pay less and try to save money for the next payment for rent.

In his book Elijah Anderson tries to describe how life is, living in a black poor community in an American town known as Inner-city. In this area everyone is struggling financially and seem distant from the rest of America. The main social class in this town is the “decent” and the “street” families as the community has labeled them. The labeling by the local is as a result of social contest between the inhabitants. The line between a decent and street family is usually very thin, it’s based on a family evaluation of itself labeling itself decent and the other street. The irony is that families bearing a street label may value itself as decent and still valuing other families’ street. However, this labels form the basis of understanding inner-city community lifestyle. The community has many of the white society middle class values but they know the values don’t hold water in the street. They say it does not provide the attitude of a person who can take care of themselves in the street.

Roberts organizes his book based on certain themes, such as culture and day-to-day life, paying special attention to the pre- and post-War periods so as to emphasize the evolution of the slum throughout the period of time covered. He divides it into chapters that cover specific aspects of society and day-to-day life in order to accentuate certain points. His writing style is a unique and well-chosen blend of personal reminiscences and historical research. Much of his writing, including his own experiences, is presented in a very matter-of-fact way. The impact this style has on the reader is great because he is able to state such horrors so bluntly, as only someone who was truly there can. Occasionally, however, his emotions break through, as is evident in his explanation of his parents' separation and subsequent death on page 238. Lastly, the work is scholarly and concise, as Roberts chooses to get straight to the point and elaborate on it rather than saying the same thing in many different ways.

Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.

Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums, predicts the direction in which the world’s cities are headed, and how the changes in living conditions are only going to deteriorate if certain trends continue. The title of his book explains Davis’s vision for the future of cities as he feels there is enough evidence pointing towards an exponential rise in slum populations across the world’s largest cities. Additionally, he expresses his opinion on many issues regarding the rapid rise in developing cities’ slum populations, although he offers very one-sided arguments geared towards those who feel the current system is causing more problems rather than improving current conditions. This causes Davis to overlook the problems of slums as resolvable through different modes of assistance such as international aid programs. Instead, he views aid programs as the root cause of imbalance created during industrialization. Throughout the book, Davis presents information that confirms his preconceptions towards the slums. Therefore, all the evidence that is presented by him portrays confirmation bias as Davis fails to mention anything about the resolution of the problem of the growing number of slums and instead sees this problem as unavoidable. Particularly, Davis’ writing, although intended for the general population, is more geared towards critics who have similar ideas. Instead of providing the means through which the economy could be improved and the problem of slums could be resolved, it is

The theoretical conversation Ralph explores in the book is isolation. He draws ideas from Wacqaunt and Wilson’s The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City. In the article, the central argument is there is an interrelated set of characteristics that corresponds to social-structural problems in the inner city and the process has triggered “hyper-ghettoization.” The evidences Wacquant and Wilson present are mainly statistical and anthropology data. The article explains many of the residents are isolated due to the social-structural, economic, and political issues that surround them. The residents being moved by