The King And The Assassination Of Chinatown

In Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto, Shelby argues that the urban poor’s refusal to work in legitimate jobs or engagement in criminal activity is justified as it does not violate the principle of reciprocity or neglect civic obligations. Shelby’s arguments focuses on determining whether or not deviant behavior is reasonable from the perspective of justice and reciprocity in society. This principle of reciprocity is derived from Rawl’s doctrines such as the basic structure of society and justice as fairness. In this paper, I will reconstruct Shelby’s argument that deviant behavior does not necessarily violate an individual’s civic obligations. I will argue that Shelby’s dichotomy of moral and civic obligations is arbitrarily defined

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.

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

(insert an attention grabber, such as a quote or question). In Erik Larson's “The Devil in the White City”, (a nonfiction novel that spans the years surrounding the building of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair) that recreates the lives of two real men, Daniel Burnham, the architect who builds the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and H. H. Holmes, the serial killer who exploits the fair to find his victims. Larson uses intense imagery, juxtaposition, and allusion to create pure and immoral tones between Daniel Burnham and H. H. Holmes. In the novel Larson uses intenses imagery to thoroughly illustrate the coexistence of good and evil.

Gangs of New York (2002), a bold and violent movie directed by Martin Scorsese takes us back to a New York without skyscrapers and modern-day lavishes that shows the rise of violent gang power and political corruption. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, the film features a personal struggle placed within the context of gang warfare between Nativists and immigrants, which is set in the larger context of the Draft Riots and the Civil War. It is a reconstructed historical narrative that uses interlocking events filled with gang violence and political corruption to show how the modern New York was born.

The Gangster Disciples are still an active group in the United States (Mallory, 2012). There are members of the group in over 35 states and 70 U.S. cities (Mallory, 2012). Nearly 20,000 members reside in the city of Chicago, where the FBI considers this group a “major organized crime group” (Mallory, 2012, p. 208). The Gangster Disciples were formed after the death of the group’s original leaders, David Barksdale (Mallory, 2012). A young man who was already a member of the group, Larry Hoover become the new leader of the Gangster Disciples because he was a person that Barksdale watched over (Mallory, 2012). After his death, the group split into the Black Disciples and the Gangster Disciples (Mallory, 2012). The group became prone to violence

The National Geographic film, A Portrait of a Killer, examines the types of stress that living beings can endure, and how it can thus affect the rest of their bodies. Severe chronic stress can lead even lead to the destruction of brain cells. Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a neurobiologist of Stanford University who has been researching stress for over thirty years. In order to study stress and its implications upon nonhumans, he went to Africa to study baboons. This species has only three hours of stress caused by eating, and the rest of their daily routine is consumed by about nine hours of free time. Much like Western society, baboons socially stress out one another, as they have social hierarchies to regulate how them interact with one another.

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

According to Engelberg (1986), Chin showed little to no remorse for his actions. In the interview he read from a list of points in Chinese characters, he said that prison was a small price to pay in exchange for improving the lives of one billion Chinese. He believed his native country greatly benefited from closer relations with the United States. Chin’s only motivation for committing espionage was to better U.S. and Chinese relations.

Picture Manhattan in 1860, a time before the city had been dolled up and gotten ready for the silver screen, before the glamour and allure took over. Amsterdam Vallan (DiCaprio) is a young Irish man that migrates to the USA at a young age. Amsterdam’s story takes place in Five Points District of New York, a filthy and dangerous part of the city before it was deleted form history. As a young boy Vallan witnessed his father’s murder at the hand of William Cutting or Bill the Butcher (Day-Lewis) during one of their many gang wars. As Amsterdam’s story progresses along side The Butcher they become inseparable, but Amsterdam had ulterior motive. Ultimately, Amsterdam attempts to betray his new found ally in order to avenge his father’s death.

In the film Thug Life in D.C was about the criminal justice system, neighbor that black inhabitants that give them no options in life, hope and no reason to care about what happening to them. The documentary follows a young man name Aundrey Burno who was awaits trial for attempted murder of a police officer and the murder of a teenager. Who talk about the southeast neighborhood he is from where he watching individuals get kill, sell drugs and rob. When his brother Kevin visit he would try to tell him to be better than me, don’t make the mistake that I have mad and “don’t die for no street because the street ain’t going to die for you.” However, his brother didn’t care for the reason that he started talking about his muscles and rapping about

“You can hire half the poor to kill the other half.” Boss Tweed spoke these words in reference to the Draft Riots. It shows that you can easily turn the poor against each other, if you bring money into the situation. Gangs of New York is about the separation of the Irish and the Natives, which eventually led into larger conflicts. In this film there are two important characters, Amsterdam Vallon and Boyle McGloin, who were both Irishmen in the Five Points. Amsterdam was the son of Priest Vallon and he became a positive Irish Leader who was looked up to by many. Boyle McGloin was an Irishmen who was a Dead Rabbit, but later joined Bill “The Butcher” Cutting and became a “Native”. The character

“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing

For this assignment I decided to read the book Code of the Street: decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city by Elijah Anderson. This book is about how inner city people live and try and survive by living with the code of the streets. The code of the streets is basically morals and values that these people have. Most of the time it is the way they need to act to survive. Continuing on within this book review I am going to discuss the main points and arguments that Anderson portrays within the book. The main points that the book has, goes along with the chapters. These points consist of Street and decent families, respect, drugs violence, street crime, decent daddy, the mating game, black inner city grandmother. Now within

Roman Polanski's Hollywood film Chinatown, directed in 1974, tells the story of Jake Gittes, a private investigator. The film focuses in on the dark reality of corruption behind power hungry men, making this a true neo-noir film. Chinatown reveals a depth narrative allowing the viewer to follow Gittes and uncover the secrets around the water dispute in California. I chose to bring focus to the significance of the male gaze and how this form of power can change and affect our views. The prominent female character in the film, Evelyn Mulwray, is a wealthy white woman. With her character comes active male attention and desire. Laura Mulvey's Theory of "The Gaze" supports this argument by studying the power and influence of a patriarchal