The mass media and many other people have attempted to define the problems of inner city ghettos in terms of American racism and brutal police tactics; however, according to Sociologist Victor Rios in his book Punished Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, the inner city ghettos exist in many of American’s largest cities and are a vicious web of concentrated poverty, disconnected youth, and a culture of gang violence. Adding to these incorrigible conditions, are the punitive social controls used by the police, politicians, school officials, mass media, businesses, and families that prioritize racial profiling and violent control. The reality of the inner city culture is extremely genuine with an arrangement of norms, values and habits …show more content…
Even though these parents try to approach normal family life, their lives are usually disorganized with many frustrations including low paying jobs and complicated relationships. Many of these parents fall into the trap of criminalizing their own children by the method of using the authorities “courtesy stigma” when their children went out or acted negatively in any way as a means of controlling their youth by giving the police or probation officers a heads up. Some of the boys in Rios’ ethnological study of 40 Black and Latino boys reported not having a trusting relationship with their parents because their perceptions of being watched, managed and treated as criminals began when they were at a young age and worsened after their first offense whether it was a minor infraction or not. One minor misdemeanor quickly became a criminal record for these boys because their names were placed in a criminal gang database used for tracking them; consequently, legal authorities could impose tougher policing and harsher sentencing (Rios 2011: …show more content…
Ultimately, Rios counted twenty-two occasions in his study where the formal social control, the police, were called to resolve minor community problems and the police only intervened in one of these instances; otherwise they just took the information and left, exemplifying the under-policing that exists in these inner city communities (2011:54). Consequently, these young men lived in a vicious cycle of having very little informal social control and a reality of harassment, profiling, discrimination, and punishment from the formal social control of police, probation officers, community centers, and school personnel. Furthermore, the role of masculinity is an important element of survival to these young men as they try to navigate through the world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized. Rios found that the boys were consistently told by various adults, including probation officers and other criminal justice personnel to “man up”. This resulted in hypermasculinity which, according to Britannica.com is the exaggeration of stereotypical male behavior such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality. This behavior was taught, learned, and greatly influenced these young men throughout their youth
This essay, largely drawn from Elijah Anderson's forthcoming book, Code of the Street, offers an ethnographic representation of the workings of the code of the street in the context of the trying socioeconomic situation in which the inner-city black community finds itself, as jobs have become ever more scarce, public assistance has increasingly disappeared, and frustration has been building for many. The material presented here was gathered through many visits to various inner-city families and neighborhood settings, including carry-outs, laundromats, taverns, playgrounds, and street corners. In these settings, Anderson conducted indepth interviews with adolescent boys and girls, young men (some incarcerated, some not), older men, teenage mothers,
The Moral Economy of Violence in the US Inner City Chicago Journals Field Research conducted in a predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood located inside Philadelphia’s northern section captures true life events. Interviews, statistics, and moral compasses are used to examine The Moral Economy of Violence in the inner city. Bringing forth how an individual’s Scio-economic environment influences morality and decision making through the eyes of Philadelphia’s inhabitants. Bureau of Justice Assistance (1994) Understanding Community Policing A Frame work for
He chose to focus on drug dealing world because it ultimately manifested as the pathos of the US inner city, an articulated response to poverty and segregation. The pathos of the inner city was embodied by the dealers and the addicts that Bourgois chose to focus on, thus enabling him to gain insight into processes that lay at the heart of East Harlem’s street culture. (11) Bourgois has essentially presented an alternative critical understanding of the U.S inner city by formulating an argument that focuses on the lives and conversations of crack dealers in order to expose and emphasise the interaction between structural oppression and individual action. He achieved this by considering cultural and structural forces, both within the manstream
John Q. Wilson (1931-2012) was a political, social scientist, and an author who was a tocquevillian, which is of, or pertaining to Alexis de Tocqueville, or characteristic of his democratic ideals. He confronted many questions during his acclaimed career as an academe were relevant to the conservation of the organizations of religion, family, and community that he judged to be crucial to a democratic way of life. Wilson was never a bandwagoner he was one to stand aside from the crowd he was known for going against the grain. Wilson said that institutions were oppressive to individuals, women, and minority groups and thus needed either to be reformed or suppressed (Piereson, 2012). Wilson was professor emeritus in government at Harvard University
We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way
The author based his investigation on criminologists, ethnographers and anthropologists criteria to argument his outcomes which add a solid framework to the entire project. I think the book suggests that there is a lot to do and it’s time to change unsuccessful methods. Despite of some critics, I think “Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys” is an obligatory reading to all people who really want to understand the whys and hows of most of young men who are labeled as criminals and live in marginal neighborhoods. This material also has the merit of describing the way these youths have to coexist with a lot of disadvantages to make a change and get a positive progress in their
Rios records several instances where the boys in the study encounter negative interactions with individuals involved in the criminal justice system like the officers that patrol the streets, the parole officers that criticize and label the boys as deviants, and the juvenile system that threaten and harass the boys. Such
Urban ethnography, a systematic method used to examine culture developing in everyday life, let Rios discern the difficult aspects, unfortunate circumstances, and social relations of the young men’s lives. Victor Rios observed, shadowed, and interviewed delinquent inner-city youth males to answer his question of the effect of the punishment on the boys. As Rio studied the life of these males he discovered a youth control complex where punishment was present in everyday social life, and the behavior of these marginalized young men were criminalized, pointing them to incarceration, disgrace, and exclusion. Racialization, harassment, punishment, surveillance, and detention by all adult figures were all pieces of the pattern of the social order in Oakland that shaped the way the young men created worldviews about themselves and the deeply rooted social stances in their community. Rios found social incapacitation present upon these marginalized males.
Anderson begins the section by explaining that there are two separate cultures in inner-city neighborhoods. The first are the “decent” this group is defined by commitment to “middle-class values,” (101). However, they are not mainstream in that they
Two parent households in minorities’ communities are rare. Most of America’s children are raised by one parent. There are many direct issues to family impact and juvenile delinquency. One of family structures with delinquency is the single-parent families and their broken homes. The mass media shows negative coverage of poor minorities’ crime communities.
Police Brutality and a Hard Life Choice Books cannot save human life; However, they can change hearts and minds of a human. ' All American Boys,' by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is one of those books. ‘All American Boys’ is a young adult novel that looks at a specific instance of police brutality and racial profiling from the perspectives of two high school classmates. For those who have not experienced racial profiling or do not know someone has, it may seem to be nothing more than a mere inconvenience. However, for characters in the novel, racial profiling changes their perspective.
The boys sought for this experiment were already delinquent, and as noted this was a case study, these were unique individuals and as such the findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of the United States, California or even Oakland. Another fact that must be noted is that the author utilized snowball sampling, the author went to community organizations and asked to be connected to ‘at risk’ kids, and when he established communication with some of the young men, he asked them to refer him to other youths in similar situations. The author also makes note of the fact that his own experiences as a child may have had a bias on his
Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.
During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe 's Jews. KEY FACTS Ghettos were set up to segregate Jews from the rest of the population. They were designed to be temporary; some lasted only a few days or weeks, others for several years.
An occurrence observed by the population of Los Angeles, California conveys the existence of racism and police brutality. According to The Polls-Trends: Racial Differences in Attitudes Toward the Police, “…three quarters of blacks, but only 38 percent of whites, continued to view police brutality as a common occurrence” (Tuch and Weitzer