Review Of In Search Of Respect: Selling Crack In El Barrios

Mary Romero’s article explained the criminality and the images that Latino/a youth have before knowing the individual. We see a lot of crimes and murders that were made by officers towards people of color, specifically, in this case, Latino/a. In the Latinx community, we have a lot of disadvantages. Not only based on the color of our skin but also the fact that majority of Latinos in this country are immigrants. According to Romero, Latino youth was always seen and described as criminals since WWII.

A primary reason which provoked Dude to get involved in drug trading was the ludicrous amount of money he could make from such a young age. At age fourteen Dude was selling dope, making $1500 a week, this led to irresponsible and hedonistic spending. This hedonistic spending gave meaning to Dude’s life, pleasures such as food, females, and the mall, were all major focuses of his life. Dude recalls spending $400 a week on overpriced rent and $50 on food even when he wasn’t hungry (Bergmann 2008:109); this impulsive spending may suggest a shaping of an unstable and turbulent economic life and poor financial responsibility for Dude in future

The writings and pictures in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives offer a vivid portrayal of the poor living conditions of New York's tenement houses and illustrated the necessity for progressive reform in the late 1800s. A vicious cycle held many of the tenants in its grasps through a combination of the landlords' rent prices and a lack of sustainable incomes. To Riis, the landowners looked like “tyrants that sweeten the cup of bitterness with their treacherous poison” (166). In the destitute areas, crime grew rampant, and the poor packed themselves into the tenements. Disease and illness worked adverse to any improvement of living conditions.

Holly Barker Mrs. Blomme English 11 15 December 2014 Walter Dean Myers Walter Dean Myers was an author born in the late nineteen thirties who wrote stories for troubled kids and teens. Walter Dean Myers wrote about the lives of struggling or troubled teens and what it was like growing up in their shoes, because at one point he was in their shoes.

How well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.

Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, a book by University of California, Professor Victor Rios, is set in the backdrop of Oakland, California. This book examines the very difficult lives of young Latino and African American boys who are caught up in the vicious cycle of delinquency in a legal system that restricts their chances of becoming successful. Rios studies the lives of boys growing up in a difficult background. He notes that the criminal justice system is very prevalent throughout many aspects of their daily activities.

On top of this, he argues that the white middle class are unrelenting with their methods of depriving black advancement in American society. Knowledge of this incites many blacks to occupy dead-end jobs, or to settle for mediocrity in the face of adversity. A large number of black males in America find themselves forced to take jobs that offer no security, or socioeconomic growth. He also contends that many blacks are not very literate and therefore left behind in cultural revolutions like the information age. For twelve months between 1962 and 1963, Liebow and a group of researchers studied the behavior of a group of young black men who lived near and frequently hung around a street corner in a poor black neighborhood in downtown Washington, D.C. Liebow’s participant observation revealed the numerous obstacles facing black men on a day-to-day basis, including the structural and individual levels of racial discrimination propagated by whites in society.

Kids in the most disadvantaged neighborhood, with low family resources, bad schools, and neighborhoods characterized by violence are the ones who are being punished unfairly and are not given second chances. This is because of the discrimination and the bias of the criminal justice system against poor African-American communities, which represent a concentrated disadvantage in that case. Moreover it affirms the theory that the poor are more likely to get to prison because there is a bias in arrest such as the neighborhood social class that affects the presence of the police and their arrests. In that case 6th street is considered a neighborhood that represents communities that are disadvantaged, and therefore the presence of police is greater than necessary. Instead of having the resources from outside to ameliorate the conditions of the neighborhood and improve schools or academic institutions, the efforts and resources are being invested in the war against crimes, but without giving an alternative solution for their

In the book “Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” written by Dr. Elijah Anderson, the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University, brings to light the different issues that are regular in the city today. The street codes have a huge influence on the activities and conduct of numerous young people in the inner city or “hood”. In the hood, Anderson demonstrates that there are numerous social disasters like high rates of unemployment, and teen pregnancy. The principle power contributing to these street codes, according to Anderson, is racism; though that kind of behavior is accelerated by the existing economic and political commands in the city (Anderson 34). The “Code of the Street”

Being part of the different subgroups prevents them from getting everything they need and want. They are burdened by lack of income and jobs. Without these essential things many of them will not be able to take care of themselves nor their family. Crenshaw presents us with many examples of why colored women are more apt to being the victim of a violent

In Chicago, and all over the nation, the effects of gang activity have been displayed, specifically in low income and poverty torn communities. Poverty is measured depending on a family’s annual income and determining if the amount falls below the poverty threshold for the family’s size. If the annual income does fall below the threshold, then the family and every individual in it is considered to be in poverty. Gang activity is more visible in the areas specifically in major cities similar to Chicago where poverty is a commonality in communities. although gangs might add structure in order where the government fails to do so in the projects and and similar low income communities the negative effects such as the distribution of drugs, violence,

In Chapter 12 of Readings for Sociology, Garth Massey included and piece titled “The Code of the Streets,” written by Elijah Anderson. Anderson describes both a subculture and a counterculture found in inner-city neighborhoods in America. Anderson discusses “decent families,” and “street families,” he differentiates the two in in doing so he describes the so called “Code of the Streets.” This code is an exemplifies, norms, deviance, socialization, and the ideas of subcultures and countercultures.

In Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates we get to see the author’s struggle of obtaining freedom from society even in millennial times because of his skin color. We learn through the letter written for his son that although times have changed many people still believe in the old ideas of race and hierarchy. Coates explains the different approaches he has to parenting compared to those of his father. His father use corporal punishment on Coates to keep him out of trouble or when he disobeyed the house rules, implemented by both of his parents, however, Coates decided violence is not the answer to solving problems and educating his children. He rather teach his son how to be a successful young black male even with all the stigma that

Victor Rios, author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Youths grew up in Oakland, California. During his childhood there he had an experience that made him return to Oakland to question and study the current issues that the youth’s their face. At the age of 14 he had joined a gang, he did this mostly for protection from other gangs and threats in the area, and during his time in the gang he met another kid named “smiley,” nicknamed because of his knack to smile during every situation, good or bad. Rios would become good friends with him, and even steal a car for him to use as a home at one point when he was kicked out of his own home. Although this would eventually lead to one of his first encounters with bad police officers, as he was severely beaten for what he had done.

INTRODUCTION This essay will address how gender roles are discussed in Philippe Bourgois ethnographic book, ‘In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio’. This will be pursued by exploring one of the key characters in this text. This essay will primarily centre on the role of women based of the stories of Candy. The other main characters in this text are of male gender.