Start at the End

To read about the first chapter of Code of the Street, scroll all the way down to the bottom of this screen, click on "older posts" and find the first entry written. Then read the entries in reverse.

This will allow you to read about the ideas and concepts introduced early in the book and build upon them. For example, the next entry discusses grandmothers and old heads. Grandmothers and old heads are discussed earlier in the blog.

Heroes of the Story

On April 30, 2008 Ron Littlepage observed in his column that

the lock-'em-up Florida Legislature is set to approve a budget that includes $305 million to build three new prisons.

At the same time, spending for public schools would be cut by $332 million.

Hello. It's cheaper to educate the state's children- which leads to a good job and a stable life- than it is to put a criminal behind bars.

Anderson makes a similar observation about the political powers-that-be.

While Code of the Street does not discuss political decisions or legislative budgets, it points out that the conditions in poor, inner-city neighborhoods will not change anytime soon. The lock-'em-up morality will continue to shape budgets built at local, state, and federal levels. Anderson points out that the people who realize this-- that nothing outside a poor community will be done to help--"are the saving grace of the community" (324).

These people, it turns out, are the grandmothers and old heads. They "focus on the idea of individual responsibility" (324). They tend to blame the victim because "not to blame the victim would be to make it too easy for those victims of inner-city problems. And it would give the decent people no way of distinguishing themselves from the street people" (324).

The old heads and grandmothers seem to have a limited view of the world-- they don't see the things that Ron Littlepage sees, for example. And yet, whether one explains poverty and hopelessness through structural racism or through spiritual and moral weakness, we are all left with the exact same conditions: poverty and hopelessness.

For this reason, Anderson lays his bets with the grandmothers and the old heads as opposed to the powers-that-be.

Because the well-paying manufacturing jobs are unlikely to return, [the elders'] orientation of making do with what one has is in some ways the height of responsibility. By telling people to be responsible, they are affirming that something can be done, that there is hope for the future. For that they are to be admired. In fact, they, as well as the other "decent" people in this book, can be considered the heroes of this story.

The Conversion of a Role Model

The code of the street is overwhelming neighborhoods because "the old heads are present in the community, but they no longer form the critical mass they once did" (324).

Fewer older men mentor younger men and as a result, "rather than feeling connected to the wider society and emulating it, [young men] suspect and distrust anyone associated with mainstream institutions" (297).

The role model gaining precedence in inner-city neighborhoods carries a gun, "demand[s] that others 'make way' for him," and is feared (299-300).

In this last chapter of Code of the Street, Anderson tells the story of Robert, a young man who used to be a street role model, was convicted as a juvenile, and sent to prison. Upon release, Robert made a successful bid to change.

As a teen, Robert was an enforcer for a drug dealer. He had a name on the street and was respected. He decided to make a conscious transition as a businessman. He moved from "'underground ghetto-nomics to above-ground economics'"-- opening a hot dog stand and a fruit stand on both sides of the same street (296).

This chapter tells the story of Robert's successful transition. For when he changes, his neighborhood changes with him. As a businessman, he begins to intervene in the spread of the drug trade because it impedes his newly opened deli business.

Because he knows the drug dealers and their families, he is able to talk with them and negotiate new boundaries for their trade. They no longer sell on one street corner where Robert's deli is.

Before the standoff between Rob and the drug dealers, many community residents, particularly the decent people, stayed away. But since he has won-- at least for the time being-- they have returned. The whole situation is public. Rob has in effect retaken the corner, and his accomplishment affects not just that corner but the whole neighborhood as well. (309-310)

John Turner's Story

This chapter can be read as a stand-alone kernel of the entire book. It is like a time-elapsed video of a door closing. The chapter traces the descent of John Turner, an African-American young man who Elijah Anderson befriends.

Except for four pages which conclude the chapter, it is all a transcription of John Turner's voice. He tells his story of trying to become a "decent" man as opposed to a man living within the criminal element, selling drugs. Every so often, Anderson will describe, from his point-of-view, a scene. For example, when John goes to court, Anderson provides a description of the proceedings.

Anderson helps John Turner by finding him a job, an attorney, giving him cash, and helping make sense of his decisions over long dinners and lunches.

Anderson is clear-eyed in his explanation of his relationship to John Turner. Hindsight allows him to see how he "was finally able to sever our relationship."

I had continued to help John even after it had become apparent that he was using me, because I wanted to see how he responded to various situations. At this point, however, I felt I had developed a rather complete picture of him; furthermore, I was beginning to feel uneasy about our association. (285)

The chapter is a complete picture of John Turner. The situations that Anderson places him in (as small tests of Anderson's theories of social behaviors) are opportunities. Anderson wants to see what Turner does when offered an opportunity to change; to become "decent."

So while Turner takes advantage of wads of cash Anderson gives him, it seems that Anderson takes advantage of Turner-- in order to write this seventh chapter.

The opportunities and offers of jobs, legal assistance and cash do not work:

In John's case, when the two worlds collided, the street prevailed, in part because John lacked the personal resources to negotiate the occupational structure available to him. At the point when the wider system became receptive to him in the form of a well-paying job, it was too late. The draw of the street was too powerful, and he was overcome by its force. (286)

Anderson tried to intervene, but it was too late. His observation, at the end of the chapter is that:

it is extremely important, in particular, to give maturing boys (and girls) job training and education in the practicalities of operating in the world of work. This training must then be rewarded with real job opportunities. (289)

The Black Inner-City Grandmother in Transition

Her role may be compared to a lifeboat. If she is pressed into service, it is because the ship is sinking. And, to many residents, the inner-city ghetto community does seem to be sinking into ever more entrenched poverty and to be increasinly undermined by the realities of the street culture as the mainstream culture slips further away. (211)

In inner-city neighborhoods, "on the average, a woman becomes a grandmother at about the age of thirty-seven; some do so at thirty-three or thirty-four..." (214). Grandmothers are young because they and their children, give birth at relatively young ages.

This chapter describes the role that grandmothers play in young women's lives and especially the lives of children who might otherwise enter the foster care system.

Grandmothers of young women who become addicted to crack, for example, will step in and raise their grandchildren. A decent grandmother is one who takes responsibility for the family when it starts to fall apart.

Anderson writes about the grandmother in relation to what he calls "the crack culture":

The difference between what is happening in poor black urban communities now and what happened in the past is accounted for by the economic and social changes that have swept urban America....All this has implications for the way poor black families operate....Probably the most worrisome development of all is the emergence and proliferation of what I would call the crack culture, which is to be distinguished from the ordinary underground economy and drug culture. Crack is special and leaves in its wake great numbers of casualties. Seen only indirectly by most other people, victims of crack in inner-city poor communities suffer acutely. (233-35)

The decent grandmother takes responsibility for the abandoned children who are casualties. She is "standing firmly against the counterculture...emphasizing a strong commitment to decency and propriety" (235-6).

However, in this chapter, Anderson makes a clear distinction between the influence of a grandmother on her daughter and grandchildren and the influence she might have on male family members. He writes of grandmothers:

As they age, grandmothers become less able to control volatile adolescents, especially as the street lures them. Although generally loved and respected even when disobeyed, they may come to seem irrelevant, particularly to their grandsons (236).

Michael's Death

On p.194-204, Code of the Street offers the story of Charles Thomas who lost his son, Michael, to street violence.

He was everything that a dad could expect out of a kid. He was the type of kid that any dad would have been proud of--six feet one, sports star...happy as a counselor of Catholic kids and public schoolchildren, extremely popular young fellow with black and white students who attended Germantown High School.

On October 18, 1974, he was on his way to a get-together with the track team, a party more or less, and he was caught by violence-- the Greene Street gang-- and was asked, "What gang are you from?"....You could say you weren't in no gang, but that didn't mean anything....So one of them held a gun on Mike, and one stabbed 'im. And he died on the street. (194-5)

Mr. Thomas, a federal police officer, is still dealing with the effects of his loss-- 34 years later. His family fell apart. His wife started "walkin' up and down the street with [Mike's] clothes on....His mother had a total breakdown" (203).

Thirty-one years later to the day, on October 18, 2005, Chris Aligada, resident of Orange Park, saw Galante Romar Phillips robbing his co-worker outside of Builders First Source on Roosevelt Boulevard. A recent Florida Times-Union story explains that Aligada was safe in his vehicle and decided to intervene in the robbery; trying to defend his friend. He was was shot and killed.

"I don't know when we're going to wake up and not be in a nightmare," said Linda Aligada, who traveled from her home in California to tell jurors about her son.

"It's been so hard, every day," she said, then began sobbing and settled on a hall bench outside the courtroom, her family trying to comfort her.

Elijah Anderson posits that daily violence has taken hold in the inner city because

Today's young people who reside in pockets of concentrated ghetto poverty, even the most decent, often have less experience with stable communities and families than their own parents or grandparents did. The old days of the manufacturing economy are more than a generation away. The more successful families and individuals have left the inner city for the wider community....As poverty becomes more deeply entrenched, as drugs proliferate, and as the level of violence rises, the community grows demoralized. (205)

Gun violence is all over Jacksonville, not only the inner city. Demoralized communities are on the Westside, Southside, and Arlington as well.

The Decent Daddy

The fifth chapter of Code of the Street is titled "Decent Daddy" because it is about one of the types of people in the black community who "have been important role models ever since the days of slavery." (180)

The decent daddy is a certain kind of man, with certain responsibilities and privileges: to work, to support his family, to rule his household, to protect his daughters, and to raise his sons to be like him, as well as to encourage other young people to demonstrate these qualities, too. (180)

The decent daddy represents the dominant values in the U.S. while living, perhaps, in a neighborhood where those values are challenged daily.

Being proper and good enough-- that is, assimilating the values of the wider, dominant system-- would, he was convinced, lead to acceptance in that system. A critical mass of the members of the black community supported this view, which was reinforced by institutions such as the church. (181)

Notice the verb tense in the above two sentences. Elijah Anderson thinks decent daddies living in the inner city are no longer making up "a critical mass."

Today the decent daddy's role...is being challenged....he tries hard to uphold the dominant society's standards, but his efforts are often not readily apparent to that society, which is liable to confuse him with the street element." (182)

One of the most important features of Code of the Street are the voices of people living in the inner city. Here are the words of Don Moses, a gypsy taxi driver who fills the role of a decent daddy:

My personal relationship withmost of the kids growing up [in my neighborhood] is very good for the simple reason there's something about children when they're little and you've treated them right all the way up-- right meaning you took the time to take them places, took the time to maybe take them to the gym, too the time to just say a few words to them if you saw them do something wrong. (183)

Is this mentoring? If so, then Jacksonville might incorporate Anderson's concept of the Decent Daddy into its discussions of mentoring. Already, the discussions are happening.

On April 10, the Jacksonville Journey started recommending the recruitment and training of 1,500 mentors each year for three years. Two other recommendations address the expansion of mentoring, according to a Florida Times-Union article.

The recommendations are targeted to Jacksonville's inner-city-- "downtown, Springfield, Eastside and all areas east of Interstate 95 between the St. Johns and Trout rivers."

African-American children are the majority in that area, many living without male role models. Should the recruitment of mentors emphasize African-American males?