Analysis Of The Street By Ann Petry

Toni Cade Bambara addresses how knowledge is the means by which one can escape out of poverty in her story The Lesson. In her story she identifies with race, economic inequality, and literary epiphany during the early 1970’s. In this story children of African American progeny come face to face with their own poverty and reality. This realism of society’s social standard was made known to them on a sunny afternoon field trip to a toy store on Fifth Avenue. Through the use of an African American protagonist Miss Moore and antagonist Sylvia who later becomes the sub protagonist and White society the antagonist “the lesson” was ironically taught. Sylvia belong to a lower economic class, which affects her views of herself within highlights the

The stereotypes in the story, makes it difficult for the readers to conclude the race of each character. People assume that the African American character would be illiterate and uneducated and the white character to be well-educated. During the time period of the story African Americans did not have access to a decent education; making it harder for them to learn just the basics. Whites had access to good education, making it easy to believe the white character is more educated. It is also believed that a person that is well educated will have a better lifestyle when they are older. A well-educated person will have a better job, paying more, and have a better opportunity to afford the means of a luxurious lifestyle. An under educated person will most likely live in poverty, struggle for their basic needs, or live in a declining neighborhood. Behavior is a harder stereo type to use to distinguish a race. Many assume that whites have an entitled attitude toward life. Whites had access to a good education and jobs, they had a “I’m better than you” attitude. On the other hand, many think African Americans were upset because of how easy it was for whites to have better access to the basic necessities such as education and housing.

The local schools were a source of communal pride and were priceless to African-American families when poverty and segregation limited severely the life chances of the pupils. A major part

Paul Watt and Kevin Stenson, The Street: It’s a bit dodgy around there’ safety, danger, ethnicity and young people’s uses of public spaces, chapter 15 in Geographies of youth, youth cultures: Cool places The aim of this chapter is to question young people’s feelings and experiences when moving around a town in the South East of England. The town, named Thamestown by the authors. The area in which Thamestown is location, is described as a predominantly white, wealthy middle class area of the south east of England. Between June 1994 and July 1995 Watt, Stenson and other researchers investigated, how an ethnically mixed group of young people use public spaces in terms of danger and safety. Several key points arise in this chapter. Racial segregation

The greatest problem that the society faces in the inner city black community is the interpersonal violence and aggression created by the troubled youth in their society. By simply living in this kind of violent, innocent people are affected by crimes such as burglaries, carnapping and drug related incident and shootings.

The education system in Bayonne was also far from ideal, and Gaines shows the injustices Black children face versus their white peers. The students are forced to get down on their knees to use the benches as desks or do their work in their laps (36). The students are so incredibly disadvantaged that they do not even have desks to write on to do their work, whereas the White children presumably have a well furnished school. This clear distinction between children’s’ learning environments shows just how bad the racism in Bayonne truly was. They are merely innocent children and they are already treated differently from their white peers. Gaines describes Grant’s class to show readers the circumstances of the Black community in comparison to the White school district. Additionally, the school year, according to Grant is only,” five months, and when the children are not needed in the field” (36). Even though slavery had been abolished almost a century prior, the Black children were still deprived of a proper education due to the field work that they were forced to complete. Grant also has to attempt to ration his supplies, because the school board does not give him an adequate amount for the year and at one point tells a

Understanding that the poverty of black Americans did not just stay within the home is a big step in understanding urban poverty. Urban poverty reached outside the home, into the parks, schools and playgrounds. With poverties reach being that extensive, there was something other than adversity causing this. Louis Gates wrote an article about this called “Black America and The Class Divide.” (Jr.)

As told through different people’s stories and Elijah’s perspective, they explain that because of their state in class experiencing poverty is the reason for their current lifestyle. These families are further prone to facing illness, depression, job loss, death, criminal victimization or even eviction. The parents who face the hard economic times can make them retributive or uneven, trying to demand their needs backed with punishments, insults or threats. The results are mainly due to the loss of jobs. Industries that these families have held jobs to have shut down and relocated out of the inner city. However, it’s difficult for them to acquire these jobs since many require advanced education or don’t pay enough causing a high unemployment rate, especially when these African Americans are dependent on welfare and trapped in the inner-city ghettos. There’s also been a significant increase in numbers of single women in poverty alone, mainly as single mothers. The feminization of poverty has affected African-American women more than any other group. Because of this, it can be related to numerous changes in contemporary America. Increases in unwanted births, separations, and divorces have forced growing numbers of women to lead destitute households. Within these divorces, fathers are avoiding child support coupled with reduction in welfare support have forced the women-headed households to

Toni Cade Bambara’s "The Lesson" revolves around a young black girl’s struggle to come to terms with the role that economic injustice, and the larger social injustice that it constitutes, plays in her life. Sylvia, the story’s protagonist, initially is reluctant to acknowledge that she is a victim of poverty. Far from being oblivious of the disparity between the rich and the poor, however, one might say that on some subconscious level, she is in fact aware of the inequity that permeates society and which contributes to her inexorably disadvantaged economic situation. That she relates poverty to shame—"But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be

Throughout the article “The Code of the Streets,” Elijah Anderson explains the differences between “decent” and “street” people that can be applied to the approaches of social control, labeling, and social conflict theories when talking about the violence among inner cities due to cultural adaptations.

In this paper, I plan to first describe the “Code of the Street” which is a term coined and a book written by Elijah Anderson. I would also summarize and describe two journal articles that test Anderson’s idea of the “Code of the Street” for a more definite explanation. I will tell how the two articles that I have chosen relates to some of the concepts that Anderson talked about in the book. I will then define general strain theory and social learning or differential association theory. Lastly, I will explain how general strain theory and social learning theory or differential association theory explain some of the behaviors that were seen by the individuals in the book published by Anderson. I will point out some of the individual’s behavior and demonstrate whether it may lead to crime or whether the behavior was learned in any way.

In the book, Bad Boys, Ann Arnett Ferguson goes on a three-year journey through Rosa Parks Elementary School to observe and research why it is that mostly black males are ending up in jail and are unsalvageable from such a young age. She interviews and observes daily interactions with the eleven and twelve year old students that have been labeled “at risk” by their teachers and peers. She wants to research how it is being in school when all of the educators have already labeled them as “unsalvagable, at risk, and bound for jail”. These kids pretty much act in the way that their teachers treat them. They get into trouble every single day and most of the times these boys provoke it because

As stated above, section one is about how to fail and how to prevent failing. In this section it introduced us to a teacher, named Elizabeth Dozier, who became a principal in some of the poorest schools in Chicago. The book also introduced us to Nadine Burke Harris, who is a pediatrician and opened a clinic in the poorest part of San Francisco. Each of these women took an interest in the children and families that are affected by poverty. Dozier became the principal of Fenger High School, and the first thing she did when she arrived was removing almost all the teachers. She brought in young and ambitious teachers, who she thought would make a difference in the school. One of the best decisions she made while she was at Fenger was to enforce a zero tolerance policy for violence, because gangs were a huge problem in the community and the school. Dozier sent twenty five of her most troubled students to an intensive mentoring program. The book then goes on

Toni Cade Bambara addresses how knowledge is the means by which one can escape out of poverty in her story The Lesson. In her story she identifies with race, economic inequality, and literary epiphany during the early 1970’s. In this story children of African American progeny come face to face with their own poverty and reality. This realism of society’s social standard was made known to them on a sunny afternoon field trip to a toy store on Fifth Avenue. Through the use of an African American protagonist Miss Moore and antagonist Sylvia who later becomes the sub protagonist and White society the antagonist “the lesson” was ironically taught.

I the article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley pp 1). What goes on in the American ghetto is not as glamorous as Hollywood makes it out to be now, this film does a great job at depicting what life in the ghetto for black teens is really like. The ghettos in America are full of broken culture that is left behind from centuries of oppression by the white man. Most teens like those in the movie never make it out of their neighborhoods alive. Thousands of kids die every years from gang on gang violence, damaging all chances of them escaping the ghetto and making something of themselves. Death, gangs, and drugs is the more common way that young people are left with to deal with a life of poverty and survival that seems to have no escape.