• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1368 0

many African American men who are high school dropouts, Harold has never been “locked up.”20 He had one close call. He was in a fast-food restaurant with a friend who had some marijuana. The police arrived. The officers were convinced Harold was involved in drug possession and sales. A bystander called his mom. She ran to the restaurant, and Harold was released to her. Reflecting on his old neighborhood, he says, “It is really bad down there; seventy percent of my friends are dead or in jail. It is crazy.” Harold feels that Blacks are treated differently from whites, particularly by the police. He recounts a racial profiling incident from his own life. Then he tells me, resignedly, that he does not “dwell on” this kind of experience.

Looking to the future, Harold says that by age twenty-five, he hopes to be married and expects to have children. He dreams of his own business, possibly a corner grocery store. He wants to earn enough money to be able to retire at thirty-five.

SECTION 3. RECURRING THEMES AND PERSISTENT PATTERNS OF DIFFERENCE IN DAILY LIFE

As the portraits make clear, all the young adults followed life paths that were fully embedded in a larger social context; no one grew into adulthood in isolation. The findings that emerged in the follow-up study regarding class differences in everyday life are highly consistent with those of other studies. Many of the patterns I found in the youths’ life paths are echoed in national data.21 As Table D1 in Appendix D shows, the young adults from middle-class families were more likely to graduate from high school, apply to four-year colleges, gain admission, and enroll. This scenario fits three of the middle-class youths; the fourth (Melanie) accomplished each step but decided not to enroll in the four-year school. (Her community college effort also fizzled.) The parents and kids in the working-class and poor families had college aspirations, but these goals were generally not realized. Siblings tended to follow similar paths (see Table D2). Although parents’ situations changed over the decade since the original research (see Table D3), none of the families experienced a dramatic shift in life circumstances. Still, differences between the working-class and poor families were more noticeable by the time the youth had become adolescents. When the kids were in elementary school, economic differences between these families were apparent in the presence (or absence) of food shortages, transportation options, and neighborhood amenities. But, in terms of the specific aspects of the children’s daily lives that were the focus of the original study, it was difficult to discern key differences. By adolescence, there were cleavages in the youths’ high school experiences. Working-class families were better able to avoid unattractive schools than were poor families. Wendy’s grandfather, for example, paid her tuition at a Catholic school. Also, the youth from the poor families entered the labor market earlier and in a more sustained fashion than did the working-class youth.

Below, I review the most important patterns of difference found across all three social classes, grouped by specific areas of the kids’ lives: high schools; networks, work, and resources; organized activities; neighborhoods and violence; and awareness of their own and others’ social class position.

High Schools

Most of the youth stayed in the same general geographic area as they grew into young adulthood. The differences between the schools they attended continued and, in some instances, appeared to increase.

The neighborhood school for most of the working-class and poor kids was Lower Richmond High School, a large, older, urban public high school that at the time had metal detectors, issues with drugs, fights, and poor attendance. About one-half of the student body came from low-income families. In the follow-up interviews, all of the families whose children were slated to attend Lower Richmond deemed it inferior or, as one parent put it, a “bad school.” Its status as a neighborhood school further diminished Lower