Transcript The Brothers - Cati Coe, PhD

The Hallway Hangers
• Stoney: pizza stores and then prison for robbery
• Steve: in and out of prison, construction, and
drug dealing
• Shorty: in and out of prison and construction
• Chris: cocaine dealer and in and out prison for
theft
• Boo-Boo: car wash, army, medical discharge,
unemployment
• Slick: marines, jail, cocaine dealer, construction
• Jinks: drug dealer, steady job in warehouse
• Frankie: spiritual metamorphosis, unemployed
The Brothers in relation to their Parents:
Have they moved up?
• Super in drug trade, father general laborer in
construction
• Mokey unemployed, father custodian, mother part-time
in daycare center
• James unemployed, mother nurse’s aide, father in zipper
and button factory
• Craig credit collector, mother takes care of elderly, father
janitor
• Juan autobody, stepfather and mother unemployed
• Mike in post office (union), mother takes care of elderly,
uncle blue-collar worker
• Derek in airport, mother assembles computer parts,
father a sailor
Brothers’ Educational Credentials
• All have HS diplomas (better education
credentials than their parents).
• For-profit computer school: James
• Some college: Mokey, Mike, Super, Juan
• College degree: Craig (1 out of 7)
Structural Issues for African-American men in the
Workplace: Has it changed?
• p. 214
• The median earnings for white men with only a
high school education were $36,539 in 2001,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But the
median earnings for blacks (men and women)
with only a high school education were $24,669,
almost $12,000 a year less or about one-third
less than the earnings of white men.
• In July 2008, the unemployment rate for black
high school graduates was 9.4 percent (higher
than for white male high school dropouts!), while
for white male high school graduates the rate
was 5.4 percent. Similar disparities exist for
those with college educations.
Structural Factors that explain where
the HHs and Brothers ended up
• Restructuring of the industrial
US economy: from
manufacturing to service
industries (low pay, unstable,
informal economy, nonunionized, no benefits, rare
raises or advancement)
• High unemployment rate for
high school dropouts (35% in
1990)
• Where jobs are located
Issues of Cultural Capital
for the Brothers
• Brothers’ lack of networks that HHs have,
p. 169
• Because young black inner-city men, seen
as dangerous or unreliable
• Service economy requires “a good
attitude” and ease of social interaction with
white middle-class bosses and clientele
• Being professional = sounding white
(James, p. 231)
The Underground/Illegal Economy rather
than the Factory Life of Willis’s “Lads”
• p. 172
• Crack capitalism in the 1980s:
more addiction, more
violence, more money than
marijuana
• But HHs didn’t make money at
it because they used their
product (as opposed to Super)
• Also crime (theft)
• p. 181
Continued Racism
• HHs beat up Black men
• They see themselves as
victims in relation to
African-Americans,
blaming them for the lack
of job opportunities
From Structure to Agency
Economic
Determinism
Cultural
Capital
Resistance
MacLeod’s Proposed Solutions
1. Expand public housing
2. Schools should:
• Acknowledge the barriers to achievement
rather than touting the achievement ideology;
• Provide students with success stories from
their own class background;
• Accept students’ working-class identities;
• Be well-funded;
• Foster critical understanding of social problems
and their structural causes; and
• The curriculum should respond to students’
needs and be academically rigorous.