The participants of “Sidewalk” are Howard, Conrad, Jerome, Shorty, Joe Garbage, Butterroll, Alice, Ron, Jamaane, Marvin, Keith, Grady, Ishmael, and Mudrick and other vendors on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village who struggle to with their economic status, on how they struggled in the wake of new economic era and political realities.
The purpose of the “Sidewalk” study is to take people into the socio-culture environment who are often seen as threats in society and work daily in the diverse neighborhood of New York City. Sidewalk also gives a portrait of several poverty-stricken black men who attempt to make their livelihoods on the sidewalks of Eighth Street, Greenwich Village, and Sixth Avenue by selling books, magazines, secondhand goods, and other merchandise. Duneier who is a sociologist who has taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, recounts their failures along with
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Some interesting things that Duneier shows us is the racial and social discrepancy of society that the vendors belief and face. Duneier is also aware of the racial and social issue between him and the other vendors. Often times, the vendors would perceive him as “a Jew who was going to make a lot of money off the stories of people working the streets; a white writer who was trying to 'state the truth about what was going on.” (Duneier 12). This can be because of the clear difference of skin tone and because the colored man is brung up to believe that the white man has an education and a good paying job. This results in the stereotype that the white man is “filthy rich and powerful” while the colored is “poor and powerless”. However, this singularity did not stop Duneier from humbling himself to a position in which he was living the daily life similar to the vendors. Because of Duneier’s decision to commit to this observational study, it has made a vast contribution to the understanding of human
Elijah Anderson wrote an interesting book, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, which describes social settings and people interactions in different parts of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. This book was published on March 28, 2011 by W. W. Norton & Company. Anderson has observed these places in Philadelphia for over thirty years. He uses the observations he made and the stories that people shared with him during his endeavor to answer the following questions: “How do ordinary people in this diverse city interact across and along racial lines? When and how do racial identities figure out into these encounters? When and how do city dwellers set aside their own and other’s particular racial and ethnic identities to communicate
This book addresses the issue of race all throughout the story, which is while it is probably the most discussed aspects of it. The books presentation is very complex in many ways. There is no clear-cut stance on race but the book uses racist language. The racist language durin...
Originally published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores the circumstances and conventions of the Black middle class, a group that has experienced both scholarly and popular neglect. In the Acknowledgments section of this work, Pattillo details the mentorship she received as a graduate student from William Julius Wilson at the University of Chicago. She recounts that Wilson often encouraged his students to extend, and even challenge his scholarly works, and that this urging provided the impetus for her research on the Black middle class (xiv). The challenge Pattillo (2013) refers to, becomes quite apparent when comparing her work to Wilson’s 1980 piece, The Declining Significance of Race. In this work, Wilson (1980) contends that in the industrial/modern era of the United States, class has surpassed race to be a salient factor of social stratification. He supplements his argument by referencing the progress and achievements of the Black middle class, relative to the “economic stagnation” of the Black underclass (p. 2). Pattillo (2013) offers a
Slims Table, written by Mitchell Duneier has been called a true stereotype buster due to its content in which it truthfully examines the lifestyles of working class black men. The book is designed to break the common misconceptions imbedded in a majority of peoples minds over how a black man lives his life and why he in a sense "does what he does," "thinks what he thinks," and "acts the way he acts." Prior to the writing of this book by Duneier, there were many common stereotypes of a working class black man, which often caused negative attitudes towards them. Although many of them are still existent and quiet prevalent, Duneier sought to try and break these misconceptions in hopes to try and bridge the gap, which has for so long been expanding between blacks and whites.
I must tell you…if you should settle down here, you’ll have to be either one thing or other—white or colored. Either you must live exclusively amongst colored people, or go to the whites and remain with them. But to do the latter, you must bear in mind that it must never be known that you have a drop of African blood in your veins, or you would be shunned as if you were a pestilence; no matter how fair in complexion or how white you may be.
In just a few paragraphs Mattson provides concrete evidence for his overall argument by creating more specific arguments and by using evidence from sources from the 1920s. In the three short paragraphs found on pages 312 to 314 he proves that before consumerism took over, Harlem was a place of strong democratic debate by citizens. He illustrates how passionately people gathered to educate themselves on issues that would affect them. His readers realize that without this communication public space is just a place where strangers pass each other by. The democratic interactions created much needed unity among neighbors, but the story of Harlem presented in this text shows how consumer culture and corporate power eventually takes over making Harlem a “playground for a new urban consumer ethic” (292).
In the first section of Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie, “The World of Reality”, Frazier introduces his discussion of the interplay of class and race. He outlines the historical roots of the social place of most African-Americans in the U.S.A. and that of the black middle class. Frazier asserts the inconsequential place of middle class African-Americans and their resulting inferiority complex. He depicts the black middle class as living in a “no man’s land” in the dominant white culture of America.
The purpose of my memoir is to awaken the power of Sociological Imagination in an attempt to analyze my own life experiences through sociological lens in order to understand how my life and opportunities in society have been shaped by race, class and ethnicity.
In society today, race can be viewed in a variety of ways, depending on the manner in which one was raised, as well as many other contributing factors. These views are often very conflicting, and as a result, lead to disagreement and controversy amongst groups. Throughout history, many communities have seen such problems arise over time, thus having a profound impact that can change society in both positive and negative ways. Such a concept is a common method through which Charles W. Mills explain his theories and beliefs in his written work, The Racial Contract. In this particular text, Mills explores numerous concepts regarding race, how it is viewed by different people, and the sense of hierarchy that has formed because of it. Nevertheless, when certain scholars think about and discuss race in society, they often take different approaches than those by Mills mentioned prior. HowevSimier, regardless of the different approaches that may be taken, often times a common idea can be found amongst them, which further ties in The Racial Contract. For example, the text “Racial Formation in the United States” by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, as well as “The Lincoln-Douglass Debates” can both be found to have a correlation regarding race within Mill’s work.
Racial discrimination has been an issue among different cultural groups, ethnic races and many religions. It is an issue that has stopped people from becoming well diversitized and embracing multiculturalism, especially during the olden days where slavery and wars were a huge part of the world. Racism has created a separation between people, causing many dilemmas’ to arise. This problem has been seen and touched upon throughout many works of literature and verbal presentations. A discourse on racial discrimination will be used to exemplify how individuals abuse their rights, categorize humans and ill treat others through an exploration of the texts in, Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes. These novels have given an insight of the discrimination between different classes of people and the unfavorability of one’s kind.
In the United States black Americans are disproportionately affected by the perils of poverty, such as frequent acts of violence, drugs, failing school districts, and numerous other crimes against person and property. Consequently, in order to address poverty, and the dangers associated, one has to understand the root of poverty. Mos Def examines the way American business intentionally denigrates the working class to demonstrate the exploitation and social control that continuously decimates the working poor’s hope.
In this narrative essay, Brent Staples provides a personal account of his experiences as a black man in modern society. “Black Men and Public Space” acts as a journey for the readers to follow as Staples discovers the many societal biases against him, simply because of his skin color. The essay begins when Staples was twenty-two years old, walking the streets of Chicago late in the evening, and a woman responds to his presence with fear. Being a larger black man, he learned that he would be stereotyped by others around him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” (135).
Staples, Brent. “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space.” 50 Essays. Ed. Samuel Cohen.
History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York.
Blacks and other ethnic minorities played a central role in advertisement during this growth in mass consumption and characters like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben soon emerged as crucial elements in the selling of products. The elements of music, politics, language and general human characteristics resulting from American popular culture all worked together to create the “white negro”- a person who can be simply referred to as a white person with black or “negro” traits. Mailer starts off the second part of his essay by describing the existential trait of the hipster, which is ultimately taken from the Negro.