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Poverty experience essay
Poverty experience essay
Poverty experience essay
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Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh sets out on a journey within the Chicago housing projects with a quest of finding out how it feels to be black and poor. Sudhir was an Indian native from a middle class Californian family and he was unfamiliar with the black culture within Chicago. In his book Gang Leader for a Day, he tells of his sociology research within one of the roughest housing projects in Chicago. Sudhir starts his research by talking to a few elderly gentlemen he played chess with at the park. His conversation with them led him to the Robert Taylor Housing Projects which was described as one of the worst Ghettos in America. His research began the first day he arrived with his clipboard of questionnaires ready to ask the question, “How does it feel to be black and poor?” His intent was to interview a few families within the projects and then go home but something unexpected happened. He ended up spending much longer gaining an insight of the lives of poor blacks, gangs, and drug dealers.
Sudhir sets out to conduct a descriptive qualitative research on young and poor black men. His research involves interviews, questionnaires, and observation of participants. His main question was, “How does it feel to be poor and black?” Conducting a descriptive qualitative research works best for Sudhir because of the type of question he wants to investigate. Being among the participants and speaking with them is the best way to collect this type of information. This method proves to be most appropriate for his research. He is interested in the lives of the men and how being poor affected them. This method gives him a better understanding when relating to his participants. He starts out his research initially wanting to focus on yo...
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...hir collected were from people who were working in secret so that they would not have to pay any tax to J.T. However Sudhir innocently shared this information with J.T which caused many of the people to be beaten up for trying to evade taxes.
I believe that his research posed some ethical issues but because he wanted to get as much information as possible he withheld most of the information about his research. Sudhir’s research and sampling method worked for him. He was able to get more information than he anticipated at the beginning of the research. He was able to get a very personal view of life among people that live in the projects. He became so involve that I believe at some points he began to feel like a member of the community.
Bibliography
Venkatesh, S. A. (2008). Gang leader for a day: a rogue sociologist takes to the streets. New York: Penguin Press.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is the ideologies rooted in the African American community. The ideal facts cannot be denied here. The idea of being black and poor is not a simple answer of, very bad, somewhat bad, neither, somewhat good or very good. Being black and poor is a lifestyle. Being black and poor is a community. This book will give you understanding how structural racism among blacks is installed throughout history. The system is created to make sure the subject matter, blacks, in this case are subjected to fail. The crack epidemic in a Chicago neighborhood was only the beginning.
Michael Sierra-Arevalo received his B.A. in sociology and psychology (high honors) from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include urban sociology, race and ethnicity, gangs, social network analysis, violence prevention, and policy implications of gang violence.
Wilson, William J. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
Lo, Chun-Nui, A Social Model of Gang Related Violence, Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology, Vol 19 no. 1, May 1991, pg. 36-43.
While whites lived comfortable lives in their extravagant mansions and driving their fancy cars blacks had to live in a disease infested neighborhood with no electricity or in door plumbing. Approximately one thousand people lived in shacks that were squeezed together in a one-mile zone. The alleys were filled with dirt, rats, human wasted and diseases. Blacks lived in houses made of “old whitewash, a leaking ceiling of rusted Inx propped up by a thin wall of crumbling adobe bricks, two tiny windows made of cardboard and pieces of glass, a creaky, termite-eaten door low for a person of average height to pass through...and a floor made of patches of cement earth”(31). Living in such a degrading environment kills self-esteem, lowers work ethic and leaves no hope for the future.
Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago who wanted to assist a professor in a study about young blacks and how their environmental factors influenced their outcomes. To do this he intended to pass out a survey to young blacks in poor neighborhoods, particularly Robert Taylor. However, on his first day, he is confronted by members of the Black Kings who did not allow him to enter the building. Their leader, J.T., laughed at him after reading the survey Sudhir was using and explained that he would not learn anything about their way of life with a survey. Thus, Sudhir decides to perform an ethnographic study which involves him following around J.T. to observe how life in the projects works. In doing this,
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.
South, David. The History of Organized Crime: Secrets of The World’s Most Notorious Gangs. New York: Metro Books, 2013. Print.
A Climate of Fear “The Gang Crackdown”, provided by PBS, communicates the everyday struggles that the communities of Nassau County face every day. The video’s focus revolves around the homicidal and violent crimes that have been provided by the “MS-13” and the details of cracking down on their development. The Latin American gang from El Salvador is known for their audacity to target the young population of Long Island and their homicidal tendencies. They have targeted children and teenagers at their workplace, their home, and their school. These gang members have left the community defenseless and struck fear into the hearts of many parents along with the government itself.
In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.
...g measures out there. The reader is given plenty of background information on gangs allowing someone with little knowledge of the subject or the cities’ history to jump right in. Statistics, interviews, surveys and personal observations of the authors during ride-alongs make up much of the source material. The book’s strengths lie in the amount of research contained within it, as well as an insider look at the gang unit and what it takes to be an officer in that specialization. However, if it is not being used to supplement another research paper or study, the book comes off as a difficult and boring read, making a reader likely to put it down otherwise.
The story, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, is a ethnographic study of a Black King Gang in the Robert Taylor community. Venkatesh accidentally stumbles upon the gang lead by J.T. and decided to study them. Throughout his journey he learns from the violence and illegal activity he witnesses that “in the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of it”’ (Venkatesh. 2008:164). He witnesses beatings, selling of illegal drugs, and exploitation of residents; but he also gained a lot of knowledge about the community. He works with J.T. and Ms. Bailey, the community leader, closely through his study. J.T. has taken a sociology class and he allows Venkatesh to shadow the gang
Sudhir Venkatesh starts his study using quantitative and statistical techniques, he uses the method of direct observation to get involved with the gang members and other individuals within the community. Everything began with a survey of testable questions that would be asked to gang members, but it had a negative reaction by one of the members. His questions began with "How does it feel to be black and poor?" which is what caused a member to be disappointed or even feel offended by it. He learned that he was able to obtain more information from the people in the community by listening to them instead of using the questionnaire he had created. Through the method of listening he was able to gain everyones trust. Venkatesh was able to learn about
Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]
Many stereotypes of gangs have been fabricated. The problem is that a majority of gang members do not fit these stereotypes, which, in turn, makes it hard for the to be caught (Klein). Traditionally they organize their group around a specific neighborhood, school or housing projec...