Elijah Anderson

Violent injuries among women in an urban area

BACKGROUND Although the rate of death from injuries due to violent acts is much higher among black women than among white women in the United States, little is known about the nature and correlates of violent injuries among black women living in urban areas. METHODS In this case-control study conducted at three emergency departments in one inner-city community (in west Philadelphia), we studied 405 adolescent girls and women who had been intentionally injured and 520 adolescent girls and women (control subjects) who had health problems not related to violent injury. Data were collected by conducting standardized interviews with use of questionnaires and by screening urine for illicit drugs. Individual logistic-regression models were constructed to identify factors associated with violent injuries inflicted by partners and those inflicted by persons other than the partners of the victims. RESULTS The male partners of the injured women were much more likely than the male partners of control subjects to use cocaine (odds ratio, 4.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.3 to 8.4) and to have been arrested in the past (odds ratio, 3.1; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.8 to 5.2). Fifty-three percent of violent injuries to the women had been perpetrated by persons other than their partners. Womens use of illicit drugs and alcohol abuse were factors associated with both violence on the part of partners and violence on the part of other persons. Neighborhood characteristics, including low median income, a high rate of change of residence, and poor education, were independently associated with the risk of violent injuries among women. CONCLUSIONS Women in this urban, low-income community face violence from both partners and other persons. Substance abuse, particularly cocaine use, is a significant correlate of violent injuries. Standard Census data may help identify neighborhoods where women are at high risk for such violence and that would benefit from community-level interventions.

The Cosmopolitan Canopy

The public spaces of the city are more racially, ethnically, and socially diverse than ever. Social distance and tension as expressed by wariness of strangers appear to be the order of the day. But the “cosmopolitan canopy” offers a respite and an opportunity for diverse peoples to come together to do their business and also to engage in “folk ethnography” that serves as a cognitive and cultural base on which people construct behavior in public.

The White Space

Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, large numbers of black people have made their way into settings previously occupied only by whites, though their reception has been mixed. Overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, restaurants, and other public spaces remain. Blacks perceive such settings as “the white space,” which they often consider to be informally “off limits” for people like them. Meanwhile, despite the growth of an enormous black middle class, many whites assume that the natural black space is that destitute and fearsome locality so commonly featured in the public media, including popular books, music and videos, and the TV news—the iconic ghetto. White people typically avoid black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence.

The Ideologically Driven Critique1

It is clear from the outset that Wacquant has a particular “theoretical” ax to grind—one with an ideological blade—and that in doing so he seriously misreads Code of the Street, distorting its findings to fit his polemical purposes. At best, he seriously misunderstands my work; at worst, he willfully misrepresents it in his review. Regardless, Wacquant fails to engage the main thrust of the book: As a result of the breakdown or weaknesses of civil law in the most distressed inner-city communities, a survival strategy with implications for local public order has emerged—a “code of the street” that relies on “street justice,” whose transactions involve a currency of reputation, respect, retribution, and retaliation. Because civil law has been so compromised and eroded locally, people often rely on themselves and their reputations for protection, a situation that leads to high rates of urban violence. A legacy of institutionalized racism, joblessness, and alienation suffuses distressed inner-city neighborhoods and exacerbates these conditions. In some of Philadelphia’s most distressed ghetto areas, the community divides itself into two opposing status groups—“decent” and “street” —each with its own value orientation. “Decency” is most often associated with the wider, conventional society, whereas “street”—or its own descriptive analogue, “ghetto”—is often used as an epithet (especially by those identifying themselves as decent) and strongly associated with the most troublesome aspects of ghetto life. In the name of “keeping it real,”

The Social Ecology of Youth Violence

This essay, largely drawn from Elijah Andersons forthcoming book, Code of the Street, offers an ethnographic representation of the workings of the code of the street in the context of the trying socioeconomic situation in which the inner-city black community finds itself, as jobs have become ever more scarce, public assistance has increasingly disappeared, and frustration has been building for many. The material presented here was gathered through many visits to various inner-city families and neighborhood settings, including carry-outs, laundromats, taverns, playgrounds, and street corners. In these settings, Anderson conducted indepth interviews with adolescent boys and girls, young men (some incarcerated, some not), older men, teenage mothers, and grandmothers. The structure of the community, and that communitys extreme poverty, which is in large part the result of structural economic change, will be seen to interact in a way that facilitates the involvement of so many maturing youths in the culture of the streets, in which violence and the way it is regulated are key elements.

The Iconic Ghetto

In the minds of many Americans, the ghetto is where “the black people live,” symbolizing an impoverished, crime-prone, drug-infested, and violent area of the city. Aided by the mass media and popular culture, this image of the ghetto has achieved an iconic status, and serves as a powerful source of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination. The history of racism in America, along with the ascription of “ghetto” to anonymous blacks, has burdened blacks with a negative presumption they must disprove before they can establish mutually trusting relationships with others. The poorest blacks occupy a caste-like status, and for the black middle class, contradictions and dilemmas of status are common, underscoring the racial divide and exacerbating racial tensions.

Fears of violence during morning travel to school

PURPOSE Childrens safety as they travel to school is a concern nationwide. We investigated how safe children felt from the risk of being assaulted during morning travel to school. METHODS Children between 10 and 18 years old were recruited in Philadelphia and interviewed with the aid of geographic information system (GIS) mapping software about a recent trip to school, situational characteristics, and how safe they felt as they travelled based on a 10-point item (1 = very unsafe, 10 = very safe). Ordinal regression was used to estimate the probability of perceiving different levels of safety based on transportation mode, companion type, and neighborhood characteristics. RESULTS Among 65 randomly selected subjects, routes to school ranged from 7 to 177 minutes (median = 36) and .1-15.1 street miles (median = 1.9), and included between 1-5 transportation modes (median = 2). Among students interviewed, 58.5% felt less than very safe (i.e., <10) at some point while traveling to school and one-third (32.5%) of the total person time was spent feeling less than very safe. Nearly a quarter of students, or 24.6%, felt a reduction in safety immediately upon exiting their home. The probability of reporting a safety of >8, for example, was .99 while in a car and .94 while on foot but was .86 and .87 when on a public bus or trolley. Probability was .98 while with an adult but was .72 while with another child and .71 when alone. Also, perceived safety was lower in areas of high crime and high density of off-premise alcohol outlets. CONCLUSIONS Efforts that target situational risk factors are warranted to help children feel safe over their entire travel routes to school.

The Emerging Philadelphia African American Class Structure

In The Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B. Du Bois presented a four-class typology of the black community. Today the situation has changed greatly. The enormous social changes of the twentieth century, culminating in the civil rights movement and followed by civil disorders occurring on a wide scale in urban America, resulted in attempts by the wider society to incorporate black Americans through federally mandated social programs such as affirmative action, fair housing legislation, set-asides, and major civil rights legislation. These initiatives helped to defuse much of the tension of the 1960s, but they also set the stage for much greater black participation in American society, leading to tremendous growth in the black middle class. At the same time, these measures of black incorporation, as realized over the past 30 years, have greatly changed the traditional castelike system of race relations. In conjunction with deindustrialization and the simultaneous growth of the global economy, these changes have contributed to a more complex class configuration among blacks.

A case-control study of female-to-female nonintimate violence in an urban area.

OBJECTIVES The aims of this study were to describe the characteristics surrounding female-to-female nonpartner violence and to identify independent factors associated with risk of female-to-female intentional injuries. METHODS A case-control investigation was conducted among women who resided in an urban, low-income community and presented for emergency department care for injuries inflicted by female nonpartners. RESULTS Women were typically victimized by women they knew (88%), in outdoor locations (60%), and in the presence of others (91%). Those found to be at risk for injury typically were young and socially active, used marijuana, and had experienced other kinds of violence. CONCLUSIONS The present results showed that women injured by female nonpartners had limited resources, experienced disorder in their lives, and were the victims of violence within multiple relationships.

The Legacy of Racial Caste: An Exploratory Ethnography

With the racial progress the nation has made over the past half century, including the growth of the black middle class and the election of a black president, many are now prepared to proclaim the United States a postracial society, where egalitarian values most often prevail; race is no longer a significant barrier to power, privilege, and prestige; and racial prejudice is mostly a thing of the past. When observed ethnographically, the lived experience of race relations suggests a different view and conceptual framework. As the legacy of racial caste, the color line persists in social interaction and is evident in racially determined perspectives and local working conceptions that order race relations and contribute to persistent racial inequality. Indeed, the claim of a postracial society is an ideological discourse that denies continuing patterns of race relations.