Suchergebnisse

This article presents an in-depth case study and qualitative examination of Young Jeezy's album " The Recession" to explore to what extent Gangster Rap artists use Hip-Hop as way to respond to structural inequality in economically poor Black communities. Through Young Jeezy's phenomenological standpoint, much can be understood about the lived experiences of Gangster Rap music and culture as well as more broadly, the perspectives of street-identified Black men. Sites of Resilience Theory and Grounded Theory were employed as method and analysis to examine Young Jeezy's album " The Recession." Analysis reveals " The Recession" speaks to the challenges of blocked economic and educational opportunity, negative living and health conditions, a corrupt political system, and the insidious ways these forms of structural inequality shape the identity of street-identified Black men. This article calls for social scientists and community professionals who seek to reach Black men in the streets to more deeply understand the phenomenological value of Gangster Rap music.

This article presents a content analysis of two group interviews with street life–oriented, U.S.-born African men that addresses issues of masculinity. The two group interviews are drawn from a more extensive dissertation data set that includes 371 surveys, 22 individual interviews, and 2 group interviews. The men specifically in the group interviews were asked to listen to and remark on a popular street life–oriented hip-hop song titled "A Gangster and a Gentleman" by Styles P. Findings indicate that for many of these men, masculinities are crafted in the face of inhumane socioeconomic conditions. In fact, findings reveal that their masculinity plays a vital role within their street-life orientation, thus serving a profoundly critical function in the development of street life as a "site of resiliency."

This article presents a prison research model grounded in street participatory action research (Street PAR) methodology but programmatically facilitated in an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program class. Street PAR's nine tenets were adapted to a prison setting, and we demonstrate its promise with a brief case study of research projects at one prison location. This article also explores the challenges scholars and incarcerated persons as researchers may face in correctional facilities. Street PAR and Inside-Out can improve prison environments and successful transition to local communities as a function of equipping incarcerated persons with reading, writing, and analytic skill sets.

AbstractThis street participatory action research project explored the reflective schooling experiences of street identified Black men and women (ages 18–35) in two small low‐income neighborhoods. Secondary analysis of survey (N = 520) and interview (N = 46) data examined: (1) How are attitudes toward schooling and teachers affected by race, gender and age?; and (2) How do students utilize a street‐identity as a site of resilience inside schools? Overall, street‐identified study participants held positive attitudes toward schooling, but generally performed poorly in schools and had negative experiences with educators. No significance was found as a function of gender and age regarding attitudes toward schooling and attitudes toward teachers. Also, interview results, across gender and age, suggest school‐related structural challenges and poor teacher‐student relationships contributed to severe conflict between students and teachers; and between students. Interviewees argued some Black students internalized a street identity or became disruptive and even engaged in school violence as a protective mechanism to endure hostile schooling environments. Moreover, Street PAR is discussed as a method and intervention to improve student performance and resolve concerns between students and educators.

Far too many poor Black communities struggle with gun violence and homicide. The result has been the unnatural contortion of Black families and the inter-generational perpetuation of social chaos and untimely death. Young people are repeatedly ripped away from life by violence, while many men are locked away in prisons. In neighborhoods like those of Wilmington, Delaware, residents routinely face the pressures of violence, death, and incarceration. Murder Town, USA is thus a timely ethnography with an innovative structure: the authors helped organize fifteen residents formerly involved with the streets and/or the criminal justice system to document the relationship between structural opportunity and experiences with violence in Wilmington's Eastside and Southbridge neighborhoods. Earlier scholars offered rich cultural analysis of violence in low-income Black communities, and yet this literature has mostly conceptualized violence through frameworks of personal responsibility or individual accountability. And even if acknowledging the pressure of structural inequality, most earlier researchers describe violence as the ultimate result of some moral failing, a propensity for crime, and the notion of helplessness. Instead, in Murder Town USA, Payne, Hitchens, and Chamber, along with their collaborative team of street ethnographers, instead offer a radical re-conceptualization of violence in low-income Black communities by describing the penchant for violence and involvement in crime overall to be a logical, "resilient" response to the perverse context of structural inequality

AbstractThis participatory action research project worked with four street‐life‐oriented black men to document how a community sample of street‐life‐oriented black adolescents between the ages of sixteen and nineteen frame street life as a site of resiliency inside schools based on 156 surveys, 10 individual interviews, and 1 group interview. Data collection took place primarily in Paterson, New Jersey, and Harlem, New York City. Findings reveal that the adolescents overall hold negative attitudes about their educational experiences within two dominant themes: student‐teacher interactions and preparation for economic and educational opportunities. Results can be used to understand how the adolescents' street identities are adaptive inside schools.