Penn sociologist Elijah Anderson writes about life at “ground zero,” in the inner city’s most blighted areas. In this excerpt from his new book, a reformed drug-dealer turned small-businessman attempts to take back a neighborhood corner from his successor in the drug trade.
By Elijah Anderson | Photography by Candace diCarlo
Sidebar | Setting the Record Straight: An Interview with Elijah Anderson
IN Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, Dr. Elijah Anderson, the Charles and William L. Day Professor of the Social Sciences and professor of sociology, offers both a clear-eyed analysis of the destructive forces acting from within and outside our nation’s inner cities and a compassionate portrayal of those who, despite poverty, crime and racism, struggle to make decent lives for themselves and their neighbors.
In some of the most economically depressed and drug- and crime-ridden pockets of the city, the rules of civil law have been severely weakened, and in their stead a ‘code of the street’ often holds sway,” Anderson writes in the preface. “At the heart of the code is a set of prescriptions and proscriptions, or informal rules, of behavior organized around a desperate search for respect that governs public social relations, especially violence, among so many residents, particularly young men and women. Possession of respect—and the credible threat of vengeance—is highly valued for shielding the ordinary person from the interpersonal violence of the street.”
Anderson examines the workings of the code and its corrosive effects on ghetto life from a variety of angles—deconstructing the power relationships involved in a stickup, a teenager’s campaign for respect after moving to a new neighborhood, relations between the sexes and across generations. The book’s themes come together in the concluding chapter in the person of Robert, a former drug dealer who, following a prison sentence for the aggravated assault of a rival dealer, determines to make an honest living in his old neighborhood.
After convincing a longtime community activist named Herman Wrice of their sincerity, Robert and some friends enlist his help in becoming entrepreneurs. Their first effort is operating a fruit stand, and Robert later adds a hot-dog cart. Anderson vividly depicts the delicate balance required of Robert as he navigates his way among the neighborhood’s “street” and “decent” elements, his own criminal past and the bureaucratic intricacies and racial prejudices of the mainstream system. In the following excerpt, Robert expands his business activities by leasing space in a local deli—and comes into direct conflict with the drug dealers operating on the same corner.
EXCERPT
On the street, in his old life as a drug dealer, a person like Robert could, and did, demand that others “make way” for him. In his street world he had a particular reputation, or name, and a history of resorting to violence to make sure that they did. He carried a gun. In giving all that up, he has stepped into a world where he has no particular status. And because he carries no gun, his old friends on the street do not need to make way for him either. He has thus entered a kind of limbo with regard to his status and the rules that govern the management and outcome of conflicts involving him.
Over the months since his release from jail, Robert has been tested a number of times, from both sides of the fence. A probation officer recently placed him in handcuffs, only to let him go and apologize. Robert was provoked and very disturbed, for he could see no reason for such treatment, and later the officer could not give a good reason for it either. But the incident allowed Robert to see just how vulnerable he now was to the whims of individuals charged with upholding the system.
More recently, Robert has been forced to confront the tension between the street and the decent world even more directly. He has accepted a business proposition from a woman in the neighborhood, Ms. Newbill. For many years Ms. Newbill has been operating a carryout restaurant on the corner across from Robert’s fruit stand. Lately, however, drug dealers have taken to hanging around, intercepting Ms. Newbill’s customers. Part of what makes the carryout attractive for the drug dealers is that people hang out there: it is busy with traffic, and the dealers can blend in with the young people who are simply standing on the corner, and even sell drugs to some of them.
While Ms. Newbill was there alone, this is what they did. Police driving by couldn’t always distinguish between the drug dealers and the kids just hanging out. In fact, adapting to the code, otherwise law-abiding and decent youths at times develop an interest in being confused with those who are hard-core street, because such a posture makes them feel strong and affords them an aura of protection, even allowing them to “go for bad”—or pretend they too are tough.
Because of the presence of drug dealers, Ms. Newbill’s business declined, since few people wanted to run an obstacle course to buy sodas and hamburgers. When she complained about this to the dealers, their response was to rob her store at gunpoint. They also vandalized her automobile, which she parked outside the store. Wanting no further trouble, she had an inspiration. She offered to lease the deli section of the business to Robert for $800 per month in the hope that his presence, as a person with respect and props, could deter the drug dealers. Robert has accepted the challenge. He feels it’s a good deal, just the opportunity he’s been looking for to become a legitimate businessman and not just a street vendor. On his first day he made $91. If he can maintain that level of profit, he thinks, he can make a go of the business.
This involvement has given Robert an even bigger stake in the corner the store occupies, across the street from the fruit stand. He, Ms. Newbill, and the drug dealers all know this. One of the many ironies here is that in his previous life Robert established himself as a drug dealer on this very corner and, to this day, feels he can claim some “ownership” rights to it. In fact, he introduced to the drug trade the young dealers with whom he is now competing for the corner. And, invoking his “rights,” he has told them that they must take their drugs off his corner, because they harm his legitimate business, that by continuing to sell, they are disrespecting him, or dissing him. Yet they still want to sell drugs on the corner and say they are entitled to do so because “this is where [they] grew up.” Robert answers that they must be responsible young men and not defile their neighborhood. He also points out to them that such “defilement” hurts his own business, and thus must cease.
Before Robert was incarcerated, his was a big name in the neighborhood. He was an enforcer for a drug-dealing gang. This role gave him great props on the street, indicating that he was not to be messed with. But now, as was pointed out above, he can be only a shadow of his former self, because such displays of violent behavior could get him arrested and reincarcerated. Having publicly come out as a “little Herman”—the neighborhood term for those who follow the lead of activist Herman Wrice—and a legitimate businessperson, he finds himself in a dilemma: Does he revert to his street self in pursuit of decent goals?
It’s a predicament that Robert must confront on his own. He knows it, and his antagonists know it. They all know that the police are not the main players here, the ones to “get cool” with; rather, the “beef” is between Robert and the drug dealers. These are the people with whom he must now achieve a new understanding. They are testing his mettle, probing for weakness, to see if he is the same old Ruck (his street name). Much suggests to them that he is not. Above all, he is now on parole and thus must watch his step in dealing with people the way he would have dealt with them “back in the day,” or the old days; moreover, his close association with Herman is something of a liability on the street.
Robert has been going through a gradual transformation, shedding his “old skin” and identity of Ruck and taking on his new identity of Robert, or Rob. His former street cronies constantly address him as Ruck, while the decent people of the community, people he is getting to know better, address him more consistently as Robert.
If Rob resolves the current tension and passes the test, he will be much stronger than he was before, garnering juice, or respect, and credibility from others he meets on the street. Bear in mind, Rob already has credibility and respect from many of the decent people who know him and what he has been up against; many are cheering for him, the celebrity of the neighborhood. It is the street element, specifically the local drug gang, that he must now impress. For his part, Herman understands that he must not fight this battle for Rob, that Rob must fight it for himself. After all, he will not always be with Rob. Choc is Rob’s main opponent in the contest for the corner in front of Ms. Newbill’s. He grew up and has been living in the area for a long time, and, as was indicated earlier, Rob helped raise him and introduce him to the drug trade. Choc’s mother still lives in the area, just a few doors away from Rob’s store.
Soon after taking control of the store, Rob confronted Choc about his drug-dealing activities. He said, “Listen, Choc, this has to stop. If you want to sell drugs, go somewhere else. You not gon’ do it here. Go sit on your mother’s step and sell. Don’t sell in front of my business.” Choc responded, “Why you want to [keep us from selling drugs here]? You know how it is. I got to eat. I got to make a living, too. Why you want to be so hard?” Rob answered that he also had to make a living and that the drug dealers were hurting his business. They could sell somewhere else; they did not have to sell on his corner. Choc responded that this is where his mother lives: “I grew up here, so I can do what I want. I’ll die for this [corner], ’cause I got to eat. And ain’t nobody gon’ stop me from eating.” Rob asked, “Is that how you feel?” Choc bellowed, “Yeah!” “All right, I’m gon’ talk to your mama about it and see if she feel the same way.”
Many people in the neighborhood are aware of the present tension around the corner by Ms. Newbill’s. A beef has been created and infused with a certain social significance. People want to know what is going to happen next. Will Rob back down? Or will the boys back down? Either way, the result carries implications for the community and the local status order. Core elements of the code of the street are heavily in play: Can I take care of myself without going to the authorities? Do I have enough juice or personal power to do what I want? The metaphor of a chess game is not lost, as both Rob and Choc consider their next moves, with everyone anxiously looking on. Ostensibly, it is between them and nobody else. In fact, it is over who is going to rule the community in the long run—the decent folks or the street element. The struggle over the corner may be viewed as simply one battle in a war.
In trying out strategies for winning, Rob offered a scenario of what he might do in regard to Choc. He said, “I’m gon’ go tell his mother, that if I crack him in his head he won’t be selling drugs there. Now, there are three corners that he can’t sell on: where I got the fruit stand, where Ms. Newbill’s place is, and in front of the library or gym. He can go over to the vacant lot where the gas station used to be. I’ll tell him, ‘You can sell over there because my customers don’t come that way,’ but he knows that place is in the open, and Captain Perez [leader of the local police precinct] will get him if he do that. ‘You can’t sell on any other corner. But since you are gonna sell anyway, go over and sell on the vacant gas station lot.’” Rob knew that setting up business there would put Choc in the open so the captain could see him, and everyone knew that the captain was not to be trifled with.
Choc then sent five others of the local community to warn Rob, as a way both of getting the message back to Rob and of obtaining feedback on the situation and drumming up support: “Rob is gonna find himself with some problems” was a common sentiment. These five people, one by one, came back to Rob his first day on the job at Ms. Newbill’s and told him what Choc had said “that he will find himself in some problems.” And they would inquire of Rob, “What’s going on?” or “You closing down drug corners, now!” or “Choc feels some type o’ way about all this [he’s mad].”
Herman and I were at Ms. Newbill’s on Rob’s first day as the proprietor of his new business there. Rob made us cheesesteaks and then came and sat with us. It was clear that he was not himself. He was somewhat agitated, and his street antennae were on high alert, as he glanced back and forth at the front door, studying everyone who entered. Suddenly he said, “Did you see that! Did you see that?” Herman asked, “What?” “She nodded her head, gave a signal to somebody,” replied Rob. We looked up and saw an older woman standing in line to pay for some soap. She was facing the street. We noticed nothing out of the ordinary. But Rob was very concerned. He seems to have thought the woman might be alerting someone outside that we were here: if they wanted us, here we were. This turned out to be nothing.
People entered and left. One person after another warmly greeted Herman, including a man who planted a kiss on the side of his face, with obvious affection and appreciation. Herman answered politely, indicating what we were up to that day: “We’re having a Little League practice this evening at six. You got any equipment, a ball, a bat, anything?” The man answered affirmatively: “Yeah, I got something for you. How long you gon’ be here?” “Until you get back” answered Herman. The man then left the store and in about 10 minutes returned with a baseball bat and a ball. We were very pleased, for the youngsters with whom we were to practice this evening needed this equipment to start up their games.
Soon we received our food and soft drinks. People continued to enter and leave. It was clear that our presence was the support Rob needed. He relaxed, and we had easy talk for the next hour and a half, at which point we left. Every minute we were there, we were putting the word out that drug dealing would not be tolerated on this corner. Herman felt strongly that the young men who were coming and going were letting others know that we were there and that we were committed to being there. And that was what Rob needed on his first day at Ms. Newbill’s.
After one man left, Herman said of him confidently, “Yeah, he know Rob will hurt that boy [Choc], so why mess up Rob’s future by sending Rob back to jail for killing this nut. He’s putting Rob’s word out, that Rob is here to stay.” The man was a crack addict named Johnny Brown, a mechanic—”the best there is when he can stay off that stuff.” Brown is like a neighborhood courier who knows the latest about the neighborhood: “He know everything, including the shooting last night.” He will also get the word to the neighborhood that another day has passed and that Rob has not been chased out. Everyone is watching, expectantly, taking in the drama. The atmosphere is something like that of High Noon, in part because there were shootouts on this busy, lucrative corner in the past. The stakes, financial and social, are high.
Moments later Tip (a crack addict) comes in, approaches Rob, and asks, “Do you want me to get rid of him, ol’ head? I know you, ol’ head.” In conversation the use of the term ol’ head is most often an address of respect, but may also be slightly derisive, depending on the social context. Although the address does not always go by age, anyone over 40 years old is considered to be past his prime and generally not as tough as the younger men. Reverent younger men may gently put such people in their place by calling them “ol’ head.” Rob says of Tip, “I didn’t need his help. ‘Cause then Tip would have been on the corner. In other words, you can’t ‘ask a devil to get rid of a devil, because then all you get is another devil.’”
The code of the street says, in certain circumstances, that each person will test the next person, probing to take his measure, in order to know how to behave toward that person. The people who survive respond by showing their tough sides. If they can do that, they deserve to be left alone. Herman comments, “Rob is like a test-tube baby. He is an ongoing experiment, and we got to save this one.” Herman’s role, as it has been all along, is to help Rob through the obstacle course toward civility and decency. Herman can often be heard from the sidelines, coaching, “Now, don’t go and bust the man in his face. There is always a better way [than violence]”—this is his constant message.
Because of his relationship with Herman—and Herman’s relationship with the police—Rob now and then converses with the local police, who recognize him when they see him on the streets. On one recent afternoon Rob encountered a policeman, who said, “How you doing, Rob?” The local drug dealers see this, too, and their reaction might be, “Aw, he’s rattin’ to the cops.” This relationship with the police brings Rob respect and derision at the same time. His goal is to be completely on his own, to establish himself as a decent person in the community with the props of such a person, along with the props of the street life: toughness and decency, which are not easy to manage and to combine. But Rob must do so if he is to exist in the community with the status he would like. Without his knowledge of the code of the street, he would be in more peril. Possessing it is knowing to some degree what to do in what circumstances, and what not to do.
At this point Rob has figured out his next move with the drug dealers, but he does not know how it will work out. He is reluctant to bring Captain Perez into it, for doing so would hurt his long-term status and reputation on the street. Perez might come in with too much police power and authority, and that would lead the others on the street to say, “Aw, he had to bring in the police. Aw, he’s just a pussy, he went and got them to help him.” Not to involve the police will give Rob more “heart” on the corner, on the street, where standoffs like this must be settled “man-to-man.”
According to the code, the man goes for himself, takes up for himself, and calls on no one else to fight his battles. Whether he is successful or not in dealing with the situation man-to-man, the outcome will become known around the neighborhood, and his status on the street will be affected. To have to resort to the cops or anyone else is to be judged a chump, to have lost heart. He loses “stripes,” or respect, because he cannot deal with the threat by the street code. Practically speaking, the police cannot be present all the time. Hence real and enduring protection depends on having a name, a reputation, and credibility for being able to defend what is rightfully one’s own, even to the point of engaging in physicality; in a word, the person must get with the challenger, get in his face, and deal with him.
What Rob did was to go see Choc’s mother and threaten Choc through her. Standing at the Little League field that evening, he explained to me that he told her that her son’s drug dealing in front of the store was hurting his business and that if it did not stop, he would be forced to “handle his business.” “So I’m just lettin’ you know.” “Don’t worry about [it], Ruck, I’m gon’ talk to him,” responded Choc’s mother, Mrs. Harmon. “I’m just lettin’ you know,” Rob repeated, “’cause I been knowin’ y’all for a long time. And I didn’t want to just move out like that, without talking to you first. He said he’s ‘willing to die for the corner.’” Unlike some other mothers, Mrs. Harmon did not deny her son’s involvement in the drug trade. She owned up to his dealing drugs in front of the store, expressed her own exasperation with it, and indicated she would handle it.
Telling Choc’s mother has turned out to be a deft move on Rob’s part because it increases the number of people who can work to defuse the situation. Choc’s mother has strong emotional reasons to prevail on her son. It also gives Choc an excuse for capitulating, for, even though he may feel manly and able enough to overcome Rob, he knows he is disturbing his mother. Now he can give in but still save face by telling his boys, “I did it for my mother.” For the time being, Rob’s strategy seems to have worked. The boys have stopped selling drugs on Ms. Newbill’s and Rob’s corner. Things have cooled down.
To reiterate, Rob was seen by the boys on the street to be in a weak position both because he was on parole and so had to watch his step and because he had affiliated himself with Herman, whom they view as square, as an informer, as a policeman—”And they can’t do anything about it,” says Herman. As Rob undergoes his tests, trials and tribulations, a chorus of old heads cheers him on. For although the old heads do not condone selling drugs, they do observe the code of the street: to be worthy of respect, to be convincing, to be credible on the street, is to display heart, nerve and manhood at once. Correspondingly, through his actions and words Rob let the dealers know in no uncertain terms that he is ready to do what it takes to be his own man, to put his own physical self in the gap, and to go back to jail if he must for standing his ground. On these issues the local old heads and Rob converge; they all understand that in this environment such an orientation is the mark of a “real” man, and here they refer back to the decent daddy in the person of “Mr. Johnson,” who is for them the embodiment of decency and manhood.
Rob still confronts major challenges. The test he went through is only one among many he will face in the future. He resides and operates in a community in which most of the residents are decent or trying to be. But there is also a street element that is less decent, poorly educated, alienated and to some extent angry; finally, there is a criminal element that is not only street-oriented but often also in the business of street hustling and drug-related crime.
Rob has to navigate this environment, not simply as an ordinary person, not as a drug dealer, but as a legitimate businessman operating a carryout. That means that from time to time he has to meet with all kinds of people, some of whom are involved in scams, trying to shoplift, to sell him stolen goods. Every day will bring another test. He’ll be tried by drug dealers because his corner is so valuable; it represents capital. As an issue of urban turf, somebody must run that corner: either the police or the drug dealers. In this case, for the time being, Rob is running it. But a new drug gang could come to town, make dibs on this corner and challenge him. And this time he may not know the man’s mother.
Thus far Rob is surviving, and his capital has grown. His business is expanding. Word has gotten around that he’s serving food at a decent price and declaring that he’s not putting up with the drug activity on the corner. The neighborhood has breathed a sigh of relief, and now people visit the store in large numbers. One man likened the situation to “sunshine after the rain, and now that the sun is out, the people have returned.” Rob likens it to there being “a new sheriff in town,” and his presence signals a new day for the Stop and Go. Before the standoff between Rob and the drug dealers, many community residents, particularly the decent people, stayed away. But since he has won—at least for the time being—they have returned. The whole situation is public. Rob has in effect retaken the corner, and his accomplishment affects not just that corner but the whole neighborhood as well. For several blocks around, a sphere of influence has been created that Rob controls and the drug dealers are keeping out of. If the community could take back more such corners, perhaps some real progress could be made in shifting the balance of power from the street-oriented people to the decent people.
The task is difficult because Rob is navigating an environment of so many alienated people, some of them without hope, some of them ready to try to pull him down—for as he rises, they may feel a sharp drop in their own self-esteem. As he gains more legitimate clout, however, his influence spreads through the neighborhood and he becomes a role model for those who lack direction or have fallen into the street life: he has visibly pulled himself up and thus offers them a profoundly different way out of the street. His example shows this way can work.
Yet it is a fine understanding of the code of the street that enables Rob to survive the many physical standoffs that characterize ghetto street life. It is by deftly interpreting and abiding by the rules of the code that he is able to get through his days and nights, to manage the respect necessary to keep the drug dealers, scam artists and others at bay, or in line. At the same time he must function in the decent world as well, in the world of legitimate business practice—licenses, tax laws and the like. The inner-city success story therefore requires the ability to code-switch, to play by the code of the street with the street element and by the code of decency with others. Rob can do that, and in the process he works at setting an example for other young people. In addition, he is helping organize a Little League team and has plans for a Cub Scout den, the kinds of groups that build up the community’s institutions. Rob has thus become an old head for today, a present-day young Mr. Johnson—both creating opportunity and getting people to see the opportunity and taking responsibility for helping themselves.
SIDEBAR
Setting the Record Straight: An Interview with Elijah Anderson
Being understood is very important to Dr. Elijah Anderson, the Charles and William L. Day Professor of the Social Sciences and author, most recently, of Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. He worries at a question, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, and there is a fairly regular contest in his answers between the concerned individual’s urge toward blanket statement and the responsible scholar’s need to qualify. At the end of a two-and-a-half hour lunch- cum-interview, he says in parting, “Feel free to call me back, because I want to answer every question that you have fully,” and the same afternoon he offers to fax over additional material. It is not hard to imagine, as he implies, his publisher practically having to wrest the manuscript of his new book from his arms to get him to stop working on it and have it published.
On the page, Anderson’s concern with getting it right translates into a powerful analysis of his subject—one convincing enough to draw book-jacket praise from readers as diverse as the conservative columnist George F. Will and Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman. Anderson sees himself operating in a century-old tradition of ethnography, practiced by W.E.B. DuBois in his book The Philadelphia Negro and associated most closely with the “Chicago School” of sociology at the University of Chicago, where Anderson did his graduate work. “A lot of the classics of sociology were written in this way—by people going out and talking to real people,” he says. “I was trained in that tradition and continue it in my work, looking at communities and trying to represent them accurately so that policymakers might be better informed to hopefully do the right thing.”—JP
Gazette: Where did you do the research for Code of the Street? The book opens with a description of Germantown Avenue, from affluent Chestnut Hill to its end near the Delaware River, where, as you say in the book, “the elevated interstate highway … allows motorists to drive over North Philadelphia rather than through it —thereby ignoring its street life, its inhabitants, and its problems.”
Anderson: The book is about a lot of different spaces in Philadelphia. Coming down Germantown Avenue was a way to move from a well-to-do community and show the code of civility that you see there and how that gives way to the point that you have the problem of how to get along in public when the police and other agencies of the city government have abdicated their responsibilities to the community—at least, if you feel that way, then what do you do? That’s the essence of the code of the street. You feel that you’re on your own, so that means taking matters of personal defense, say, into your own hands, and this is where the decent people put their bodies and their images in the gap, so to speak.
I call these communities ground zero. Ground zero is the extreme community—8th and Butler, 13th and Fitzwater, 58th and Willows and other areas, too, these pockets of poverty. There is a relationship between the code of the street and persistent urban poverty, especially with this idea that the wider system has abdicated responsibility, which produces a kind of alienation among people.
Gazette: How does the research process work? How do you find the people you talk to and write about?
Anderson: I spent about a year or more at 13th and Fitzwater, and I did focus groups with a lot of the young men who live in the housing projects there and hung out there and went to stores there. I befriended people and got to know them, and became something of a fixture there, looking and talking. Another place I studied was Simon Gratz High School. I did focus groups there with students, parents and teachers to really get an understanding of what the world meant to them. But I also spent a lot of time walking the streets, Germantown Avenue and various places, and writing field notes. I’m an ethnographer, which basically is defined as the systematic study of culture, and this is what I’m interested in as an ethnographer, so this is what I try to do there.
Gazette: Do you ever wish you studied something wildly different from yourself? Do you get tired of being asked about your relationship, as a black man, to your subject?
Anderson: As I was coming up, coming of age and [going to] undergraduate school and all that, I wanted to become a sociologist and part of the reason was—for good or bad—to try to set the record straight, to contribute to the discussion of the day with respect to race and poverty. In a sense, my whole academic life has been involved in studying this issue and trying to represent—in a rather accurate way, I like to think—what’s going on.
I feel that I’ve got to tell the story. In a sense, it’s my own story, because I come from the working class. My father was a factory worker. My mother was a domestic. My father worked at Studebaker, which was a car manufacturer in those days. I was born in the Mississippi Delta, and my family was part of the Great Migration from the South to the North during and after World War II. We settled in South Bend, Indiana, when I was just a baby. I grew up there and attended the public schools, and from there went to Indiana University in Bloomington as an undergraduate. I’ve always been curious about things and sociology just fit right into that. And speaking about the black experience is important to me, so that’s what I do.
Gazette: Can you talk about the differences between the kind of environment you grew up in and the neighborhoods you write about in the book?
Anderson: It was a stable situation for us—church, the work ethic, a lot of those things were important for my family. But also, in the 1950s, my dad was making $5,000-6,000 a year, and he had a fourth-grade education. In today’s money, that’s like $38,000-39,000 a year. How many young black men with no education or even a high-school or college degree can get those kinds of jobs making that much money? It was really the heyday for the American working class, of which we were a part. While there was racial caste, it wasn’t a big problem for blacks to feel a part of something and part of the community. This is what my family certainly felt when we were living there.
It was a much more stable situation compared to what we see today. In the late-1970s and early-1980s, you have the beginnings of deindustrialization, which basically meant that the global economy is coming in, that jobs are leaving these places and becoming more complicated, becoming high tech, becoming automated. The result was that great numbers of black men became marginalized with respect to the working-class economy.
In Philadelphia, so many of the inner-city poor communities used to have people like my father and my mother living there and working. Today, if you go to the same neighborhoods, you don’t find people like my father living there. You find a young man named Marvin, who I’ve interviewed extensively. Marvin works at a car wash. He has a daughter who is seven years of age. [The mother] gave him the baby because she had three others, and she was on welfare. Marvin lives with his mother and his sister, who help him raise this child. He plaits her hair, he fixes her lunch, he picks her up from school. But Marvin has a checkered past: Marvin was a drug dealer. Marvin works at the car wash sporadically. Marvin is really a poor imitation of my father, so to speak.
A lot of this, people can argue about whose fault it was—”personal responsibility,” what have you—but it’s easier to have personal responsibility when you’ve got manufacturing jobs available. Marvin doesn’t have that. Plus he didn’t have the role models that people like myself had. What we are talking about really is ground zero, and this is where the persistent urban poverty is really seen—grinding poverty, I’m talking about, where the alienation is so thorough that the code of the street is the only way that you go about dealing with life. It’s important to see the distinctions between the communities I’m talking about and ones that exist not very far away where you have more [role models], people that I like to call Mr. Johnson.
Gazette: Has the improved economy made its way at all into these places?
Anderson: It has and it hasn’t. A lot of people are working now, but they’re not out of poverty—and that’s the rub. It is kind of calming things down. I think the crime rate’s gone down maybe partly because people are preoccupied with working, and that’s a good thing, but the drug trade is still there. It operates in a way that people don’t always appreciate because it doesn’t make the news, but it’s still there as a way for people who are looking for some other way to make it.
I think what we need is more in the way of jobs that will give people a leg up and a way out. These jobs are not the kind of jobs that are lifting people out of poverty but a kind of holding action it seems for the time being, and there’s something to be said for that, but it isn’t the panacea that a lot of people are expecting.
Gazette: Can a book like this have an impact? The descriptions of people and analysis of their behavior are extremely vivid, but some of the prescriptions for what should be done are the sort of things that have been said before, and it’s fairly clear that they’re not going to get done.
Anderson: I don’t want to see this problem as intractable—I resist that—but at the same time it’s important to appreciate the fact that since Reagan, I think, there has been a real diminution of support for the idea of the welfare state. What that means, in a large way, is in doing anything about any of our problems, whether health care or welfare, we’re on our own more and more. I think that really the answer has to do with structural kinds of solutions. We need more investment in Philadelphia and cities all over this country. We need to invest in these areas—people who need jobs and need human capital. We need to be building that up. The whole solution isn’t simply to build up human capital; we need a helping hand from the structure, as well, to bring people in. It’s really a matter of incorporating black people into the system. Simply to provide jobs and opportunity is not going to erase all the other problems that have come about because of this problem, but we have to keep on it and we have to keep making the society better, keep on trying to improve.
