Inner-City Issues: Social, Cultural, and Economic

Over the years, numerous debates have raged about America's inner cities, ranging from violence to urban blight to hunger. Since the 1920s, one of the challenges that the inner city has faced has been the relocation of workers and economic opportunities to the suburbs (National Council Research Staff, 1990). Many academic discussions have focused on the human equation in all of its aspects and how it applies to inner-city issues. Where this paper will try to deviate from those discussions is by using a mix of statistical data and personal stories about the people living in the inner cities to bring to light a more personal side of what it is like to live and to try and survive the environment that makes the inner city such a minefield to navigate and escape from successfully. While the situation in the inner cities may always improve in the future, many economic, social and cultural problems still exist and continue to plague inner city youth.

In the foreword to the book Against the Wall, African-American activist Cornell West lays out the problems of today’s males with respect to the lack of leadership in the black community by explaining “Now our leadership is so decrepit, our leadership has caved in so easily and sold out so quickly, that the young folk had to create their own connection, their own black structures of meaning and feeling” (as cited in Anderson, 2011, p. 12). West goes on to state that hip-hop music is the structure of meaning and feeling, and as such, it is “indictment of black leadership and the black community” (as cited in Anderson, 2011, p. 12) who have been “so preoccupied with [their] own careers, [their] own hedonism and narcissism, that we [the black community] feel we have to raise ourselves” (as cited in Anderson, 2011, p. 12). So, even though American society is primarily responsible for what is happening to the inner city American black male, per Dr. West, the black community and leadership must also accept their share of the responsibility.

To illustrate how the community and the system are failing young black males, we look at the story of David. He was an “academically promising” (Anderson, 2011) young black male who went to high school at a charter school in north Philadelphia. His home life in west Philadelphia was not atypical of other young black males. His father abandoned him and his younger sister to start a new family in another part of the city, leaving his mother to work long hours as a nurse’s assistant to support the family. Because of his mother’s long hours, David had to look after his younger sister who was 13. One day on the way to school another boy in David’s west Philadelphia neighborhood was making “sexually suggestive remarks” (Anderson, 2011) to his 13-year-old sister. David got into an altercation with the boy and when it broke up, a third boy told David to “watch his back” because he may get “jumped” (Anderson, 2011). Taking this warning to heart, the next day David picked up a pocket knife and put it in his pocket before going off to school. He had forgotten about it by the time he reached school and passed through the metal detector at the entrance only to be discovered with the knife in his pocket. After the knife was discovered by security, which was a serious violation of the school’s policies against weapons of any kind, David was sent to a “privately-managed alternative education program” [sometimes known as “soft jails” by critics] (Anderson, 2011) for between 120 to 180 days. Upon completion of the program, he was not allowed to return to the charter high school where he had been doing well but was forced to attend his neighborhood high school where student achievement was extremely low. Because of this one isolated incident, David went from being a student “full of promise” to “hyper vulnerable” (Anderson, 2011). In this instance, the system and its rules failed an otherwise bright student with potential and sent him back to his neighborhood without much consideration. A neighborhood where boys like David, who grow up without fathers or strong male role models, are forced into a system where “hegemonic masculinity – an expression of gender identity that males attempt to use to establish dominance over females and other males” (Anderson, 2011) reigns and where they are often “told to be a man” but are never “shown how to be man” (Anderson, 2011).

How the environment (the neighborhoods) impacts what happens to people living there and how increasingly these neighborhoods are isolating people from mainstream society is another factor that contributes to the failure of inner city youth and keeps them from breaking out and achieving success in mainstream society. Inner cities have been hit hard in the last several decades by increasingly violent crime which cuts off outsiders from interacting with people of the community. Violent crime also has the effect of providing fuel to “the outmigration of middle-class and stable working-class families, thus deepening the impoverishment of these neighborhoods” (Rankin & Quane, 2000). Traditionally, per Rankin and Quane (2000), “inner-city neighborhoods were characterized by a mix of poor working-class and middle-class blacks, the new urban ghetto has a much higher concentration of poor and otherwise disadvantaged reside.” This shift in the demographics of inner city urban ghetto areas has contributed greatly to the detriment of the people residing there.

Social problems have also had their effect on the changes going on in the inner cities. Increasing social obstacles such as “levels of crime, gang activity, chronic joblessness, welfare dependency, and teenage pregnancy soared” (Rankin & Quane, 2000) and have worked to compound the stress with which inner city families live with in their day-to-day lives. Another structural aspect that contributes to the problems in the inner city is the breakdown of social institutions. As Rankin and Quane (2000) have noted “The vitality of a community's institutional structure depends to a large extent on the economic support and involvement of working people” which is lacking in poorer inner city neighborhoods. Further, in poor inner city neighborhoods, “key community institutions - businesses, schools, churches, social clubs, voluntary associations, and community organizations - decline and often disappear, leaving residents cut off from institutional resources and the benefits they can have for families with few resources of their own” (Rankin & Quane, 2000).

Another problem that faces inner city youth is their exposure to violence and violent behaviors. Exposure to violence can cause fear and apprehension in children and cause them to be depressed and withdrawn as well. Per the research of Ceballo, Dahl, Aretakis & Ramirez (2001), “It is an unfortunate yet all too common fact that many poor, inner-city children are continuously and chronically exposed to community violence” and, what, if anything, do these children’s parents know about what they are exposed to in the course of their daily lives. Regarding exposure to violence, a recent survey of 170 students in the fifth and sixth grade of a major metropolitan school, conducted by Lorion & Saltzman, (1993) noted that “80% reported regularly hearing the sounds of gunfire in their neighborhoods, and one in every six of these children reported having witnessed a homicide.” (as cited in Ceballo, et al., 2001, p. 928). This level of experience shocks many parents because in their view their children are not exposed to that much violence on a daily basis. To further illustrate this point, a 1997 study by Hill and Jones showed that, of a sample of 96 children, ages 9 to 12 years old, virtually all of the parents indicated that their children had not been exposed to any violence but when the children were asked, only 15% of them agreed with their parents’ assessment (as cited in Ceballo, et al., 2001, p. 929). Ceballo, et al. also conducted their own studies which tracked along the same lines as the surveys conducted by Hill and Jones. In many cases, parents were totally unaware of the level to which their children had been exposed to or had been victimized by violence. Some of the more significant results from the Ceballo study were that children reported a 13% rate of having been stabbed with a knife where the parents reported 0%, the children reported a 23% rate of having seen someone commit suicide to the parents 0%, and 11% of children surveyed said that they had personally been shot at with a gun whereas the parents only reported this at a rate of 2%. These statistics prove that inner city children are over-exposed to instances of violence when compared to a constituent group from the suburbs or more affluent neighborhoods.

Another situation that is beleaguering inner city youth is the shadow of teenage pregnancy and parenthood. Although rates of unwed mothers have decreased in the U.S. in the 21st century, the problem is ongoing and has to be addressed in the scope of assisting African-American, Latino, and other groups of poor inner city youth. Becoming a teen parent ruins the lives of inner city youth who were otherwise on a promising track to grow to be successful in life. A typical story of what teens face in this area is demonstrated by looking at Elijah, a thirteen-year-old boy living in the Roxbury Crossing neighborhood of Boston.

Elijah has a growing interest in girls but his parents want him to wait until he is older to become sexually active. Elijah has been taught that “sex before marriage is dangerous because of the potential failure of contraception” (Harding, 2010). Not only this, Elijah is well aware of what happens when teens have children. Often times, fathers end up running out on the girls and leave them to raise the baby alone or with the help of their mother, grandmother or guardian. However, there is the other influence that has Elijah’s attention. That is the influence of the streets. Under this influence, boys are encouraged to “holler at girls” and begin relationships with them that will eventually lead to sex (Harding, 2010). This influence is very strong in the lives of boys like Elijah and hold sway over some more than others. To not participate in these rituals will get boys like Elijah branded as “gay” or “fag” which is an overwhelming social stigma in his world.

Having noted all the problems that the inner-city youth have to contend with on a daily basis, we must now consider what can be done to assist in helping the children to a greater degree to combat all the problems they face. Some solutions require community participation, some require backing from the federal government, however, the greatest obstacle facing any program is generating interest and participation by the youth that they aspire to assist. These sorts of programs have had limited but noticeable successes in the poor neighborhoods of the inner city.

One of the programs which garners a lot of support is the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). This program provides “at-risk urban youth” with entrepreneurial training as a way of involving them in school and “improving their life chances, self-esteem, and career aspirations” (Anderson, 2011). Another goal of the NFTE is to provide students with engaging subjects designed to keep them interested in attending school. This is problem for a lot of schools because the curricula have not been updated for years, sometimes decades, and therefore does not engage today’s youth to learn.

However, not all programs that succeed are a product of governmental processes. An idea which transplanted itself from Bangladesh is the microfinancing scheme. “In January 1977, Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor in Bangladesh, began to lend poor women small amounts of money to start their own businesses” (Katz, 2012). His idea was to loan the money to women rather than men because women more often would use the money to improve the situation of their family. Yunus went on to found the “Grameen Bank” (Grameen mean village in Bangladeshi) in 1983. The bank had a simple plan, to lend small amounts of money to groups of women who would use the money to generate capital through the establishment of businesses that would support the community and provide income to repay the loans. The program had a 98% success rate of repayment of loans. Yunus noted that “we discovered that support groups were crucial to the success of our operations” and “we required that each applicant join a group of like-minded people living in similar economic and social conditions (as cited in Katz, 2012, p. 130). The success of the Grameen banks was based on a model that turned conventional aid programs for the poor on their heads. The program based its model on “the poor’s strengths rather than their deficiencies” (Katz, 2012). Grameen America opened in 2008 in Queens, New York and “flourished and grew during the worst financial recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s” (Katz, 2012). The self-employment and microfinance trend has carried forward and has expanded opportunities for the poor all over America.

While the plight of inner city children continues and in some ways, grows, there are glimmers of hope that things are starting to change for the better. As noted above, some very innovative programs have been introduced in the past years that continue to work on the problems of the inner-city youth and others. However, the problem is far from solved and significant portions of the population of the inner city are still wallowing in decades-long poverty with no chances for escaping it anytime soon. There is a chance that, given the growing prospects for economic upturn in the near future, that more people will be able to find a way to extricate themselves from the cycle of poverty that has been perpetuated, especially over the last eight years, by a “nanny-state” mentality. People are hopeful that a “hand-up” rather than a “hand-out” is coming in the very near future. Only time and the will of the people most affected by decades of spirit crushing poverty will tell if the cycle can be broken for a greater number of those living in poverty.

References

Anderson, E. W. C. (2011). Against the wall. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3441625.

Ceballo, R., Dahl, T., Aretakis, M., & Ramirez, C. (2001). Inner-city children's exposure to community violence: How much do parents know? Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(4), 927-940. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3599805.

Harding, D. J. (2010). Living the drama: Community, conflict, and culture among inner-city boys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Katz, M. B. (2012). Why don't American cities burn? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3441953.

National Research Council Staff. (1990). Inner-City Poverty in the United States. Washington: National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3377019

Rankin, B., & Quane, J. (2000). Neighborhood poverty and the social isolation of inner-city African American families. Social Forces, 79(1), 139-164. doi:10.2307/2675567.





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