Code of the Street Summary: Unraveling the Urban Dilemma

Introduction

Everyone has different backgrounds; race, culture, and neighborhood are some of the prominent aspects affecting identity as who they are. In the book “Code of the Street,” Anderson clearly addresses the reality of how a code of the street rules certain neighborhoods on a daily basis. The book specifically showcases life in downtown Philadelphia. However, what the author tries to insist is that the country as a whole is experiencing the same dilemma in every single metropolitan city that people love and admire.

Illustrating the dark side of urban life is the core of the book. The significance of Anderson’s research is to put gravity toward the relationship between the mainframe of street life and the branches of the societal system. Lack of interaction between two groups segregated from each other and undermined the lives of disadvantaged communities. Overall, the book is a perfect summary to take a glimpse of life on the street.

The Unveiling of Urban Realities

Throughout the chapters, Anderson vividly portrays the aspects of the street, such as drugs, violence, crimes, mating games, teenage pregnancy, and so on. From each topic, the author draws attention to one fundamental idea: the code of the streets is the ultimate outcome within dismantled communities where life and death are determined so recklessly. Based on the book itself, Philadelphia is described as a two-faced city with one side well-balanced with upper-class families and middle-working class and the other, more toward downtown, with colored neighborhoods plagued with drugs and violence.

The executed aspect of Anderson’s research is that it brings genuine awareness of how the code of the streets affects individuals, families, and communities and how they coexist with the codes. He highlights how people manage to balance the codes within their lives and respect them in order to maintain their status in terms of survival, life, or death. Through the engagement of interviews, the dynamics of the code present a clear distinction between decent families and street-oriented families. “Street mugging requires a profound degree of alienation, but also requires a certain commitment to criminality, nerve, and heart. A victim may have a certain edge on one who lacks street knowledge” (Anderson, 125).

The Street Code's Stranglehold

Throughout the stories of underprivileged communities, the author, Anderson, misses the basic idea of explaining why this has ever happened in the first place and what should be done to prevent this from happening in the future. This wounded society is the result of racial discrimination and prejudice against certain groups of people and passed down to generations of generations, yet experiencing the same dilemma up until the present moment. The author emphasizes the idea of profoundly losing faith in itself and toward the judicial system as the core of the problem. Nevertheless, Anderson only states the answer to the problem is the role of decent people, such as old heads, and the viable mainstream within the inner city (Anderson, 325). From my point of view, it seems that the solution to the problem itself wasn’t heavy enough to be felt as one. The gravity was not equally measured between the problem and the solution.

Conclusion

Furthermore, the way of presentation and the context were heavily centered on the colored community with stereotypical subjects: low education, violence, drugs, and no occupation. There was only a single case of a young black girl who went to a private school in the neighborhood and became a doctor with the help of her single mother. She is the only one who did not follow the stereotypical footsteps of young black men/women. A disproportionate way of presentation is a way of raising a sense of bias and establishing negative views of the black population.

References

1. "Urban Ethnography: A Reader" edited by Mitchell Duneier, Philip Kasinitz, and Alexandra Murphy

2. "Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets" by Sudhir Venkatesh

3. "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio" by Philippe Bourgois

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