The book, Random Family, written by author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, provides a fascinating depiction of the lives of individuals in disadvantaged urban areas. The book allows individuals to experience a life of crime, deceitfulness, and incarceration through the lives of the characters in Random Family. The endeavors portrayed by the individuals in LeBlanc’s book demonstrate the determination of people who desire to escape ghetto captivity in search for better opportunities.
A life in the ghetto inherently derives from an individual’s inability to conform to the expectations of conventional society. Permissible behaviors in underprivileged areas, fail to align with the traditional methods of proper etiquette in modern societies. The environment one associates with significantly influences their perception of societal norms. The unfortunate reality is that children of lower socio-demographics are often exposed to acts of violence on a regular basis. Moreover, to alleviate the stigma, parents of children in disadvantaged neighborhoods should avoid viewing films that promote violence, as it is inappropriate behavior for children to observe. However, parents
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Collectively, each deficiency must be successful fulfill before advancing to the other levels. The diagram essentially motives individuals to ensure his or her needs eventually get met. Case in point, Coco has advanced to the entry level of esteem, as she is no longer depriving her children of a stable living environment; hence, re-servicing their cognitive development. Often, the individuals who associate with underprivileged developments lack the desire to break the vicious cycle of habitation as the opportunity to do so rarely presents itself. However, Coco takes the initiative to uproot her family of four for a new start in a smaller town better suitable for family
Where we’re from, who we know, and how our mental makeup is, is very important in our lives. It can be the deciding factor between life in prison and a life dedicated to giving back to others. In The Other Wes Moore, The lives of two young men are examined through three distinct lenses, how the role our environment, social capital (How we get ahead by helping each other) and how our mindset can dictate who we become later on in life. Both of these young men grew up in roughly the same environment, the ghettos of Baltimore, Maryland and the Bronx, New York, respectively.
In the world we live in today, an estimated 100 million people find themselves homeless and over 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing. For most, being homeless and in poverty is not the desired lifestyle and people work hard to have a constant roof over their heads, and food on the table. However, for a select few, living in poverty and being homeless is a life decision that they desire and enjoy. Both families in the memoirs Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt find themselves in extreme poverty. Neither Rex and Rose Marie Walls nor Angela and Malachy McCourt have the ability to feed, clothe, or house themselves and their families.
The Other Wes Moore is an interesting nonfiction novel about the challenges and adversities that children growing up in poor inner city communities face. The author, Wes Moore, examines how the support systems and role models a child has when growing up are crucial to their development. He explain that while the inner city children have control over their own decisions, the influences around them all put pressure on them to make the wrong choices. There was not a huge difference in the lives of Wes and Moore while they were growing up, and the end result of their lives could have easily been reversed if it had not been for the intervention of Moore’s mentors and family. Moore was on a bad path as he was growing up, but the intervention of
In Alex Kotlowitz’s book, There Are No Children Here, he explains the challenges and hardships a family faces growing up in the Henry Horner projects through social construct. Throughout the book, the social constructs are based off social class, discrimination, poverty, and social location. Due to where ones family is raised or comes from, their location influences ones decisions, in which may cause them to lead a life of crime. My beliefs, after completing the book, were reaffirmed. Those living in a social class below poverty, have a harder time “making it” then someone who lives on a nicer side of town.
Kids in the most disadvantaged neighborhood, with low family resources, bad schools, and neighborhoods characterized by violence are the ones who are being punished unfairly and are not given second chances. This is because of the discrimination and the bias of the criminal justice system against poor African-American communities, which represent a concentrated disadvantage in that case. Moreover it affirms the theory that the poor are more likely to get to prison because there is a bias in arrest such as the neighborhood social class that affects the presence of the police and their arrests. In that case 6th street is considered a neighborhood that represents communities that are disadvantaged, and therefore the presence of police is greater than necessary. Instead of having the resources from outside to ameliorate the conditions of the neighborhood and improve schools or academic institutions, the efforts and resources are being invested in the war against crimes, but without giving an alternative solution for their
Many of the boys pretended that negative interactions and stereotyping did not affect them, but their bravo personas only masked the fear inside. Fear made the boys feel weaker and less masculine, so they would deviate from social norms to regain respect and dignity among their peers and for themselves. Routine patterns of punishment eventually lead the boys to develop an altered view of thoughts, beliefs, and ways of behaving in order to survive the tough life set them. Chapter two concentrates on the history of Oakland, incarceration rates, youth systems of control, and the boy’s resistance to punishment and brutalization. The Oakland ghetto consists of a multiracial community, predominantly African-American and Latino, that are equally targeted and brutalized by police
J.D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a personal psychological, cultural and sociological analysis of poor white working-class Americans. Specifically, Hillbilly Elegy examines the life of the author in Middletown Ohio, a once booming post war steel town that today has a struggling economy, diminishing family values and a rapid increase in drug abuse. At the beginning of the memoir, Vance perfectly situates the reader to the uniqueness from his life in Middletown. Vance repeatedly wrote throughout the memoir that the youth living in this Ohio steel town has a bleak and troubling future. Vance illustrates the statistics that children like him living in these towns were lucky if they just manage to avoid welfare or unlucky by dying from a heroin overdose.
Elijah Anderson, a Yale professor, developed the concept or theory entitled the “code of the street” which explains the reasoning for high rates of street violence among African-American juveniles in a Philadelphia community. The “code of the street” is the way of life for many living in poverty-stricken communities which attempt to regulate behaviors. Anderson observed that juveniles in inner-city neighborhoods who are exposed to racial discrimination, economic disadvantages and alienation from mainstream society may lead violent behavior. The strain, social learning, and labeling theories are all directly related to Anderson’s work.
All children are different so it is the parent’s responsibility to determine whether or not their children can handle the different media. Some media critics believe that violent cartoons, video games, movies etc. are good for children. Gerard Jones gives an example in his essay “Violent media is good for kids” which he explains how violent media can be good for children, Jones explains his point by giving an example of his son. Jones tells how he exposed his son to marvel comics which helped him in his kindergarten experience. The marvel characters gave Jones’s son the desire of “transforming himself into a bloodthirsty dinosaur to embolden himself for the plunge into preschool” (373).
Children will always find ways to watch these kind of shows with the type of technology that is available now. Children can watch these type of shows on all type of devices now such as cell phones, I-pads and etc. These children can also view these shows outside the home without the parent’s knowledge. Parents can control the amount of violent television shows by monitoring the programs that their children watch at home and by removing the television out of the child’s room. Also, with today’s technology, televisions now come with parental control and so does other devices.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has graphic violence that may seem pathetic compared to the media of the 21st century American society. Violence can affect children and adolescents up to the age of 18 mentally, physically, and socially. As Zena Rudo, senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research with 35 years of experience, infers through her research, “Social learning theory suggests that violence exposure has effects on children's behavior through modeling and the positive and negative reinforcement of aggression... and through the development of coercive parent--child interactions” (94). Children exposed to violence can begin to behave aggressively and develop unhealthy relationships with their parental figures. Detrimental
The Story of the Vargas Family “Rosa Vargas’ kids are too many and too much. It’s not her fault, you know, except she is their mother and only one against so many” (Cisneros 29). In the novel The House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, touches on the many negative consequences of a single, impoverished mother raising an overwhelming amount of children. Poverty, discrimination, parental and neighborly responsibility, and respect are all issues and social forces that act upon the family; their presence or lack thereof cause several grisly occurrences to take place. Poverty was almost like a curse given to Rosa Vargas by her husband, who “left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come” (29).
Today, it is normal for modern technology to show many forms of violence. These acts of violence may influence children and teens to be more aggressive in everyday life. For example, I babysit a pair of twin boys. Their names are Devin and Gavin. Devin and Gavin like to play video games.
Even though parents still may not see the appealed of letting their children be exposed to violent content due to the fear of them
There are many studies on media violence and its social effects. Most of the studies have indicated that children who are exposed to media violence are more likely to exhibit violent and aggressive behaviors. As the child observes the violence, he/she is motivated by the fact that the show is enjoyable without realizing the violent behaviors. As a result, they copy and identify the behavior, and this has detrimental effects on their social life. According to Boxer et al., the content of the media has a direct impact on its audiences (420).