Exploring Essay: Always Running By Luis J. Rodriguez

According to the book Punished: Policing The Lives Of Black And Latino Boys by Victor Rios, he explores hyper criminalization of Latino and African American young men in Oakland. He was a former gang member and juvenile delinquent. He earned a degree in sociology. He explains and describes how the working class youth of color who lived in Oakland are harassed, disciplined, watched and profiled at a young age by the authorities even if they have not committed any crimes. Moreover, his research are based on forty Latino and African American young men in Oakland. He studied this issue for about three years. According to this book, it gives details about how the culture of punishment works and explores the harmful effects on the young men in the

The book that was read in class was ‘Runner’ by Robert Newton. It was based in the year 1919 in Richmond which is a poor suburb in Melbourne. It is about a boy named Charlie Feehan who is only fourteen years old. He lives with his Ma and little brother Jack. Charlie and his family aren’t very wealthy. Charlie really likes running because it gets his mind off of things and because he is poor he only really craves one thing which is warmth and running makes him warm. He ends up applying for a job with a guy named Squizzy Taylor to earn money for his family, he gets the job and he becomes a part of the gang and is the runner for all the jobs Squizzy Taylor needs being done. Charlie ends up quitting the job later on in the book when he realises

People read books to escape or to get away. People also read books to learn. In the story East Side Dreams written by Art Rodriguez tells a story about when Art was young growing up in the East Side of San Jose. He was living life fast in the streets and was getting into trouble at a young age. East Side Dreams reaches out to the youth and shows kids involved in gangs that there is a way out. When involved in a gang you feel there is no way out, nobody understands your struggle and your chances of dying is 60% more than the average person. It is important to reach out to the youth and Art Rodriguez has done a great job contributing to that cause.

Gang life and involved were forced upon him due to his environment. His parents had to move around a lot after his father lost his job at the school and went to jail. The privileges others had Luis didn’t have, “I didn’t have guidance from parents or older siblings” (Rodriguez 22).

The Dominican Republic is a beautiful island located on a larger piece of land called Hispaniola. The tropical land takes up two-thirds of Hispaniola which equals out to be roughly 19,000 square miles, while its sister island, Haiti, takes up the rest. According to an article by world atlas, there are four significant mountain ranges. Lesser ranges cover the northern coastlines, and the southwestern border areas with Haiti (World Atlas). The Dominican Republic lies between the

Luis Rodriguez’s childhood was filled with humiliation, he was always tortured and beaten by his older brother named Rano. For example, Rano would tie a rope around Luis’s head and play cowboy treating him like a horse, he would also push him off from the roof of the house. Luis was often times bullied by his older brother, which inspired other children to mess around with Luis as well. Luis had a difficult time adapting because his family was constantly moving from one

The book On the Run by Alice Goffman narrates six years Goffman spent hanging out in a black poor neighborhood of West Philadelphia that she calls 6th Street. During her stay there, she became friends with a group of resident young men, and got to know their surroundings such as girlfriends and family members. This experience in this disadvantaged neighborhood pushed her to write this book where she describes the neighborhood’s conditions, the violence encountered by the police and the residents, and the injustices of the criminal justice system. The book’s primary argument is that the continuous threat of surveillance and continuous investigations that lead to the arrest and imprisonment of young people did great harm to 6th Street, turning many of its residents into

The term gang can be attached to a legion of groups which would include outlaws from back in the nineteenth century in the west of America, a congregation of unruly prison inmates, members of the triads, the mafioso, and other organised criminal entities such as sons of anarchy a know motorcycle gang, and groups of socially displaced inner city youths. Despite its diverse definition, the term gang most of the times denotes the involvement to illegal or disreputable activities.

The passage, “Always Running” by Luis J. Rodriguez evokes the tone of indifference. Rodriguez demonstrates these tones through imagery. For example, at the beginning of the passage the narrator, Luis gives us background information about his living situation to set up imagery for the rest of the passage. Then, Luis sets the tone of indifference with this sentence “So without ceremony, we started over the tracks, climbing over discarded market carts and tore-up sofas.” This quote uses the literary device of imagery because the narrator is painting a picture of their environment. He describes his neighborhood without use of any adjectives that express emotion about how he feels about the place. The lack of emotion suggests that they have done this walk before and they have grown indifferent to their surroundings. Another example is at the high point of the story when he and his brother are getting beat up, “I watched the others take turns on my brother, this terror of a brother, and he doubled over, had blood and spew on his shirt, and tears down his face. I wanted to do something, but they held me and I just looked on.” Terror of a brother implies that Rano is a bully himself. Watching this must’ve been hard on Luis, but instead he does nothing. He does not fight back. When Luis just looks on, you can imagine that he just accepts this as something that occurs and they can do nothing about it.

According to Rodriguez, one of his first experiences in school was being put in the back of the classroom, being ignored and isolated. His first teacher basically let him “‘play with some blocks until [they] figure out how to get [him] more involved’” just because he did not speak any English (Rodriguez, 26). Often times, many teachers during this time did not know how to deal with Mexican or Chicano students who did not speak much or any English, so they usually were neglected or not favored over their white counterparts. Consequently, many young Mexicans and Chicanos grow disinterested in school (usually even drop out) due to the fact they are left out or not accommodated for. Rodriguez calls this type of education system, a “two-tiered” education system, where whites were given a better quality education compared to their colored counterparts. For Luis, school continued this way as colored students were not as privileged or treated as well as whites. Because of this education system and society, whites usually felt superior to their colored

“Society thinks we are monsters.” Mr. Antunez said at the beginning of the article Shuttling Between Nations, Latino Gangs Confound the Law. The following paper is going to take a close look at several aspects of Latino gangs and their effects on culture. The taboos and deviant acts that are committed by both groups. Actions the dominant culture has done to enforce the rules of society and, more closely, ways that the dominant culture has been deviant. The material and nonmaterial items in both cultures, and how has one nation’s culture influenced another. What might a sociologist hypothesis be and what type of research would they use. To start off with, let’s look at the two cultures that are in conflict.

Mexican American youths adopted a fashion style known as Zoot Suits that caused the Zoot Suit Riots, a series of conflicts in 1943 between U.S. Sailors and Mexican American youths, demonstrating fashions potential to create conflict and difference between societies.

He shadows them at school and in their neighborhoods watching their day-to-day activities. He notes that police and crime also follow them in their daily activities. The primary goal of his study is to understand how boys in these complex webs of crime, criminalization, and punishment made sense of these processes and to observe their interactions with an authority official. Throughout the book, Rios notes that these boys go through many aspects of criminalization such as the labeling hype. Labeling is a process by which agencies of social control further stigmatize and mark the boys in response to their original label. This gives law officials an even bigger and better opportunity to further belittle these young men and push them further down the road to a criminal existence. By criminalizing all of the boys, the police, it seemed could not tell the difference between criminals and innocent young people try to live their

According to Juana Bordas “the Latino population in the United States grew by 43 percent in the last decade, accounting for more than half of the population gain” (IX). As a consequence the Latinos represent one of the largest and most diverse groups in the USA (cf. Saenz 352).

Gangs activities are frequently portray in the media , the exposure of gang violence have an negative impact on the minds of our youth in our communities . Gangs are described as groups that are involved in gang related crimes and other crimes , such as assaults , rape , and robberies . Gangs are mostly conform of people from the same race or ethnicity , the majority are males and are most likely to be young . The majority of the people that join this groups come from places where they suffer from economic disadvantage and dysfunctional families . One of the issue that is problematic in our society nowadays is the media coverage of gang activities . Since we like in a technological era people on their daily basis have access to different type