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Poverty in the us
Research paper on gang violence in the bronx
Poverty in the us
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Back in the Bronx during the 1960’s and 1970’s it was common to see poverty, violence, gangs and drug dealers. This city was forgotten about and it was filled with poor people living inhumane places. Buildings were being burned to the ground by gangs hired by landlords, so they could collect insurance money. This lead to the evolution of music which changed society for years to come. In the episode of “The Get Down,” hope, violence and music is used illustrate the character lives and hardships they face in the Bronx. “The Get Down” begins by introducing the two main characters, Mylene and Ezekiel, which are both very talented kids growing up in the rough part of the Bronx. Mylene has an amazing voice and is an ambitious girl …show more content…
This also shows the audience that there were limited ways talented people to leave the Bronx. There were plenty of kids with talent trapped with no hope of ever escaping the conditions. Her dreams are being held back by people close to her, from the little sister telling on her and the father beating on Mylene for going to the club and singing the devil’s music. Mylene loves Ezekiel, but she rejects him for acting like a man and refuse to let anybody hold her back from her goal of escaping the Bronx. Ezekiel is talented himself, but he has no courage and he cares what other people think about him. For example he didn’t want to read his beautiful poem in front of his class and he lied saying he didn’t write the poem. Zeke is the opposite of Mylene where he got talent but he not trying to become anything but another kid who had talent to escape but didn’t use. He thinks there is no chance of escaping the Bronx, so he goes with the flow of life having no ambition. Toward the end of the scene, Mylene rubbed off on him and Ezekiel started wanting to be somebody. When he was at The Get Down, as first he froze up on the microphone and then later he snatched the microphone back and started rapping in front of a large crowd. I think Zeke started to find his meaning in life and he finally felt his gift. Through the eyes of “The Get Down” kids in Bronx had potential, but it was hard for them …show more content…
It portray violence and gang activity to be normal. There was numerous amount of violence in the Bronx during late 20th century, because of low wages and unemployment, which made people turn to other alternative like drug dealing. The Warlord was a gang displayed in the Get Down who attacked Zeke and his friend for being on their territory. Gangs were everywhere in the Bronx particularly on every block. During this time it wasn’t safe to travel alone because there was a high crime rate, which is the reason gangs were created in the first place because it would give young teens and children a sense of protection. Gangs became more than protection when they started committing crimes like robbery, arson and even murder. During the episode, the Savage Warlords went to Kingston Top Stop Variety Store to make the owner sign a contract promising to give them $50 a week not to disturb the peace or hurt the owner. This was normal around this time, because gangs would just intimidate other people for income or sell drugs to the people in their territory. This made surviving life in the Bronx difficult, because all of the crime that was being committed around them. “The Get Down” also portrayed violence to be normal because you here sirens wailing throughout the episode. Another example of how dangerous the Bronx was, Les Inferno was dance club run by a drug dealer which led to a big shootout in the club
To the urban lifestyle of growing up in the ghettos and the hardships. She depicts the usages of drugs, gang, crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and mostly how it effects the community. But also shows how the outside violence comes into the home and can devastate the natural order of the household.
The book emphasizes the idea of how difficult it is to leave the gang lifestyle. There are frequent cases of relapse by individuals in the book, who were once out to again return to gangs. This case is brought by what gangs represent to this in the book and what leaving entails them to give up. The definition of gangs presented to the class was, three or more members, share name, color, or affiliation, or must exist in a geopolitical context. To members associated with gangs, this definition can include your family members, neighborhood, everyone that they associate with. Take for example Ronnie from Jumped in by Jorja Leap it states,” Ronny’s role models are gangbangers. His family is a hood. His mentors are older homies in county jail.”(102). Ronnie and other gang members like him do not
In chapter one Stuntz discusses the rise of violence in the early nineteenth and twentieth century, and the arrival of European immigrants, along with African Americans heading north. This also caused a drift between all immigrant groups, young immigrant males began to have rival gangs, also along with no care from the government. In the early
Gang violence is a complex issue with many causes consisting of; lack of jobs, dysfunctional schools, and a biased judicial system, these things have shaped and molded the social structure of this South Central society into something dark and perverse, it has given rise to violence and death, and the inconvenient truth of the matter is it’s our societies fault. References Anderson, Elijah. 1990. The. The Code of the Streets.
Inner-city life is filled with glimmers of hope. The children had hopes of leaving the dreadful streets of the ghetto and moving into an innovative and improved place. There are times when Lafayette states, ...
The movie ‘From Mambo to Hip-Hop’ is a great documentary about a revolution in the entertainment industry. It talks of evolution on Salsa music and Hip-Hop culture in suburbs of New York. South Bronx is a ghetto neighbourhood. The people living in the area are challenged economically. There is a record of high cases of violence that exist in the streets due to high crime rate and drugs being traded as a means of survival (Gordon, 2005). Most of the people living in the area are descendants of African immigrants who could trace their origin in the Caribbean islands with a large number Latin American population too.
All through their lives Pharoah and LaFayette are surrounded by violence and poverty. Their neighborhood had no banks, no public libraries no movie theatres, no skating rinks or bowling allies. Drug abuse was so rampant that the drug lords literally kept shop in an abondoned building in the progjects, and shooting was everywhere. Also, there were no drug rehabilitation programs or centers to help combat the problem. Police feared going into the ghetto out of a fear for their own safety. The book follows Pharoah and LaFayette over a two year period in which they struggle with school, attempt to resist the lure of gangs, mourn the death of close friends, and still find the courage to search for a quiet inner peace, that most people take for granted.
Comparing ?Everyday Use?, ?Sonny?s Blues? and ?The Cathedral?, one can conclude that they share a common meaning. Although all three stories consider poverty as their theme, each chooses to elaborate it in a different manner. In fact, ?Everyday Use? emphasizes on the state of extreme poverty in which certain people live. On the other hand, ?Sonny?s Blues? contributes to the theme by describing the poverty of spirit of Harlem?s ?inner kids?. Carver?s ?The Cathedral?, however, prefers to explore the notion of poverty as a state of one?s mind rather than the environment in which one lives.
As for the analysis of the book itself, although the author aims toward providing a chronicle of two years in the lives of the two brothers, he actually ends up writing more about their mother. He discusses LaJoe's parents, how they met and married and why they moved to Horner. He depicts LaJoe as an extremely kind-hearted yet tough woman who will do anything to help not only her own family, but all the neighborhood children as well. LaJoe feeds and cares for many of the neighborhood children. For this, she is rare and special in an environment of black mothers who are prostitutes and drug addicts. She sticks by her children when most mothers would be ashamed and disown them. I finished this book feeling a great deal of respect and admiration for LaJoe and everytihg she went through.
Boyz N the Hood was a film created to convey an anti-gang message as well as to provide societal members an in-depth look at life in “the hood” so he or she can expand their culturally awareness of identifying societal issues (Stevenson, 1991). Upon the debut of “Boyz N the Hood” violence erupted at theaters across the nation, resulting in multiple shows pulling the film from scheduled showings to alleviate future violent behaviors (Stevenson, 1991). The film profoundly illustrates the realty of the events revealed within the storyline that frequently occur on a daily basis within every impoverish community; however, is overlooked by the individuals who are not directly involved and or affected (Leon-Guerrero, 2016) Children of lower socioeconomic status often are raised in ghetto neighborhoods where they often witness, crime, violence, gang activity, abuse, and drugs (Leon-Guerrero, 2016). Ghetto communities envelop tumultuous cycles of violence and substance abuse creating a pervasive occurrence within the residents of the community. This is prevalent in lower developed communities that unfortunately many children and the youth populace indirectly inherit and sadly conform to, as there are no other means to an end for them (Leon-Guerrero,
One of the theories that is associated with this school is the “Concentric Zone Theory”, which states that some of the highest crime rates will occur in the zone in transition (Lilly, 2012, p. 40). This is shown in the film when looking at the neighborhoods where much of the crime occurs. These neighborhoods are full of families that live in or close to poverty (Kotlowitz, 2012). The violence interrupters were taking a large step in trying to solve many of these problems, much like Shaw and McKay, with neighborhood organization (Lilly, 2012, p. 41). The group of people in the film would walk around and talk to citizens within the community and try and explain to them that violence was not the answer. They wanted the youth and the people on the streets to know that situations could be handled differently and one way to stop the violence that was occurring was by calling a ceasefire. The Chicago School of Criminology also explains that “juveniles were often drawn into crime through their association with older siblings or gang members” (Lilly, 2012, p. 41). Many of the youth that were involved in crimes in the film had history of crimes in their families. Some, like the people in the violence interrupters group, were able to escape the life of violence and continue to share their story and hopefully help people. Much of the crimes throughout the show were based on blood
When first reading “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, it may initially seem that the relationship between musicians and drugs is synonymous. Public opinion suggests that musicians and drugs go hand and hand. The possibility lies that Sonny’s passion for jazz music is the underlying reason for his drug use, or even the world of jazz music itself brought drugs into Sonny’s life. The last statement is what the narrator believes to be true. However, by delving deeper and examining the theme of music in the story, it is nothing but beneficial for Sonny and the other figures involved. Sonny’s drug use and his music are completely free of one another. Sonny views his jazz playing as a ray of light to lead him away from the dim and dismal future that Harlem has to offer.
There is a misconception regarding rap music content about how it predominantly focuses on the topics of drugs, sex and money. Various people do not understand that rap music is a valuable method of expressing one’s emotions and thoughts. The lyrics in rap music are able to strongly represent a broader story of someone’s story. Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise is a story of what it was like as an African-American male to grow up in the ghettos. Through his lyrics, Coolio explains the real-life problems of living in Compton, his hometown. His music describes how immense the amount violence inner city violence that occurred and what he had to become in order to fit into that society. The point of this song was to show those who had not experienced what he had gone through some insight. Coolio mentions how his deviant actions have affected his relationship with his mother. He attempts to justify that murder and violence were the only way to survive on the streets he lived in. The song devises numerous associations to the situation of class, socialization and the conflict subculture. In his
Rap and hip-hop is an artistic mirror reflecting society, which is violent in some places, and needs not a moral dismemberment via the glorification of fictional violence. The history of hip-hop has some sting to it, being that deaths have been caused and childhoods are under affect; the actions that younger listeners who enjoy hip-hop are not influenced by the songs or the artists, but only by perception of their surroundings. All that hinders a strong faith in hip-hop is its “gangsta rap” counterpart. Violence is a reaction, not an action.
In Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace, he examines the lives and experiences of many children living in the Bronx. In all cases, they lived in run-down apartments surrounded by violence, drugs, and hopelessness. His main argument was that the poor people of this area were not treated well by the city, and the society tried to hide and forget about them. The second chapter of his book have several examples of this practice.