Racial Inequality and Crime: Struggles of Urban African American Girls

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Recommended: Relationship Between Crime And Gender

Getting played is a well written portrayal of the harsh realities of African American girls in poor urban environments. The theoretical framework this book uses will be related to Sampson and Wilson 's Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality 1995. The relationship with race and crime is complex with historical, cultural, structural factors and more. The Unequal Treatment of Girls in the Ghetto Black girls in urban environments have high rates of being victims. There are multiple causal factors for this including many environmental factors such as these neighborhoods having low collective efficacy, few resources, low supervision, and more. Routine activity theory, strain, social disorganization theory, and more can be included …show more content…

Some girls put themselves in situations that put them at higher risk. These situations can be getting high and drunk at a party or at a guys house and he takes advantage of her, as well as wearing provocative clothing and having a reputation of having sex with others. Many of these boys believe that if you take a girl out to a nice restaurant and buy her stuff that they deserve to have sex. When girls deny sex it can be seen as disrespect to guys in these communities and can lead to isolation or violence. If it is not physical coercion many of the time these girls are lied to and set up to run trains on them. The black girls in these neighborhoods live in a place of poverty and in a community that lives in inequality and they are the ones who face even deeper forms of inequality because of their gender. The males in these communities have the power especially when it comes to physical and social power. This is due to structural and cultural …show more content…

The cultures that are bred in these impoverished neighborhoods like in Getting Played support criminal activity and put a stigma on getting help from the police or other government officials. The police are not seen as helping the community but as an enemy. This system increases the likelihood of physical conflict, revenge and mistrust. These girls have to fend for themselves in the streets and in their own homes from physical and sexual violence. The social capital that exists for many of these girls is strongly correlated with what the boys give them. The girl who are able to get guys to buy her stuff has more prestige in the neighborhood, but once she gets pregnant she loses her status. It is common for pregnant girls to be abandoned by the man who got her pregnant which gives rise to a broken home which is a predictor of crime. This is a generational occurrence that can help maintain the poverty, isolation, and disorganization that poor blacks

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