Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

Ain’t No Makin’ It : Aspirations and Attainments in a Low-Income Neighborhood by Jay MacLeod. Ain’t No Makin’ It is a critique on the ways that social class is reproduced from generation to generation. If we see this essay from a sociological point of view then it is a critical analysis of Aspirations and Attainments of people that varies from class to class, race to race etc. According to the essay and the author, there are distinct ideologies in this community who believe that school systems only have the capacity to overcome the achievement gap between class of students i.e. rich and poor.

We must admit that this essay is really complex if we go deep through it. The author divided the book into three distinct parts, Part I The Hallway Hangers

and the Brothers as a Teenagers, Part II Eight Years Later: Low Income, Low Outcome, and Part III Ain’t No Makin’ It? The Men at Midlife. Here MacLeod brought us to the Clarendon Height where we met the two peer group which are The Hallway Hangers (predominantly white group of teenagers and pessimist of achievement ideology) and the Brothers (predominantly black and optimist/believers of achievement ideology).
These two groups were raised in poverty and in financial crises. According to author, MacLeod, these two groups didn’t get themselves out of poverty because they think that there are several and numerous barriers in the society which do not let them to be out of poverty.
These two group “The Hallway Hangers” and “Brothers s” lived in a similar situation and shared same community with exactly the same financial difficulties but still there are variations in the thought of this people with individual’s expectations and achievement ideology. On one hand there are Brothers who anticipate what future holds for them just like having decent job, house, garden, families etc. There were 7 boys in this group who had high expectations as well as aspirations. This group internalizes the success philosophy believing that if they will work hard than they can make to the middle class. On the other hand, we have The Hallway Hangers who think exactly the opposite what Brothers do. Most of them believed that there was no equal opportunity so they became pessimist specially in getting jobs. They take drugs, drop schools, engage in criminal activities etc. They were wretched about their prospects for social mobility. This difference can be illustrated by two different characters Juan (a Brother) and Frankie (a Hallway Hanger) about what their lives will be like in 20 years? This is what they said:
Juan: I’ll have a regular house, y’know, with a yard and everything. I’ll have a
steady job, a good job. I’ll be living the good life, the easy life.
Frankie: I don’t fucking know. Twenty years. I may be fucking dead. I live a
day at a time. I’ll probably be in the fucking pen.
These statements made us to admit that these two boys Juan and Frankie from the different group had different opinions about success in their life.

Hallway Hangers and Brothers had entirely different way of living life with different perspective. Hallway Hangers believed that to gain respects from others one’s must be bad and fearless. In the contrary, the Brothers give respects without any physical strength. Their way of living life displays their individual personalities what they have. Juan is only the one from Brothers who had completed school and he was not physically strong. All the boys from brothers were good at extracurricular activities. They were good at sports.

The boys from Hallway Hangers could just roam around the society doing nothing at all and they don’t have any problem doing so. However, the Brothers couldn’t stay doing absolutely nothing. They believed to utilize their spare time doing anything that would be productive to them. The Brothers were not interested in stuffs like drinking, making troubles or engaging in criminal activities. Brothers were committed to following rules and gaining their degrees. All of the Hallway Hagners boys attended the same high school. Their experiences split in a huge amount. The author describes how the school is comprised of myriad tracks which are created to motivate students to choose the subject or course of study which will be productive and suit for their future. Nevertheless, we saw how without sufficient counseling

from school counselors, concerned personnel/teachers impact the students for social mobility and their thinking for the future.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (Schooled by Social Class) stressed their “correspondence principle” which spotlights the similarity between the social relations of production and personal interaction in the schools.

Author McLeod finds to investigate the tightness between personal agency and structural barriers to social mobility. According to his own words, how “class based institutional mechanisms set limits on mobility, thereby ensuring social reproduction, while cultural innovations can be at once both functional of dysfunctional for social reproduction” (PN 152). He acknowledges that the society is structured in such a way that despite of personal ambitions and aspirations, “no matter how diligently they devote themselves to schools, they cannot escape the constraints of social class” (PN:

150).
In the following parts, the boys became young men in their mid-20‘s struggling hard to find steady job and then other older men too, only trying to be able to working class stability. We have further sections where second and the third sections tell the stories of men no longer involved with the formal education system. The author did extremely well displaying how the social welfare policies, drug, racism, alcoholism etc. effected to the men to find steady job in the labor market. He also wrote that “if the Hallway Hangers show that opting out of the contest is not a viable option, the Brothers show that dutifully playing by the rules hardly guarantees success either…they show how rigid and durable the class structure is. Aspiration, application, and intelligence often cut through the firm figurations of structural inequality” (P.N. 243).
The limit of the class structure then, school proved not to be the agent for upward mobility for which Brothers believed it to be. Finally, in the end it was only possible through the social relationship with supportive associates, family members or with the god, so that they were able to maintain peace and dignity. In this essay school is a source which reproduces class and also not perfectly furnished to vary structural inequalities. The character Brothers taught us the belief in the achievement ideology does not even guarantee the success in the future or what future holds for one who believe in achievement ideology.
In essence, this essay Ain’t No Makin’ it focused on two distinct group of teenage boys who were entirely different with their individual’s nature and also with the perspective. Macleod inspected about poverty and why poor tends to remain poor rich tends to get richer. This essay is a good example for people like us who take stress thinking for our future, where lots of other people with distinct and multiple talents will compete with us making keen competition in future’s world. In this essay the author believed that the Brothers should overcome all the racial and social barriers to move on from low class to the middle class and to view more opportunities more openly. It was the fault of Hallway Hangers who had chosen to live their life entirely different than that of Brothers. This essay reflects the research made by MacLeod who essentially tried to express what he feels and also tried to show us his perception on how to alter the class structure to reform the education system.

CHARACTERS
Hallway Hangers:
• Frankie - White/Irish
• Slick - White/Irish, Intelligent, GED
• Stoney – White/Italian, high school dropout, smokes a lot
• Jinx – White/Irish, sensitive person, high school dropout
• Steve – White/Irish, younger brother of Slick
• Shorty – White/Irish, high school dropout, fearless
• Chris – Biracial (black/white), high school dropout, drug dealer
• Boo-Boo – Black, high school dropout, serious.
Brothers:
• James – Black, small, quick tongue, GED
• Mokey – Black, switches interests, high school grad, dropout from community college.
• Mike – White/half Portuguese, high school grad, athlete
• Derek – Black, high school grad, Boo-Boo’s half brother
• Juan – African – Caribbean (Dominican), high school grad
• Super – Black, high school grad, fighter
• Criag - African – Caribbean, Bachelor’s degree, good athelete