As this field note suggests, Harold’s restraint was disconcerting after so many observations of working-class and middle-class children who routinely ask their parents to purchase items for them.
But Harold does not live a life of total deprivation. Ms. McAllister is committed to meeting her children’s basic needs, and, whenever possible, supplying them with “extras.” For example, the field-workers noted occasions when she gave the children money to buy a soda or a bag of chips at a store near the housing project. Ms. McAllister sees herself as a very capable mother. Like Alexander Williams’s mother, she wants her children to be successful and happy. She strives to provide a strong, positive influence in their lives (unlike the drug-addicted mothers in the project), but she views her role as a parent very differently from the way Ms. Williams views hers. In the McAllister family, as in other poor and working-class families, a parent’s key responsibility lies in providing important physical care for children, offering clothing and shelter, teaching the difference between right and wrong, and providing comfort. In all of this, language plays an important, practical role. Unlike Ms. Williams, Ms. McAllister does not continuously attempt to enrich Harold’s vocabulary, cultivate his verbal (or physical) talents, cajole him, or attempt to persuade him to act in particular ways. When Harold complains, as in the opening of the chapter, that his teacher “lies,” his mother listens quietly and reminds him of a teacher she did like, but unlike Ms. Williams she does not have her son elaborate. Ms. McAllister often issues short, clear directives and she expects prompt, respectful compliance. Harold rarely challenges any directive issued by an adult, nor does he try to reason or negotiate with either of his parents. The strong, clear boundaries Ms. McAllister draws between adults and children do not, however, lead her to tightly control Harold’s activities. He and the other children are free to play, watch TV, and spend time with their nearby friends without specifically consulting her. In contrast to middle-class children’s worlds, where children’s activities often supplant kinship time, extended family networks play a very important role among the McAllisters.
These differences in parenting, especially language use, affect the children’s lives both outside and inside the home. The emerging sense of entitlement that is apparent when Alexander Williams visits the doctor, for example, is shaped by his ability to use language to control how the doctor perceives him. Alex is at ease with adults (so much so that he casually interrupts the doctor); he visits the doctor often enough to be familiar with the routines; and since he is used to being questioned and having his answers attended to, he supplies information fluidly. It is different when Harold goes to a clinic for a physical for Bible camp. Mistrust of doctors and other professionals and lack of familiarity with the practices and terminology of health-care professionals combine to tongue-tie his mother and constrain him. Harold has neither the language nor conversational skills that Alexander takes for granted. He is unfamiliar with questioning and probing, and he has no experience making special demands of persons in authority. The result is an emerging sense of constraint. The positive aspects of Harold’s upbringing—the ease he displays with his peers, his resourcefulness in creating games and organizing his own time, his respectful attitude toward adults, his deep connection to family members—are rendered nearly invisible in the “real world” of social institutions. Educators, health-care professionals, employers, and others accept (and help to reproduce) an ideology that values, among other things, reasoning and negotiating skills, large vocabularies, facility in speaking and working with strangers, and time management—the very attributes children like Alexander Williams develop in their daily lives. By looking closely at parts of Harold’s life, especially the role of language, this chapter uncovers ways in which these institutional preferences evolve into institutionalized inequality, as differences come to be defined as deficits.
LETTING HAROLD BE “PLAIN OLD HAROLD”:
THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF NATURAL GROWTH
Harold McAllister, the target child, is a fourth-grader at Lower Richmond elementary school. With his large shoulders and stocky build, he has the look of a budding football player. This is how Alexis describes her older brother:
Harold is plain old Harold. He never changes. He does the same thing over and over and over again. He listens to the radio. He plays basketball. He listens to the radio. He watches TV. He goes to sleep. He watches TV. He listens to the radio, he watches TV, he plays basketball. And he’s just plain old Harold. He don’t do nothing that’s fun.
In Harold’s view, doing the “same thing over and over” is fun. He loves sports and would happily play basketball (which he is particularly fond of) or football for most of any given day. He follows professional sports closely. Most afternoons, he is either watching television or, more likely, outside playing ball. The number of children available to play with varies, but for Harold, unlike for Alexander Williams, there is always someone to play with. There are forty children of elementary school age residing in the rows of apartments surrounding the McAllister’s apartment. With so many children nearby, Harold could choose to play only with others his own age. In fact, though, he spends time with both older and younger children, and with his cousins (who are close to his age).
Family Ties
Unlike Alexander Williams or Garrett Tallinger, Harold has ready access to his extended family. His cousins, Runako and Guion, practically live at his house, and his aunts are close by. But family ties are more than a matter of convenience. The connections linking Harold to his cousins and aunts, to his grandmother, to his father, and to his father’s relatives are fundamentally important to him—they form the context of his life. On any given day, he is likely to share a bed with Runako and a basketball with his cousin Guion. He runs errands for his aunts, and he takes the bus by himself to visit his grandmother and his father’s relatives.
Harold celebrates special occasions such as his birthday with his relatives. Among the McAllisters, the parties are not, as in middle-class families, based on friends from school or from extracurricular activities. Extended family members pool their resources and energies, celebrating birthdays with enthusiasm. There is cake and special food; presents, however, are not often part of the occasion. Similarly, at Christmas there is a tree and special food, but no presents. At these and other family events, older children voluntarily play with and take care of their younger siblings and cousins while adults mingle and talk among themselves.
Organization of Daily Life
Organized activities, the backbone of Alexander Williams and Garrett Tallinger’s leisure time, are nonexistent in Harold’s life.5 He structures his time much to his own liking. He enjoys tossing a football around with his friends and relatives; he also organizes basketball games, playing off the bare, rusty hoop that hangs from a telephone pole on a side street in the housing project. One obstacle to enjoying sports is a shortage of equipment. Hunting for balls is routine part of Harold’s leisure time. For example, one very hot and humid June day, Harold, his cousin Guion, and a field-worker wandered around the housing project for about an hour, searching for a basketball. Later that afternoon, after spending some time listening to music and looking at baseball cards, Harold joined Guion and other children in a water fight that Guion instigated. It was a lively game, filled with laughter, and with efforts to get the adults next door wet (against their wishes).