Tyrec Taylor (African American, working-class) and I meet in the living room of the house his mother bought a few years earlier. Tyrec, who is tall and wears his hair in long, neatly kept cornrows, is wearing an ironed white T-shirt and casual pants. A tattoo on his forearm bears his nickname, “Ty.” His manner is quiet, low-key. Although he visits his mother often, Tyrec lives with his father (and his father’s girlfriend).
Tyrec attended three different high schools. His mother helped him apply to a respected charter school. He was accepted and did well academically. But he missed his friends and longed for an opportunity to play high school basketball. Ms. Taylor permitted Tyrec to transfer to Lower Richmond High in the middle of his sophomore year, a decision she bitterly regrets. “Once I got in school with my friends, I was just running loose,” Tyrec confesses. He passed only three courses (and became ineligible to play basketball). At sixteen, he “got locked up” because, he tells me, “I was running with the wrong people.” The case went to court, but “I didn’t get found guilty or nothing,” Tyrec reports. Upon release from juvenile hall, he moved in with his father.
Ms. Taylor’s efforts to get Tyrec back into a charter school failed. Frantically worried about him returning to Lower Richmond, she persuaded her ex-husband to take out a $6,000 loan, promising that she would repay half of it, to cover Tyrec’s senior year at a private school. There, Tyrec regained a sense of stability, met his (current) girlfriend, and focused more on schoolwork. His parents’ shouldering of substantial debt on his behalf led him to feel, as he puts it, “like I better pass.” He graduated.
Tyrec never took the SAT or ACT, and he seems to have taken few of the high school courses four-year colleges require for admission. He enrolled in the local community college for two semesters, spread over a four-year period. He took four courses (two were required remedial classes) at a cost of $2,500, which he and his father paid for in cash. His mother helped cover the cost of his books.
Tyrec’s work experiences have been erratic. He has worked in fast food restaurants and in a shopping mall; he has been a sales clerk in a drug store and a convenience store. None of these jobs lasted more than a few months. With his cousin’s help, Tyrec recently landed a highly desirable construction job in lead abatement. After a two-week-long training program (which cost $500), he was certified and immediately began working, for $12.00 per hour.
He says he wants to form a business with his cousin, remodeling homes and selling real estate. But he is often preoccupied with simple survival. Two of his good friends have been killed in recent years. When I ask what he plans to be doing five years from now, Tyrec says, “I don’t even know. Tell you the truth, I hope, like right now, I’m not dreaming at nothing like extravagant, I’m just hoping I’ll be ok. It’s crazy out here. I’m hoping I’m still alive . . .”
Billy Yanelli (white, working-class) lives at home with his parents. He and I meet there. Dressed in long baggy shorts and a T-shirt, he looks simultaneously like his grade-school self and strikingly older. He is heavy set, with clear skin and bright eyes. His buzz cut is gelled to stand straight up. The Yanellis have remained in the same house, in the same white, working-class neighborhood. Financially, the family is doing reasonably well. When Billy was in elementary school, his father’s company unionized, and Mr. Yanelli’s wages increased substantially, as did his benefits. Recently, Billy became an apprentice in the same union.
The behavioral problems Billy had in elementary school continued. He recalls “getting suspended for this and that [in middle school]. Talkin’ back to the teachers, stuff like that, just a problem child.” High school brought more of the same. From day one at Lower Richmond High, Billy had not been optimistic. He says he “knew” immediately that he “wasn’t gonna graduate high school.” He tells me about a “little incident” that led to him being suspended: “Me and my buddy were running around the hallway one time, slamming doors. And then, I slammed the door on one of the teachers and [the teacher] got hit.” (Ms. Yanelli strongly believes Billy was wrongly accused of hitting a teacher and thus unfairly suspended.) He dropped out his sophomore year. Later, he enrolled in a $500 test preparation course for the GED, took the exam, and passed. “It got me in the painters’ union,” he says. “That’s all I cared about.”
Although his knowledge of college is vague, Billy maintains, “Everybody that comes out of college right now is gonna be loaded [become rich].” Still, he is not tempted. He says it is “too late” for him, and, “I already got my heart set on a career. I’m trying to hang with this; I can’t hang with college.” Unfortunately, thus far, Billy’s work experiences mirror his school life: behavioral problems undermine his success. He is on probation in his apprentice program. He walked off a job, and he failed a mandatory urine test for drug use (he had smoked marijuana with friends the weekend before the test). These actions make his job precarious. “It’s like, three strikes, you’re out,” he explains.
Billy feels that, overall, he is “doing better than a lot of people.” He has his GED, a job, and “a nice car.” Although he has not had a serious girlfriend, he and a group of friends enjoy “partying” together regularly. He readily admits, “I’m not perfect,” but “I’m a lot more successful than a lot of people in this neighborhood. I’m one of the top five. I can say that.” When I ask him about his plans for the future, he is optimistic. “Hopefully, have a house, a nice car,” he responds, and then, summing up his vision of the future, adds, “Just working and going, still having fun.”
Youths from Poor Families
When Katie Brindle (white, poor) is eighteen, I visit her in the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her new husband, Dave, and her sixteen-month-old daughter, Nirani. Katie is earning $9.00 per hour working as a maid for a major hotel chain; Dave is in construction. They have been married about six months. Katie is dressed in gray sweatpants and sweatshirt. Her long, straight blond hair is pulled up; her bright pink lipstick, black eye make-up, and long, elaborately painted fingernails give her a stylish look. She has several prominent tattoos including one with the name of her daughter. Katie feels she is doing “great.” A year and a half later, we meet again, this time at her older sister Jenna’s house. Katie and Dave have separated (“When I get enough money,” Katie says firmly, “I’m going to divorce him”), and Nirani, now three, is living with Jenna and her family. Katie is cleaning houses (with her mother) and living alternately with her mother and with friends. She seems both hopeful and worn out.
The move that Katie, her mother, and her toddler brother, Melmel, made to Florida when Katie was nine lasted less than a year. The family returned to Lower Richmond, and Katie went to middle school there. She did well academically, but she began experimenting with drugs and started fighting with other students. Still, her middle-school teacher helped her fill out applications for high school, and she was accepted at three high schools: a highly desirable, publicly funded school about a 20-minute bus ride from home; a nearby vocationally focused high school; and a local comprehensive high school. Her mother narrowed the pool to two (she did not want Katie traveling across town). Katie chose the vocational school but, she explains, she quickly found it oppressive. “I’d start fights with people, I’d rip stuff from the walls,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be there, so they kicked me out.” The local comprehensive public high school did not work out either. Throughout ninth and tenth grades, she cut classes, drank, “smok[ed] weed,” and got into fights. She also got pregnant the summer after sophomore year.