As the first edition of the book notes, the middle-class parents appeared to see organized activities as filled with “teachable moments” that helped cultivate their children’s talents. As young adults, most of the middle-class kids articulated a similar perspective, readily linking their past activities to enduring life benefits. Working-class and poor parents who enrolled their children in activities generally did so to provide a safe form of entertainment—“something to do.” As young adults, these kids sounded much like their parents, describing their organized activities as a diversion without long-lasting importance.
Overall, while some young adults spoke positively of their involvement in organized activities, they did not believe that it had significant consequences for the transition into higher education and/or the labor force. It is possible, however, that the young adults were unaware of benefits they accrued from their activities.26 College applications ask about organized activities, and arguably, evidence of participation may give an applicant a competitive edge, particularly in small liberal arts colleges.27 In addition, participation in organized activities gives children experience performing in public. Being comfortable performing in public could be useful in many settings, including in speaking out in a college seminar. Also, one ethnographic study of hiring decisions in an investment bank, a prestigious law firm, and a business firm found that extracurricular involvements were crucial in helping candidates make the cut.28 Still, conclusions about the role of organized activities must await the availability of additional data.
Neighborhoods, Police, and Violence
In addition to different family situations, the young people grew up in different neighborhoods. As they transitioned into adulthood, they had unequal exposure to neighborhood conflict, including violence.29 The African American working-class and poor young men in the study spoke at length about the death of good friends. For example, Harold remained shaken by the death of his buddy, a young man he used to “chill” with as they were growing up. He and his cousin separately reported the same tale: this buddy was sitting in a car (in an inner-ring suburb) with his girlfriend. In an attempted robbery, “Two people came up out of nowhere or whatever and tried to rob them and stuff like that. They both got killed that night.”
Similarly, Tyrec experienced the deaths of two good friends. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges in his life has been learning to cope with these losses. One friend was killed during the winter of what would have been his freshman year in high school; the other in what would have been his junior year. The first death, especially, stunned Tyrec:
I was just shocked. It was somebody that I used to be able to go, I’d call and be like, “Let’s go here, go there.” Like, it was a hard time getting through that. I just was having a hard time doing everything.
During his interview, Tyrec seemed visibly depressed about his friends’ deaths. He reported that his girlfriend, Whitney, was an enormous aid in helping him cope with these tragedies.
Some of the working-class and poor young men in the study also spoke about the role of the police in their neighborhoods. It was a topic that evoked long, passionate commentary from them. Both white and Black males reported police harassment. Harold had moved across town from Lower Richmond to a working-class, low-income neighborhood that was virtually all African American. Some of his family members and neighborhood acquaintances have had run-ins with the police there. He reported, “Cops, they just like harass people for no reason. I don’t like cops.”30
Over in Lower Richmond, Tyrec echoed Harold’s complaints. He felt that while he was out driving, he was a magnet for police:
The cops, they . . . kept giving me tickets, trying to mess my license up, so I was like [I’ll] just sell the car. I don’t know—it’s just up here they really like tend to mess with people. I’d rather catch the bus than keep having to go to traffic court and all that.
The white working-class and poor young men in the study also complained bitterly about the police. Billy acknowledged, “I mean, these kids around here are bad, half of them aren’t going anywhere.” Still, he was insistent that inequity and corruption were interwoven with police work in his neighborhood:
(Extremely serious tone) They’re crooked. I never committed any crimes, half of us didn’t. But we all get locked up because the cops don’t like us around here. It’s a fact. They love locking us up.
Although quite different from young people getting “locked up,” there were signs of variation in how storekeepers treated young men in public spaces. As noted above, although Alexander is pursuing a pre-medical curriculum at an Ivy League school, he was regularly treated with suspicion in stores. He reported, “Sometimes I play games with them and [stand] in a not very visible place in the store and someone will come to ‘put something away.’ ” “My parents have always talked to me about that kind of thing,” he told me and, in a tone of resignation, said he tries to “just ignore it.” In this regard, his experience is similar to others from less affluent social classes. Harold, who works full-time and has never been “locked up,” sounded equally resigned when he talked about being harassed by the police: “You can’t dwell on it, though. It’s going to happen regardless.”31 White middle-class youth did not raise the issue of treatment by the police. When I queried them, they described the police as benign or as positive forces in their lives.
Awareness of Social Class
Despite signs that the middle-class youth had benefited in critical ways from the social class position of their parents, these young adults appeared largely unaware of the advantages that had been bestowed upon them. Instead, they stressed how hard they had worked, implying that they thought they had earned on their own the position of privilege they held. Also, they were very focused on their position only vis-à-vis others in their own neighborhood or school. They seemed unaware that there were youth living less than an hour away who had very different lives. Although the degree to which the middle-class youths’ life paths had been structured by their class position was not clear to them, in contrast, the working-class and poor youth and their families were keenly aware of neighborhoods where life was different.32 Many dreamt of moving to the suburbs someday. Billy directly observed the impact of middle-class neighborhoods on life chances. In his interview, he described a friend who had moved to a middle-class suburban community 20 minutes from Lower Richmond. Before the move, his buddy was “going nowhere”:
I had a friend who I grew up [with] here that lived here and then moved up there. He’s a whole different person now that he moved up there. He’s going to college, he dressed different, he’s nicer than the people who live around here.
Billy was convinced that it was the move to a school in a middle-class neighborhood that had made the difference:
If he lived down here, he wouldn’t really have made it through high school. Because I went to high school with him, at Lower Richmond. And he was going nowhere. He was in the lunchroom with me every day. And as soon as he moved, he changed.