In our class discussion on Wednesday we spent a lot of time trying to understand Alice Goffman’s position/role within the 6^th street neighborhood community and how her role may have informed the way in which she presented her findings. While it is clearly valuable to examine Goffman’s relationship with her subjects and it is important to be critical of how the information is being presented, I personally am more interested in spending a bit more time discussing the social relationships in the 6^th street neighborhood. My expert question focused on the conflicting descriptions that are presented regarding the practice of “riding” or not “riding” and what that may mean for a certain relationship between someone on the run and their family or friends. While conflicting arguments are presented, I do not think the conflict stems from Goffman not properly presenting an argument but rather that in the unique social world of the 6^th street neighborhood, the “culture of fear and suspicion” (Goffman, 90) gives way to social interactions that are specific to the people, time, and place.

Being on the run means that one lives in near constant fear of being caught by the police and so therefore the men of 6^th street go to great lengths to avoid any sort of interaction with an authority figure. This extreme avoidance of the law means that if one does choose to turn himself in or to go to an event or place in which he may run into a police officer, that decision is most often a calculated choice. In the section “The Social Life of Criminalized Young People” on page 131, Goffman states, “the giving and taking of legal risk becomes a way that people in the neighborhood of 6^th street define their relationships, honor or dishonor someone, and draw moral distinctions among one another” (Goffman, 131). I am intrigued by this concept/practice and how in a neighborhood such as 6^th street where the police presence is so constant, how the residents begin to adapt and use the police in a way that benefits their personal social lives. In a way, I think that one could argue this use of the police presence to one’s own advantage could be a form of a resistance identity. While it may not be the traditional sense of a resistance identity, because residents (often spouses or family members of men on the run) begin to use calling the cops on the man on the run as a survival tactic I think it does fit in with a larger definition of a resistance identity. Turning someone in who is on the run is often a power play used by a spouse when she feels that she is not receiving the proper respect from her partner. Furthermore, a spouse may turn in her partner when she feels it has become too dangerous for him out on the streets (Goffman, 94). I think these two practices count as resistance identities because they go against the grain of the typical system and show 6^th street residents using something that often oppresses them to their own advantage. Whether or not these practices do fit into the definition of resistance identity, I think Goffman has touched on a very intriguing part of the social world of 6^th street.

Last week our discussion was focused on “the persistence of the ghetto” and readings and class discussions were centered around unpacking what the term “ghetto” means today, both as a noun and adjective and how the ghetto as a place continues to exist today.

Patrick Sharkey’s article, “Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress towards Racial Equality” proposed the urban ghetto as an inherited place and how poverty in the ghetto persists across generations due to a multitude of factors. While I did find this piece a little difficult to read at some times due to his focus on qualitative evidence, Sharkey does bring up some very interesting findings.

What I found to be Sharkey’s most surprising, but also compelling, finding is how the ghetto is often passed down to children even by parents who have left the ghetto to pursue higher education and good careers. In the section “The Lingering Influence of Childhood Neighborhoods” Sharkey examines the roots of racial inequalities by looking at the family environments in which children were raised. On page 116 Sharkey states, “While the black child’s parents may have the same amount of income and the same education as the parents of the white child, neighborhood inequality means that the black child is likely to be surrounded by peers who have been raised by parents with less education and fewer resources to devote to their children, less cultural capital and social connections to draw upon.” I think this finding is very interesting in the context of our readings for tomorrow (Sherman on rural poverty) and urban poverty. In both the Sharkey and the Sherman readings we see how people’s strong sense of place and connection to place can influence their decision to stay in an environment that may not provide them with the brightest future (by some standards). Sharkey focuses a good amount of his research on the economic mobility of blacks and whites and how neighborhood environments can influence the direction of mobility. Sharkey argues against the idea that poorer blacks are not economically mobile by showing that there actually is more mobility than people may perceive, but it is just not always a constant upward mobility. While some blacks living in urban ghettos may leave that place, due to their sense of community and connection to place, successful parents may return to the ghetto to raise their children because that is where the parents grew up and they have ties to that neighborhood. I think this example is a good show of the actual mobility because it shows that some residents of the ghetto may become upwardly economically mobile but that does not guarantee that their children will be upwardly mobile as well. Sharkey found that if parents return to the ghetto to raise their children, the children may end up following a trend of downward mobility due to their surroundings and trying to fit in with their peers (who may not have aspirations to leave the ghetto). The Sherman reading also focused on Golden Valley residents’ connection to place and how that shapes their lives. In many of Sherman’s interviews he cites residents’ emotional ties to their identities as Golden Valley residents (“being loggers, hunters and outdoorsmen, mothers, daughters and pivots of social and community life” p. 45) as being a primary driving force behind their continued residency in the Valley.

As someone who moved around a few times when I was younger, I can completely relate to the sense of place and how one would be drawn back to a certain community or compelled to stay in one that was maybe not so easy, both socially and economically, due to community ties. I think the ways that both Sharkey and Sherman have studied how these connections affect people’s social and economic statuses is very compelling and I look forward to studying this more.