Summary Of Chapter Six By Victor Rios

The author’s personal background, his familiarity with the scholarly literature on critical criminology and ethnography, and his three-year study of the 40 young men in Oakland combine to produce a significant contribution to the understanding of how our society oppresses and criminalizes young men of color. Rios’s affirmation of the humanity and aspirations of these young men is quite strong, as is his unrelenting exposé of the social processes which systematically deny their humanity and aspirations. While the grave problems of mass incarceration and police brutality have been widely discussed in numerous books and journals, the other aspects of the “youth control complex” have received less attention, and this book helps to address this gap in the literature. The author’s analysis of the role of probation officers, school officials, and even family members in the “youth control complex” is particularly informative. His discussion of the psychological and social damage inflicted on these young men by “hypercriminalization” is both revealing and

How well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.

Fist Stick Knife Gun By: A Personal History of Violence is a well written memoir by Geoffrey Canada. Canada informs his readers his story of growing up in the South Bronx, and how violence was a constant fact of life. He explains how violence is instilled in children from a very young age, and he uses this to explain how our culture needs to change so children don't have to experience the things he saw and went through. Throughout his book, Canada describes the combination of the weapons kids have access to and what parents teach their kids about violence as “America’s war against itself.”

The police were very often seen as violent, brutal, and corrupted. The author takes it a step further to not only say that this relationship is only caused because the men are gangsters, but that they are also Mexican. There are many occasions when Rodriguez relays an account where the police call the men very racist names and act upon their beliefs in a very brutal manner. He continues this theme of social inequality as he talks about his experiences in school and his parents ' experiences in their jobs. By depicting these situations Rodriguez makes the large assumption that the main reason that gangs are so prominent is because the Mexican culture was experiencing a lack of resources and support and therefore, their youth turned to something they felt could help.

Also, from my observation of the author’s interaction with the gang members, he acted in a way, that was out of respect, and in no way condemning of the gang members or their culture. He befriended them and truly showed great interest in their personal lives. He also knew that he couldn’t’ approach these gang members in a hostile manner, as he learned this from a gang member, who stated that “You can’t just walk into the neighborhood and act like a tough guy, you get beat up.” Moreover, I also observed that the author seemed mild mannered, and certainly did not come across as this know it all, arrogant researcher. I can only imagine how scary this entire experience may have been for him, but nonetheless, he allowed himself to “hang around” the gang members as they drove him around their dangerous neighborhood.

This quote examines the gender roles that the drug dealers of El Barrio established for themselves as an attempt to overcome the stress of failing to support their family financially. The drug dealers revert to life on the streets to regain their sense of masculinity and authority that they feel is lost because of the instability that they caused within their households. In the earlier chapters of the book, Bourgois examines the gender roles that the drug dealers impose on women. In El Barrio, the mothers are expected to provide a nurturing environment for the children while the father earns the income for their survival. Women are also expected to comply with the demands and orders of the men in their lives.

The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.

Chapter one of the book opens with an in-depth explanation of the methods and the inspiration behind the study. Rios goes into great detail of how he recruited the boys for the study and proves additional information about their history with the criminal justice system. However, most the chapter focuses on the patterns of punishment that are observed in Oakland that the boys experienced on a routine basis. The chapter covers the police brutality and negativity on the streets that leads to continuous victimization.

Urban ethnography, a systematic method used to examine culture developing in everyday life, let Rios discern the difficult aspects, unfortunate circumstances, and social relations of the young men’s lives. Victor Rios observed, shadowed, and interviewed delinquent inner-city youth males to answer his question of the effect of the punishment on the boys. As Rio studied the life of these males he discovered a youth control complex where punishment was present in everyday social life, and the behavior of these marginalized young men were criminalized, pointing them to incarceration, disgrace, and exclusion. Racialization, harassment, punishment, surveillance, and detention by all adult figures were all pieces of the pattern of the social order in Oakland that shaped the way the young men created worldviews about themselves and the deeply rooted social stances in their community. Rios found social incapacitation present upon these marginalized males.

Racial Profiling of Youth and the Failure of Justice For those who haven’t experienced racial profiling, or know someone that has been a victim of it, the issue may seem nothing more than annoying noise in their ears. However, the reality is that racial profiling has consequences, which results in emotional, physiological, and physical damage. The ones that are the most at risk are the youth of color. Racial profiling is harmful because it creates mistrust in law enforcement, hostile environment in the educational system, and social tension in communities.

Victor Rios, author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Youths grew up in Oakland, California. During his childhood there he had an experience that made him return to Oakland to question and study the current issues that the youth’s their face. At the age of 14 he had joined a gang, he did this mostly for protection from other gangs and threats in the area, and during his time in the gang he met another kid named “smiley,” nicknamed because of his knack to smile during every situation, good or bad. Rios would become good friends with him, and even steal a car for him to use as a home at one point when he was kicked out of his own home. Although this would eventually lead to one of his first encounters with bad police officers, as he was severely beaten for what he had done.

Geoffrey Canada does an excellent job of bringing his readers to the streets of the South Bronx and making them understand the culture and code of growing up in a poor, New York City neighborhood in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In his book, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, Canada details, through his own childhood experiences, the progression of violence in poverty plagued neighborhoods across America over the last 50 years. From learning to be “brave” by being forced to fight his best friend on a sidewalk at six-years-old, to staring down an enraged, knife wielding, “outsider” with nothing to defend himself but nerve, Canada explains the nightmare of fear that tens of thousands of children live through every day growing up in poor neighborhoods. The book

Based on a study of a thirty-person Latino classroom, sixty percent said their parents resorted to violence when disciplining them. The definition of masculine can have 2 different meanings. One, being the percentage of male characteristics someone has, and two, how tough someone is. Certain cultures have sets of rules on how to grow and be a man. In the story “Fiesta 1980”, Juniot Diaz writes about a boy named Yunior who has trouble growing up in his Dominican family with an aggressive father that he grows upon.

Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.

Police Brutality is an ongoing problem and existent concern in the United States and should be resolved immediately. Law enforcement must function as an element that consists of organized and civilized officers. The presence of police brutality is becoming more of an issue as society grows. The problem posed by the illegal exercise of police power is an ongoing reality for individuals of a disfavored race, class, or sexual orientation. Police brutality must be stopped so that police do not forget who they are serving – not themselves, but the public.