Code of the Street

Structural Factors

Multiple scholars have detailed the drastic structural changes that occurred in urban cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The high-paying and low-skilled manufacturing jobs present in the 1950s and early 1960s moved offshore to other countries, such as Mexico or India, where cheaper labor was available. Service sector jobs that required postsecondary degrees were available, yet many minorities in inner-city areas did not have access to these types of jobs because of the low percentage who attended or graduated from college. Subsequently, high rates of unemployment occurred.

In addition, this was a time of “White flight” and an exodus of Black middle-class individuals to the suburbs. When these two groups left, scholars say, they took with them the necessary capital to maintain these communities and create adequate-to-superior school systems. As property values decreased, school systems declined in quality, ill-equipped to give students the requisite skills for the new service sector economy. Also, major urban services, such as sewer maintenance and garbage removal, which were readily and consistently performed with the presence of middle-class Blacks and Whites, became inconsistent or nonexistent without them, according to the findings in this research. Moreover, according to some scholars, lower- and working-class Blacks lost their role models with the exit of middle-class Blacks. Quite literally, inner-city residents were abandoned. The loss of the middle class and of manufacturing jobs crippled urban areas, but what replaced them was worse.

Due to the dire conditions in inner cities, scholars argue, some residents turned to illegal activities, such as drug selling, to make money. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a large explosion of drugs, particularly the addictive, potent, and mind-altering drug crack cocaine. After individuals become hooked on such drugs, they develop dysfunctional and pathological behaviors in order to maintain their “high.” Thus, studies show increasing rates of crimes, such as theft, [Page 313]assault, and murder, among other illegal activities, resulting from drug abuse. These criminal activities create fragile communities with volatile relationships between residents. Moreover, many studies have found that underrepresented minorities who live in city neighborhoods believe that police are unresponsive or indifferent to the concerns of innocent bystanders. Instead, many city dwellers think that police officers uniformly treat minorities as criminals because they live in ghettos or substandard communities. According to this thinking, police officers cannot differentiate between “decent” individuals, those who adhere to mainstream norms and values, and “street” individuals, those who rebuke mainstream norms and instead possess oppositional cultural beliefs. Furthermore, some research has found that employers exhibited bias when hiring or firing for entry-level jobs—minorities were the last ones hired but the first ones fired. As a result of the aforementioned structural factors, scholars say, many residents, both “street” and “decent,” were forced to adapt to the new environment; that is, they created and abided by a “street etiquette,” or a way of handling themselves in public environments.

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