The Minds of Marginalized Black Men is a non-fiction book written by Alford A. Young Jr. Young explores the lives of impoverished young black men living in the near New West Side of Chicago, Illinois, in order to get a better understanding of how they view their lives and what they want for their futures. The book was first published in 2004 by Princeton University Press.
Reception The book received a generally positive reception, garnering reviews from academic journals including Contemporary Sociology, Gender & Society, Journal of Urban Affairs, and the American Journal of Sociology.
Characters Larry - A 24-year-old male who has never held a full-time job for longer than a month or two. Because he cannot find and hold a job, he still lives at home with his parents and siblings.
Devin - A 21-year-old active gang member who is on parole for possession of narcotics. He has been a part of many illicit activities such as selling drugs and theft. Devin has never held any form of a job in his life.
Casey - A 25-year-old ex-convict who just got out of drug rehabilitation for an addiction that started when he was a teenager. He had a job as a bag boy at a local supermarket but besides that the majority of his income came from hustling and drug dealing.
Lester - Grew up with both parents, and had a plan to excel in his future. Unfortunately his parents were criminals, and once his father was incarcerated he had to stop focusing on school and start focusing on survival. It was then that he resorted to becoming a drug dealer.
Earl - Comes from a family that was unfamiliar with college because nobody was fortunate enough to have experienced it. He moved to Near West from Mississippi, and was often teased and picked on as an adolescent. Eventually Earl found a sense of security from being an outsider by joining a gang.
Jake - Was one of few to receive his high school diploma. Unfortunately, college was out of the question as his family did not have the finances to help him out. Eventually Jake fell into the easy money-making system of drug dealing.
Barry - He stayed away from gangs growing up, and was able to receive his high school diploma, but he got caught up in drug dealing to make quick and easy cash during the summer shortly following his graduation. He eventually stopped when the police were catching on to him, and drug dealing gangs wanted him dead.
Donald - Worked many different jobs during his adolescent years, but was unable to keep any of them for very long. Eventually being desperate for money led him down the path of drug dealing.
Gus - A high school football star who had plans to participate in the army. Unfortunately his addiction to cocaine hurt his athleticism, and got him kicked out of the military. He eventually came back to Near West, where he began dealing drugs.
Tito - A survivor of Near West Side who was able to work with a moving company for a short period of time. Eventually he began gangbanging, and was incarcerated.
Synopsis Introduction - Making New Sense of Poor Black Men in Crisis
The introduction gives insight on what is to come later in the book. It also describes the setting and how Young did his research.
Young conducted his research in several public housing developments in the Near West Side of Chicago. Young describes the area as "geographically and socially isolated from downtown Chicago and the opulent western suburbs, and resembles a holding pen for the economically immobile."
The first development that Young went to was the Governor Henry Horner Homes. The development had "19 buildings with 1,774 units, almost all of which are occupied by African Americans." In these households over 85% received public assistance, and only 8% were able to be supported by the employment of a member of the household.
The second development was the ABLA homes located one and a half miles away from the Henry Horner Homes. This development contains 160 buildings with 3,505 units and, like the Henry Horner homes, is almost all African-American. ABLA occupants do a little better financially, with 75% needing public assistance and just over 8% able to support themselves.
The second half of the introduction talks about what made Young want to research and write this book and what the main themes of the book are. Young says that the main goal of this book is to "uncover these men's worldviews on issues such as mobility, opportunity, and future life chances." The book is not about what was going through these men's heads when they were dealing drugs or carrying a firearm but instead about how they view their place in American society and what they think about their futures.
Chapter 1 - The Past and Future of the Cultural Analysis of Black Men
Chapter 1 starts off by going into the idea of "the crisis of the black male", which is the idea that the rate of crime and incarceration among blacks is directly connected to their high rate of unemployment. Young attributes the crisis to two key factors: structural factors such as race-based residential segregations and mobility prospect, and cultural factors such as attitudes and behaviors that prevent acceptance into the work world.
Young then talks about how most research on poor black males only focuses on behavioral traits and their value systems. He says that good research would also include a deep analysis of how these men create their worldviews and beliefs regarding the present and future. Cultural analysis is the topic of a huge debate right now. On one side "the debate asks whether black men adopt or promote distinct cultural patters that contribute to, if not cause altogether, their demise."
The other side questions "whether these men, who are taken to be cultural actors in the ways that other groups of Americans are, might simply experience unique life circumstances and conditions that overdetermine the social outcomes comprising their everyday lives." Young then finishes off the chapter talking about social isolation which is the idea that these poor young black men are unable to get jobs because their class standing keeps them away from mainstream society. They are isolated from the areas where the jobs and opportunities are.
Chapter 2 - Time, Space, and Everyday Living
Chapter 2 looks at the everyday lives of these men. Uncertainty is a common feeling for them because each day they must worry about whether they will have a job or even make it through the day. One thing in this chapter that really surprised Young was the men's inability to manage time. They would show up late, extremely early, or even on the wrong days to interviews. These men do not have to deal with appointments on an everyday basis because on the majority of their days they have nothing to do, so they do not know how to handle appointments.
Young brings up the concept of Habitus, which is a "system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them." Essentially, the way people think and act is related to the social constraints and structures around them.
Young gives the example of how the use of violence in order to defend oneself is a justifiable in certain situations. Young was surprised by how much these people have to deal with violence. He talks about how in most communities violence is rare but in the Near West Side it has become part of the daily lives of the people. Most people only feel unsafe when they go out late at night but people in the Near West Side fear violence all day, even in their own homes.
Chapter 3 - Coming Up Poor
Coming Up Poor addresses the issue of young African-American men developing their futures through the obstacles of growing up in Near West Side. The most common obstacles that most of the men experienced were the lack of decent finances, a father figure, a sense of security, and the proper information to lead them to college. Young men are interviewed and asked to describe what it was like trying to grow up in the community and what kind of support they received from their family to pursue an education beyond high school.
When discussing their upbringing the men speak of how the community was extremely violent, and quite often the children in elementary school had other things on their mind other than getting a quality education. Survival of the gang-infested area, the home that was full of stress and anxiety due to the lack of money, and earning the respect of peers no matter what it took were the main focuses of these adolescents. When asked about their parental figures' attitude towards achieving a higher level of education, they all had the same answer. All of the parents stressed how important it was to receive a quality education and stay off the streets and out of gangs. Although their parents wanted nothing more for their children but to grow up and do something with their life, they were unable to provide concrete information or help to guide the children in the correct direction.
Some parents overprotected their children to the point where the children would sneak out to the streets and be exposed to gang violence. One often found a sense of safety and security only in joining a gang to avoid being the recipient of a soft reputation. To find security in the streets one had to gain the respect of one's peers. When kids are bullying, stealing, and dealing drugs when in elementary school, the future for that generation is limited to those who can stay away and deal with the conflicts another way. The local high school had an enrollment of 97 percent African Americans, and during the 1980s the percent who received a high school diploma only ranged from 15 percent to no more than 30 percent.
The high school could not provide what one would call a safe and educational learning environment for many different reasons. During daily instruction students would have to halt their studies and duck beneath their desks because of gunfire in the streets. With instability such as this one can only imagine the quality of an education that a student could receive, which is why the percent of students who went on to attend college ranged from 10 percent to no more than 40 percent. This does not mean that those eligible to go to college were able to afford it, considering that 95 percent of the students came from low-income families that needed financial assistance to survive.
Once these boys became men and were still stuck in the city, they believed that they had survived the most challenging part of growing up. Now they were off to the workforce, where many were unable to keep steady jobs. With the morals and mindsets that the men had acquired growing up, they faced difficulty keeping their jobs as they valued the respect of their employees more than the importance of getting the job done. The men are extremely affected by their adolescent years and are now struggling to provide for children of their own. This cycle seems to continue as the elders always stress the importance of a quality education; the only challenge is learning how to get it.
Chapter 4 - Framing Social Reality: Stratification and Inequality
Chapter 4 focuses on determining what the men's interpretive thoughts are on characteristics of society such as power, hierarchy, and social relations across race and class lines. The author mainly focuses on each of the men's personal experiences. By analyzing their differences in opinions, the author strives to figure out how differences in personal experiences connect to the kinds of interpretations that the men have.