Destructive Culture and the Black Middle Class

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how one of the biggest problems facing the black middle class youth today involves destructive cultural patterns: a resistance to academic achievement as acting "uncool", a celebration of "ghetto" street culture, and the normalization of criminal activity and drug and alcohol dependency. It contends that ,because the black middle class youth are surrounded by and espouse certain destructive cultural patterns, the group, in general, suffers downward social mobility.

From the Paper:

"Besides the street culture that holds back black middle-class youth, there is also the tendency for many teenagers or people in their early twenties to shirk work and school. As Jay MacLeod, in his book Ain't No Makin' It put it, "to be bad is the main criterion for status in this subculture." Although MacLeod's study focused on working-class youths, what he has to say deals very much with the black middle class as well. MacLeod would disagree with my sentiments because the Brothers, although espousing an "achievement ideology", still did not fare much better than the Hallway Hangers."

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