Essay About Personal Security And Social Order

The Code Of The Street
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CODE(S) OF THE STREET
Put simply, the “code of the street,” which according to Anderson is
prevalent in the inner city ghetto, functions as a way for African American
youth to maintain social order in neighborhoods that have been abandoned
by formal institutions such as the police. Unlike other social codes that informally
regulate public space in mainstream American culture (in Jacobs
era or our own), a violation of the code of the street can put an individual
at potentially life-threatening risk. According to Anderson, these norms of
the street grow out of an opposition to mainstream culture, which itself is a
response to the alienation of black inner-city residents from the economic
and social institutions of a predominantly white society (p. 323). The code
ensures some amount of physical protection in an environment where a violent
drug economy poses a sense of danger in everyday public life. Ambient
threats to personal security, combined with a distrust of the police, lead youth
to develop their own policing mechanisms through which respect must be
demonstrated toward those who have built reputations based on their toughness.
These informal rules “prescribe both proper comportment and the
proper way to respond if challenged. They regulate the use of violence and