The code of the Street

In the the short story Adler and Adler spoke about the differences between living in the suburbs and living in the ghetto. Respect is a number one priority when you are living in the ghetto. On the other hand, in the suburbs its completely different, they do not carry themselves the wat the people in the ghetto would and its not about power or respect. It's about focusing on school, having a good job, and a good head on your shoulders. I feel that Adler and Adler really described the differnces amongst these neighborhoods thoroughly.
I come from Brooklyn, N.Y. and I was born and raised in an area known as East New York. From my experience living there I can honestly say that it is about power and respect. I think that it is more of a challenge for the men than the woman to live in these kinds of neighborhoods. A guy has to prove to everyone that he cannot be messed with or disrespected because if that were to happen it would cause a conflict. And now and days conflicts are not dealt with fighting one on one, people are killing each other over stupidity but because of lack of respect. Guys have to have the latest gear, show they can not be messed with and handle themselves when there is a problem. Young teens see this and they start following what they see on a everyday basis and it becomes normal to us. They go from being home and going to school to dropping out, selling drugs and more than likely end up incarcerated. We live day by day hoping things would get better but they don't and since these young teens have nothing to live for then they have nothing to lose either so life becomes unvalues to them. The only thing they focus on is making money and not by going to school and obtaining a good job, they want that fast money from selling drugs or guns. I feel that parents lose their kids to the street and do not enforce to them what is really important in life. And as the young teens get older he/she has to decide if living this lifestyle is worth it. I do not want to sound blunt but I honestly feel that people from the ghetto are close minded and ignorant to life. They feel that the ghetto and the projects is all there is when in reality there is so much to live for and do. For example, I have associates around me that always use to criticize me by telling me that just because I graduated HS that I thought I was better than everyone, just because I am in college that I thought that I was better than everyone, just because I have a good job that I thought I was better than everyone. And it's quite the contrary, I do not think I am better than anyone but because they see you going about life in a different manner it becomes a problem.

From the article about gender I learned how much of a learning process it is for children to actually realize and understand sexuality. I do believe that they do know the differnce between boy and girl and that they do know that boys have something that females do not. If they see either gender portraying as the other they recognize them as that gender that they are portraying even though its not intentional. I believe that when a child is young he or she knows what his or her preference is. For example, when I was young I had a next door neighbor who had a little boy that was about two years younger that I was. He would always love to come to my house and play with me. We would play with barbie dolls and play dress up and he use to love playing with my hair. Now that we are older, similar to Agnes he changed his entire male appearance and dresses as a female and likes to be acknowledged as a female. So I do believe that a lot of your sexual preference and gender identity is understood as you are a child and even more as an adult.

Class in America

The difference between class now and days as oppose to class in the earlier years is that the necessity of money wasn’t needed as much. People learned how to survive without financial means. Now and days, money is the key to success and survive. The article stated a lot of negative and positive aspects of class in America but the article states that “More Americans than 20 years ago believe it possible to start out poor work hard and become rich. They say hard work and a good education are more important to getting ahead than connections or a wealthy background.” I disagree with this statement. It is about the people you know and what kind of money you grew up in. Regardless of how many people think that things have completely changed, they haven’t. The minorities still live a struggling life and instead of things easing up they get harder and harder everyday. How are we supposed to move up in class if America makes it hard to provide a house, to eat, to pay bills? I found all of the people’s opinion in the article interesting mainly because I am pretty sure none of those people have ever been poor to know what its like to not have.