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by: Jay MacLeod  List Price: $28.00 Price: $22.25 You Save: $5.75 (21%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Format: Bargain Price Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 318 Publication Date: July 30, 2004 Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: “I ain’t goin’ to college. Who wants to go to college? I’d just end up gettin’ a shitty job anyway.” So said Freddie Piniella, an eleven-year-old boy from Clarendon Heights low-income housing project, to Jay MacLeod, his counselor in a youth program. MacLeod was struck by the seeming self-defeatism of Freddie and his friends. How is it that in America, a nation of dreams and opportunities, a boy of eleven can feel trapped in a position of inherited poverty?The author immersed himself in the teenage underworld of Clarendon Heights. The Hallway Hangers, one of the neighborhood cliques, appear as cynical self-destructive hoodlums. The other group, the Brothers, take the American Dream to heart and aspire to middle-class respectability. The twist is that the Hallway Hangers are mostly white; the Brothers are almost all black. Comparing the two groups, MacLeod provides a provocative account of how poverty is perpetuated from one generation to the next.Part One tells the story of the boys’ teenage aspirations. Part Two follows the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers into adulthood. Eight years later the author returns to Clarendon Heights to find the members of both gangs struggling in the labor market or on the streets. Caught in the web of urban industrial decline, the Hallway Hangers—undereducated, unemployed, or imprisoned—have turned to the underground economy. But “cocaine capitalism” only fuels their desperation, and the Hallway Hangers seek solace in sexism and racism. The ambitious Brothers have fared little better. Their teenage dreams in tatters, the Brothers demonstrate that racism takes its toll on optimistic aspirations.This edition retains the vivid accounts of friendships, families, school, and work that made the first edition so popular. The ethnography resonates with feeling and vivid dialogue. But the book also addresses one of the most important issues in modern social theory and policy: how social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next. MacLeod links individual lives with social theory to forge a powerful argument about how inequality is created, sustained, and accepted in the United States. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - An Accessible, Enlightening Page-TurnerWhen I was in college, I read several chapters of Ain't No Makin It as assigned reading for a sociology class. Years later, I came back to the book because I had frequently thought of it and wanted to reread it. Not only is the study enlightening, the writing is clear, insightful and elegant. MacLeod makes highly intelligent arguments without using pretentious language. His sense of metaphor is lovely, always helpful, and never a stretch. Overall, it is a humble body of work from someone who has ... Read More Rating:  - Ain't No Makin' ITBook came fast. And in good shape. Warning: The F-Bomb is used over 100 times. So if you are sensitive to swearing, there is a lot of it. Rating: - Useful facts and stories; out-dated left theoryThere are two books here, one useful and interesting and one not. The useful and interesting book tells the story of two groups of young men growing up in a public housing project. One group is mostly white and bitterly alienated from society. The other group is mostly black and is hopeful about the future. The group of poor whites turns into junkies, criminals, alcholics and losers. The group of poor blacks turns a modestly less poor version of their parents. The poor whites experience ... Read More Rating: - Think againThis book is not rubbish. Yes it is slightly propagandistic on the part of "socialism" (though I agree with the views of a previous reviewer), though if you'd seen this type of poverty and social immobility in a FIRST WORLD COUNTRY you'd want to do the same thing. If you read this book and come out with the view that "they should have worked harder", then I believe you are only accepting the view that these people projected onto you. THEY believe they won't make it, so they don't do any work. Also to these ... Read More Rating: - Moving and TroublesomeI read this years ago in an anthropology/sociology class in college, and I can say that it still carries as much weight today as it did then. Jay manages to weave entertaining narration with factual reporting, resulting in a moving work that points a critical finger at our society. I've actually met the author, and can say that he is an honest, engaging and professional writer. At no point did he milk the drama angle of this work, nor use it to further his own agenda. I noticed another reviewer called this ... Read More 
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