The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption / Edition 1

by Nikki Jones

Overview

In The Chosen Ones, sociologist and feminist scholar Nikki Jones shares the compelling story of a group of Black men living in San Francisco’s historically Black neighborhood, the Fillmore. Against all odds, these men work to atone for past crimes by reaching out to other Black men, young and old, with the hope of guiding them toward a better life. Yet despite their genuine efforts, they struggle to find a new place in their old neighborhood. With a poignant yet hopeful voice, Jones illustrates how neighborhood politics, everyday interactions with the police, and conservative Black gender ideologies shape the men’s ability to make good and forgive themselves—and how the double-edged sword of community shapes the work of redemption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520288355
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/25/2018
Series:	Gender and Justice , #6
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Nikki Jones is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence. 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Eric's Awakening

You either gonna kill someone, get killed, or go to the pen. What are you goin' do?

— Eric

Eric was born in 1974. Like many other Black residents in San Francisco, Eric's grandparents migrated to California and the San Francisco Bay Area from the Deep South. Eric's father, in his mid-twenties at Eric's birth, was born in California's Central Valley. His mother, about a decade younger than Eric's father, was born in Louisiana. She moved with her family from Louisiana to California when she was about twelve years old. Eric's maternal grandmother purchased a home in the Lakeview district of San Francisco, a former African American enclave near the city's southwestern borders. Eric remembers little about his maternal grandmother, except for that she was shot and killed in a bar. Eric grew up in the home that she left behind. He remembers splitting time between his home and his aunt's apartment in the Fillmore neighborhood as a child. His aunt's apartment was in a housing project owned by one of the Black churches in the Western Addition. Eric remembers the home as the gravitational center of family gatherings. It was a place where all in the family were welcome. In the early 1980s, Eric's family left his late grandmother's Lakeview home and moved with his parents and two sisters into a home just a couple of blocks away from his aunt's apartment — and just footsteps away from the housing complex where he would first enter the neighborhood's drug trade: "That's where I guess the trouble started."

The "trouble" Eric refers to here would last for over a decade, deepening as his involvement in the neighborhood's illicit drug market and his commitment to the street family (a phrase he uses as an alternative to gang) he took up with as an adolescent boy deepened over time. As he neared early adulthood, Eric realized that if he continued his troubled trajectory, his life would be limited by the three options he refers to above: kill someone, be killed, or go to the penitentiary.

In this chapter, I provide a life history account of Eric's turbulent adolescence and early adulthood to illustrate how Eric crafted a fourth option for himself — one that would allow him to shed the criminal career and associated lifestyle he had invested so deeply in for over a decade, while continuing to live in the neighborhood he had called home for most of his life. I begin with an account of how experiences in various social settings, like school, the home, and the neighborhood, shaped Eric's drift into delinquency. This account demonstrates how Eric's early life history is shaped by the unique set of social, historical, and economic shifts that came to characterize life in poor, urban, African American neighborhoods from the mid-1980s to the end of the twentieth century. This period marked crack's earliest appearance in the neighborhood to the rise of the War on Drugs, which took aim at the type of open-air drug markets that took root in the Western Addition during Eric's adolescence. Episodes of violence would fracture the neighborhood into warring pockets of youth, and the shockwaves from these violent episodes would reverberate in the neighborhood for years to come. It is within this context that Eric's moral dilemma emerges. It is also within this context that Eric develops a way to break free from the street and to make himself a new man in his old neighborhood.

Eric's account of how key events, like witnessing his uncle's exploitation at the hands of neighborhood drug dealers or becoming a father at age twenty-three, shaped his efforts to break from the street. In particular, his story illustrates the role that awakening moments — brief episodes of reflection triggered by external events that encourage a person to think, even in the most fleeting ways, about changing the direction of their lives — can play in the process of change. Eric's account of his turn away from the street as he approached his mid-twenties challenges understandings of change as the result of an epiphany. His process of change was protracted and extended from late adolescence into early adulthood. Through Eric's story, we learn how being "half-and-half," as Eric describes it, can operate as a key phase in a young adult's movement away from the street. Young men who are half-and-half may straddle the line between the street and decency for months or years before completely giving up on the lifestyle associated with the street. By the end of the chapter, we come to see Eric's transformation — his final break from the street — as the result of a gradual awakening over time that was deeply influenced and eventually supported by his relationships with others. In this way, Eric's story helps to reveal how change is a group process embedded in distinct situational and relational contexts. Put simply, Eric's story reveals how young men change first for themselves and then with and for others.

ERIC'S DRIFT INTO DEALING

As I explain in greater detail in chapter 3, the image of the young Black man as "thug," an image that exploited long-held stereotypes of Black men as dangerous or criminal, came to dominate representations of Black masculinity over the course of Eric's adolescence. As Eric grew closer to the "trouble" he alludes to above, beliefs about the inherent criminality of Black men were hardened by now infamous (and wholly unfounded) warnings of the rise of a criminal class of "superpredators." Among the many flaws of such warnings, from the implicit racial bias that lent traction to such a theory to its deeply problematic empirical assumptions, is that such theories simply mischaracterized the problem of crime and violence in inner-city neighborhoods and how young people like Eric were most likely to become involved in the new drug economy of the city and its associated violence. Eric's pathway to dealing drugs and, later, crime was not determined by internal characteristics; rather he, like many others, seemed to drift into delinquency over the course of his early adolescence. In this way, Eric's trajectory is much more consistent with early discussions of delinquency than with the now-defunct "superpredator" theory of the late twentieth century.

As David Matza puts it in a classic study on delinquency, a range of underlying influences or events "so numerous as to defy codification" often guide an adolescent's involvement in delinquency. Though difficult to isolate, as I attempt to do in some part in the following pages, such influences and events operate in ways that "make initiation more probable." Today, such experimentation with delinquency is widely regarded as age-appropriate behavior for most adolescents. However, the circumstances in which youth come of age vary by place and socioeconomic status. These differences shape the forms of deviance one is exposed to at an early age. As is evidenced in the following sketch of Eric's life history, his involvement in the underground economy as a pre-teen was determined, in part, by the circumstances in which he came of age. He was not, as Matza writes, "wholly constrained" by these circumstances. Yet, that he was also not "wholly free" became ever more clear as law enforcement bore down heavily on his neighborhood and peers as Eric entered early adulthood.

For Eric, as it is with many young people who first enter the underground economy, getting into the illicit business of drug selling was as easy as child's play. An older person in the neighborhood might ask a youth to hold something in exchange for some money or to act as a lookout for the police, and, just like that, an adolescent becomes a small part of a much larger market in illegal drugs. It appeared to be this easy for Eric, who once explained his entrance into the drug game this way: you find a person with a little money and a little drugs then you go and get a deal. Fifty dollars buys you a 50 shot of crack-cocaine. From there, you start the process: sell drugs, make money, replenish your supply, and on and on, until it ends. Although getting in appears to be nothing more than the outcome of a simple transaction, it is rather the culmination of a longer process — a final submission to the gradual pull toward participation that began years earlier, building strength as circumstances in other domains of a young person's life, like school or the family, worsen over time.

Trouble at School and Home

Eric says that while his other siblings, two sisters and a brother, "excelled in school, I never really cared for school." His older brother graduated from a local state university. One of his sisters earned a degree from an elite university in the state. Another sister went to college in Southern California and "never came back," he says. As a boy, it was hard for Eric to measure up against his high-achieving siblings. He was held back in second grade. He was "made" "Special Ed," Eric says. He believed this label, and the tracking that comes with it, hindered him in his life and made him question himself, "because I seen my sisters excel and I always wondered why I was in Special Ed." In middle school, Eric felt like he was always in the long shadow of siblings, especially his sisters: "And it was just like my sisters are so educated and I'm sittin' here in Special Ed classes and they in gifted classes. When they [teachers] hearin' my last name immediately it's like, 'Okay, I know your sisters, they gifted and everything,' and I'm just sittin' here in the Special Ed classes and it's like, what am I doing here?"

As an adult, Eric has a much more critical understanding of what Special Education is used for in public school settings: "It's just a place where they shift you to" if you "act up a lot ... it's just like 'okay, we'll put you in Special Ed.'" The only positive reflection on his early schooling is a class he was referred to after he "got into problems as a juvenile." One of his father's friends taught the class on African American History at the local community center. He remembers learning about the Egyptians and the Moors. "That was interesting to me," Eric says. When he "finally" started going to City College years later, he remembered this experience and enrolled in classes in African American Studies. His interest in these classes helped him to recast himself as a student:

I'm like okay, well I guess this is the problem. This [African American history] is what is interesting to me, but you're not taught until you go to college and things like that, then you can take the studies. In your younger years, in elementary, high school you hear about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, but you don't get the detailed history of who you are. That scared me away from it, or school, or what it was. I just didn't like the whole school thing.

Eric's sense of disconnection from school was exacerbated by the troubles he encountered at home, where Eric's father and mother fought often. When he was around, Eric's father was an imposing force in his life. Eric's parent's eventually split up, and Eric felt the absence of his father as abandonment. He recalls his father, who had already moved out of the family's home and, by Eric's account, was losing his grip on Eric's life, coming up to school after he got into trouble:

He came up to my school, I guess they had called him and he had sat in the office and he was just asking me what was going on with my life and you know, of course when he came up there he kinda scared me. Then he got upset and left and that was the end of it. It was like you're not going to be at home when I get home, so I guess this conversation is over with.

Even as he engaged in troublesome acts, Eric made attempts at involvement in more positive social settings, but he found that each institutional actor — teachers, principals, and even coaches — simply reinforced the negative feelings he already had for himself. He remembers these slights more than twenty years later: "I tried to join the basketball team and the coach didn't like me, he said I wouldn't amount to nothin' wouldn't be nothin'." He also remembers how school officials steered other students away from associating with him: "The principal, it was a younger class comin' up after me and the principal was tryin' to steer them away from hangin' out with me. He said that I'm a loser and all this type of stuff."

Eventually, Eric was kicked out of his middle school "because of the fights, the horse playing, and things like that that I was involved in. Not doing my homework, not really going to class, acting up in class." He was transferred to another school "out in the Avenues" with a history of conflicts between "Asians and the African Americans." "From that," Eric says, "I got into a lot of trouble because of the racial thing [animosity among racial groups in the school]": "It was more so as a social hang out up there than anything. We had to fight with the Asians. It was more so the African Americans had to stick together because the Asians will clique up. There were many fights on campus behind that."

Despite his poor performance, Eric eventually graduated to high school. "That's where I lost all interest," he says. "High school is like okay, well you're really on your own," Eric explains. "The teachers aren't really on you as much and I found out how to cut class and once I found that out I was like, okay it's on." Notices sent home were not responded to: "The notices and things use to come to the house but my mother was basically trying to get her life together by being abused from the time of her and my father's marriage. So, she just kinda stepped out and I had two older sisters you know so it was the whole thing we were all transforming to and I was like the last of the bunch and it was time for me to grow up and everything was at its point where everybody was trying to get their stuff together." Eric felt as if he was on his own as he entered his high school years. He grew tired of a school system that made him feel badly about himself. These feelings were made worse by financial pressures at home, where Eric struggled to find a way to buy the most basic necessities: "Finances at home wasn't going too well, I didn't have clothes to wear. This impacts this point of your life right there when you're a teenager, you gotta have clothes, you know."

"The Weed Man"

It was during this turbulent adolescent period in his life that Eric became drawn to the activity that buzzed around the housing complex across the street from his new home in the Fillmore. OGs (a colloquial term for "Original Gangsters," or more experienced members of a crew, set, or gang) were hanging out playing dominoes; younger guys were hanging out too. Eric found a level of sociability that drew him closer to a group with a "lifestyle" filled with "cars and things like that." Eric found a "fun environment" among his peers. He also found a way to make money. Eric's association with a new group of youth and OGs, along with his newfound career in the drug economy, helped him to build an identity that carried a positive status among his peers and that made him feel good about himself — a feeling that often eluded him at home and school: "It was like a high itself, just to be known." Eric's entrance into the drug game also helped him to garner a new reputation on his high school campus. Although he rarely attended class, he continued to visit the high school where there was a steady market for marijuana. By his account, he "became the weed man on campus." Eric learned the importance of diversification at an early age. At high school, he sold weed. In the neighborhood, crack.

Over time, hanging out selling dope became Eric's "lifestyle," as he describes it. It also became something of a job for him: "Seven in the morning, I try to get out here before anybody else, make my money, hang out all day and hang out all night, drink. It was the hang out place, and it became the place for me just to have fun." Eric's drift from school to the street was accelerated, by his account, by his father's final departure from his home: "My father is not around to control me, so I'm hangin' around a whole bunch of people that are under no control." Eric's father left the home for good just when Eric was entering his teenaged years. Eric saw his departure as a sort of liberation: "It was open season for me."

Crack Comes to the Fillmore

Eric was one of many young men on the block who, in his words, "got into sellin' crack cocaine" in the mid-1980s. The "easy money" that came along with this new trade was a draw as cash began to flow quickly into the hands of young men who, like Eric, had little financial support at home. The social structure of the new drug economy also strengthened bonds of affiliation among groups of young people, like Eric's newfound street family, who cliqued up so they could offer some protection to one another in the landscape of the new urban drug economy. Eric explained the formation of these groups this way: it's "not really a gang thing, but a set, up here, we call them 'sets' out here, sets." Set is a term that is still used to refer to smaller geographic units — sometimes as small as a block — that fall within a larger geographic area. People who grow up in or around a housing complex, including those not directly involved in the drug trade, may describe themselves as part of that set. Within each set, young people are typically divided into age-ordered cliques. The names of sets change over time, as adolescents move up the age hierarchy that organizes the set and make their own claims on the space.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowiedgments xv

Introduction 1

1 Eric's Awakening 31

2 The Crime-Fighting Community 59

3 Targets 87

4 Buffers and Bridges 116

5 "A Rose out of This Cement": Jay's Story 142

Conclusion: Lessons from the Field 162

Notes 177

References 197

Index 207

Editorial Reviews

"The book offers a nuanced account of crime fighting and identifies challenges that are not well covered in the broader sociological and criminological literatures. . . . The Chosen Ones should be read by gender scholars, urban sociologists, criminologists, and ethnographers."

Theoretical Criminology

"The Chosen Ones is theoretically astute, methodologically sound, and empirically rich and a model of what ethical, ethnographic research should look like in urban sociology."

American Journal of Sociology

"Jones does a masterful job exploring the process of redemption among street-involved Black men; a process that is neither linear nor solely an individual effort. Her critique of violence prevention programmes shows the ineffectiveness of such initiatives in making Black communities safer while exacerbating problems of crime and violence. The Chosen Ones is an important contribution at the intersection of race, crime, and justice and would be well suited for scholars and students of Criminology, Sociology, African American Studies, and Gender Studies."

Decolonization of Criminology and Justice

"Nikki Jones addresses a significant sociological puzzle: how does violence in inner-city neighborhoods continue despite institutional and individual level resources aimed at addressing this problem? . . . The Chosen Ones is an in-depth and powerful account that must be read by anyone interested in researching and addressing the violence experienced by those most vulnerable, often young people of color in inner-city neighborhoods, and understanding the material conditions that facilitate and challenge it."

Social Forces