Introduction

Elija Anderson's (1999) four-year ethnographic study of a poor Black area in Philadelphia, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, should be required reading for anyone with an interest in race and inequality. Anderson explains high rates of violence among Black juveniles in high poverty neighborhoods as resulting from decades of area economic disadvantage, a disconnection and isolation from most of American society, and experienced discrimination, resulting in antisocial behavior and even violence. Based on his analysis, he categorizes individuals and families into two types or groups: decent or street. Decent people are those who have hope and strive to achieve a better life. These are the folks who embrace middle-class values. Street people are those who have lost hope for achieving middle-class values and adopt the oppositional Code of the Street, where they tend to react violently when faced with disrespect or threat and celebrate their antisocial and criminalistic values.

All of this is relevant to disproportionate minority contact (DMC). Specific to our main argument, Anderson describes most folks in these poorest of the poor, extremely violent neighborhoods as part of the group he identifies as “decent.” Most of the folks embrace mainstream values. In fact, only the most extreme of the “street” folks are typically the violent criminals. Anderson's (1999) work suggests that in the most disadvantaged areas, most folks embrace mainstream values. In addition, less than 30 percent of Blacks live under the poverty line, and clearly not all of those live in ghettos like the ones studied by Anderson. Painting, with broad strokes, the number of non-White individuals residing in ghetto or barrio neighborhoods:

• • Fewer than 30 percent of all Blacks live in desperately poor Black neighborhoods (Thernstrom, 2020).

• • Most people in the area studied by Anderson (1999) were what he referred to as “decent” rather than “street” people.

• • Even among “street” people in Anderson's study, only the fringe street people were identified as significantly criminalistic.