“Effects of neighborhood and family stressors on African American male adolescents’ self-worth and propensity for violent behavior.”
Most citizens of the world live in an urban environment. By 2030, only one-third of the world population will be residing in rural areas as the majority of the people move to towns and cities. Sociologists have tried to use numerous methods to explain this trend, but are now using urban sociology to explain. The sociologists have been attempting for long to explore the social changes that take place in society as citizens move from rural to urban areas. As a result, the earliest attempt to develop urban sociology borrowed ideas from the model of biological ecology. However, it did not consider class, ethnic, and racial conflict that would characterize 21st-century societies.
Modern scholars such as Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engel laid the foundation for contemporary sociological theories, including urban sociology. According to Gottdiener, Hohle, and King (2019), the three scholars used historical analysis to explain their ideas about social development. The three understand that social organization considers other factors such as politics, economics, and culture. Karl Marl wrote about the existence of social classes (proletariat and bourgeoisie) that were created by industrial capitalism (Gottdiener, Hohle, & King, 2019). In analyzing the failures of the French Revolution of 1848, Karl Marx’s noted that several groups oppose or support reforms for individual gains. For example, small shopkeepers and industrial workers may fight capitalist regimes because they would be the greatest beneficiaries of positive changes. On the other hand, large merchants in cities and farmers in the countryside may support a capitalist regime because it serves their interests. Thus, Karl Marx’s view about social classes was a precursor to modern-day thinking about interest groups competing within political arenas that is prevalent in the tribal polity. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
An essential aspect of urban sociology is socio-spatial inequality and racism. It suggests that the deployment of resources in one neighborhood hurts the development of other deserving cases. As a result, there is uneven development in some regions of a city. Although the class was the primary mode of segregating people in the past, racism has become the leading form of discrimination in countries such as the United States (Gottdiener, Hohle, & King, 2019). As a result, most black neighborhoods in the country are poor and lacking development because of consistent discrimination on a racial basis.
At the same time, the pattern of urban change is not consistent or uniform in all regions of the world. Some nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, and Germany have experienced decentralization of the populations away from large urban centers. As a result, major cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast, and Glasgow witnessed harmful population growths (Gottdiener, Hohle, & King, 2019). In most of these cities, the changes were a result of government policies trying to decongest urban areas and developing suburbs in the surrounding environments. However, in the United States, immigration and the increase of new ethnic communities are posing a threat to the country’s efforts. As a result, the country his forced to deal with the emerging challenges of urbanization.
The transformation of the global economy now determines the direction of the flow of capital. The immigration of more people from developing world countries to Europe is also disrupting social order inhomogeneous communities in the west. The decline in manufacturing employment, restructuring of the economies, and emphasis on high tech jobs are some of the common problems that are facing urban Europe, Japan, and the United States (Gottdiener, Hohle, & King, 2019). Other challenges include the uneven development of economic opportunities for city populations due to the restructuring of the economy to concentrate on service delivery. Although these challenges are rampant in most western capitals, they are more severe in the United States with devastating consequences to the African American community.
Urban Social Problems
Like all industrial nations of the world, the advent of capitalism in the United States led to the emergence of social problems that persist to date. By the start of the 20th century, most American cities were overcrowded, had massive traffic jams, and crowds of children swarming across city streets, among other challenges (Gottdiener, Hohle, & King, 2019). Until after the Second World War, city life in the United States was full of public health challenges such as high rates of cholera outbreaks, high infant mortality rates, street gang activities, and crime. Thus, a lot of city life was synonymous with social problems.
Social problems are out of a person’s control and have negative consequences on their lives. Racism, poverty, lack of affordable housing, polluted air, and crime are social problems because individual actions cannot address the challenge. Some of the leading causes of social issues include racial exclusion, uneven development, and gender discrimination. Although social problems exist in all regions of a country, the concentration of people in cities makes the situation worse. Thus, social issues such as drug abuse and poverty have more impact in towns and cities because of the density population of the areas. The situation is made worse by racial segregation that makes some minority communities, such as African Americans, occupy specific regions that are then neglected by the government.
The internalization of capitalism has caused the United States to witness an influx of huge populations from developing countries. As a result, large metropolitan regions such as New York, Los Angeles, and Houston are attractive for most immigrants from developing countries. Therefore, segregation in most cities is a consequence of involuntary discrimination. Although voluntary bias accompanies class segregation in the black community, affluent blacks live in a better environment than their weaker counterparts. However, the presence of most impoverished black neighborhoods sprung up through a form of racism as a way of preventing black communities from residing in white settlement space. It was also the result of federal housing policies that concentrated the construction of public projects in the inner city while subsidizing “white flight” to the suburbs through the development of interstate highway systems and discrimination in access to mortgage loans.
The segregation of African American and other minorities have severe consequences for the quality of life of the affected individuals and their communities. In the United States, the leading cause of segregation is race and not the income of a person. Therefore, society should not underestimate the impact of systematic racism on the metropolitan region. Since neighborhoods and settlements occur following racial patterns, the concentration of the African American community is in defined geographic areas that have social problems such as inadequate housing and police brutality. As a result, these communities have to deal with risky life behaviors such as alcoholism, smoking, and drug abuse. These risky behaviors have adverse health consequences such as heart disease, cancer, kidney diseases, and stroke. These ailments are among the top ten leading causes of death for African Americans. Engaging in several risky behaviors is a gateway to the use of severe illegal drugs that could lead to more dependence. Substance use can, in turn, lead to involvement in other illicit activities. Thus, the occurrence of one or two life events can escalate into more severe life events.
The type of neighborhood that African Americans live in has stressors effects that result in male adolescents’ self-worth and propensity for violent behavior. Many factors inform the way a child perceives itself, including the support that it receives from the community, parents, teachers, and peers. Chronic stressors such as neighborhood violence, economic hardships, and oppression that a person experiences as a child may affect them for the rest of their lives. The neighborhood disadvantages such as crime, poverty, poor housing, insecurity, substance abuse, racism, among others, are some of the stressors that prepare children for violent behavior (McMahon, Felix, & Nagarajan, 2011). Neighborhood and family stressors cause youths to participate in deviant behavior that causes social disruptions. Although living in a specific neighborhood is stressing to male African American adolescents, social support can play a protective role.
When growing up in a community that erodes competencies and the wellbeing of a person, it is essential to have social support to survive. High self-worth is critical for teenagers because it protects them from participating in criminal behavior and from becoming better individuals in socio-emotional adjustments. It is essential to note that social support builds the self-esteem of a person enabling them to talk about the issues that bother them. Other forms of support are tangible or material aid that improves the living conditions of the individuals, such as money and substantial supplies. Social support can also be through the provision of relevant information in certain areas, such as the knowledge about how a system works (such as how to get a mortgage loan) or skill to accomplish a specific goal. Teachers, the extended family, parents, and peers, provide support.
Social support is critical because it improves self-confidence, academic performance, and facilitates behavioral adjustments.
Participation in risky behaviors such as using drugs and getting in trouble with the law is a threat to the community. One of the apparent consequences of breaking the law is incarceration. In the United States, the imprisonment of African Americans is at a higher rate than that of other ethnic communities (Mauer and King, 2007). The incarceration affects severe effects on the youth, the family, and the community. The family loses potential income from the individual, but also on social capital that they could have provided to the community. The loss of a productive and responsible member hurts all members of the family. At the same time, there is also a stigma to parents whose children are in contact with the legal system. Thus, participation in risky behavior hurts the children, parents, and the community.
More than half of the world population is living in urban areas, and the number will likely increase to two thirds by 2030. Since the industrial when the challenges of urbanization began to emerge, sociologists are still trying to get the best tool to explain the social problems that it causes. One of the latest approaches is the use of urban sociology. Since the era of the industrial revolution, every generation is trying to address the urban issues that it faces. One of the problems that American society is addressing today is the use of racial segregation to allocate development resources and disenfranchise African Americans. These challenges make it difficult for the youths of in this community to achieve their full potential and participate in violent behaviors. Therefore, it is essential to have social support to protect teenagers from going astray.