Making a Difference: The Impact of Traditional Male Role Models on Drug Sale Activity and Violence Involving Black Urban Youth

Abstract

Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street provides an ethnographic account of a disadvantaged urban environment where residents face poverty and racial residential isolation. For Anderson, joblessness among African-American men deprive youth of positive male role models, creating a context for the “street code” to govern behavior, leading youth to violence. Similarly, a disadvantaged urban setting in which opportunities in legitimate labor markets are lacking fosters an environment where youth may seek illicit markets for a means of economic support. Drawing on Anderson's work, we assess the availability of male role models (older, employed black males) and the concentration of urban disadvantage on black juvenile drug sales and violent arrests across multiple cities in 2000. We find Anderson's concerns over the removal of traditional role models as a result of rising disadvantage in a Philadelphia community to be generalized to large urban areas. Specifically, we find that the presence of traditional role models reduces aggravated assaults by youth, but male role models are unable to reduce the economic lure of drug sales for black urban youth in disadvantaged environments.