Great Performance !

After some wrangling, J. T. promised Venkatesh unfettered access to the gang’s operations as long as J. T. retained veto power over any information that, if published, might prove harmful.

When the yellow-gray buildings on the lakefront were demolished, shortly after Venkatesh’s first visit, the gang relocated to another housing project even deeper in Chicago’s south side. For the next six years, Venkatesh practically lived there. Under J. T.’s protection he watched the gang members up close, at work and at home. He asked endless questions. Sometimes the gangsters were annoyed by his curiosity; more Read the rest of this entry »

As night deepened, his captors eased up. They gave Venkatesh one of their beers, and then another and another. When he had to pee, he went where they went—on the stairwell landing one floor up. J. T. stopped by a few times during the night but didn’t have much to say. Daybreak came and then noon. Venkatesh would occasionally try to discuss his survey, but the young crack dealers just laughed and told him how stupid his questions were. Finally, nearly twenty-four hours after Venkatesh stumbled upon them, they set him free. Read the rest of this entry »

He told Venkatesh to go ahead and ask him a question from the survey. Venkatesh led with the how-does-it-feel-to-be-black-and-poor question. It was met with a round of guffaws, some angrier than others. As Venkatesh would later tell his university colleagues, he realized that the multiple-choice answers A through E were insufficient. In reality, he now knew, the answers should have looked like this: Read the rest of this entry »

“I’m a student at the University of Chicago,” Venkatesh sputtered, sticking to his survey script, “and I am administering—”

“Fuck you, nigger, what are you doing in our stairwell?”

There was an ongoing gang war in Chicago. Things had been violent lately, with shootings nearly every day. This gang, a branch of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, was plainly on edge. They didn’t know what to make of Venkatesh. He didn’t seem to be a member of a rival gang. But maybe he was some kind of spy? He Read the rest of this entry »

But his graduate advisor, the eminent poverty scholar William Julius Wilson, promptly sent Venkatesh into the field. His assignment: to visit Chicago’s poorest black neighborhoods with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. This was the first question on the survey:

How do you feel about being black and poor?
a. Very bad
b. Bad
c. Neither bad nor good
d. Somewhat good
e. Very good

One day Venkatesh walked twenty blocks from the university to a housing project on the shore of Lake Michigan to administer his survey. The project comprised three sixteen-story buildings made of yellow-gray brick. Venkatesh soon discovered that the names and addresses he had been given were badly outdated. These buildings were condemned, practically abandoned. Some families lived on the lower floors, pirating water and electricity, but the elevators didn’t work. Neither did the lights in the stairwell. It was late afternoon in early winter, nearly dark outside.

Venkatesh, who is a thoughtful, handsome, and well built but not aberrationally brave person, had made his way up to the sixth floor, trying to find someone willing to take his survey. Suddenly, on the stairwell landing, he startled a group of teenagers shooting dice. They turned out to be a gang of junior-level crack dealers who operated out of the building, and they were not happy to see him.

Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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Police in other cities, meanwhile, were spinning a different story during the 1990s. The sudden, violent appearance of crack cocaine had police departments across the country scrapping for resources. They made it known that it wasn’t a fair fight: the drug dealers were armed with state-of-the-art weapons and a bottomless supply of cash. This emphasis on illicit cash proved to be a winning effort, for nothing infuriated the law-abiding populace more than the image of the millionaire crack dealer. The media eagerly glommed on to this story, portraying crack dealing as one of the most profitable jobs in America. Read the rest of this entry »

To take a trip on a vacation must be something that can ease our mind after a long boring working week. This act can relief our stress and then we can be eventually refreshed by doing so. France is a country which has become the most favorite destination picked by many people to spend their holidays in. Read the rest of this entry »

However created, the conventional wisdom can be hard to budge. Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and devout critic of George W. Bush, bemoaned this fact as the President’s reelection campaign got under way in early 2004: “The approved story line about Mr. Bush is that he’s a bluff, honest, plainspoken guy, and anecdotes that fit that story get reported. But if the conventional wisdom were instead that he’s a phony, a silver-spoon baby who pretends to be a cowboy, journalists would have plenty of material to work with.” Read the rest of this entry »

Consider the recent history of homelessness in the United States. In the early 1980s, an advocate for the homeless named Mitch Snyder took to saying that there were about 3 million homeless Americans. The public duly sat up and took notice. More than 1 of every 100 people were homeless? That sure seemed high, but…well, the expert said it. A heretofore quiescent problem was suddenly catapulted into the national consciousness. Snyder even testified before Congress about the magnitude of the problem. He also Read the rest of this entry »