Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City

Unsparing and important. . . . An informative, clearheaded and sobering book.—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post (1999 Critic's Choice)

Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence; in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. How you dress, talk, and behave can have life-or-death consequences, with young people particularly at risk.
The most powerful force counteracting this code and its reign of terror is the strong, loving, decent family, and we meet many heroic figures in the course of this narrative. Unfortunately, the culture of the street thrives and often defeats decency because it controls public spaces, so that individuals with higher, better aspirations are often entangled in the code and its self-destructive behaviors.
Writing in the tradition of Jane Jacobs and William Julius Wilson, the author delineates the true workings of city streets. His most interesting characters are not the bullies and dealers, but the decent folks, young and old, who through entrepreneurship and creative self-help strategies are forging a viable alternative, an escape from the code of the street.
Winner of the Komarovsky Book Award, this incisive book examines the code as a response to the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, to the stigma of race, to rampant drug use, to alienation and lack of hope. An individual's safety and sense of worth are determined by the respect he commands in public—a deference frequently based on an implied threat of violence. Unfortunately, even those with higher aspirations can often become entangled in the code's self-destructive behaviors.

Unsparing and important. . . . An informative, clearheaded and sobering book.—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post (1999 Critic's Choice)

Wall Street Journal

Mr. Elijah Anderson has long been admired for his unflinching eye. Code of the Street is as clear-eyed as any of his earlier work, and it paints an even more chilling picture of the vicious peer culture that can make the inner city all but unlivable. Mr. Anderson writes about the oppositional attitudes and predatory behavior that poison life in the inner city. Over the years his work has played a key role in opening up debate about the underclass: providing striking observations and analysis but also emboldening others to face the truth more candidly. The heart of the book...its greatest strength and lasting contribution...is its close-grained reporting on the life of the street.

Elijah Anderson holds the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professorship in Sociology at Yale University, where he teaches and directs the Urban Ethnography Project. His most prominent works include the award-winning books Code of the Street and Streetwise. He lives in New Haven and Philadelphia.