The best poverty writing in America
Here is something you simply must read.
Check out the brilliant cover piece in this week's New York Times Magazine: "When the Man of the House is in the Big House." It's by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and is adapted from her new book Random Family -- about the lives of inner-city residents of the Bronx.
I heard LeBlanc talk about the book back in November at the Nieman Narrative Journalism conference, and her research sounded awe-inspiring; she spent nearly a decade tracking the lives of a few people in a Bronx neighborhood. It shows: In this week's Times article, she offers one of the most precise and nuanced portraits of what it's like living with the justice system as part of your life.
Indeed, her longitudinal approach -- ten long years -- makes all the difference. I know tons of reporters who get sent out to write a piece about "what life is like" in a project. But they're given a day or two at best for research, and really, you can't learn anything in that time. The inner machinery of poverty won't reveal itself with such a cursory glance. In fact, it's these snapshot glances that produce the classically smug, one-dimensional views that dominate Republican ideas about the urban poor: They're lazy; they have no self-control; they're needlessly violent. In contrast, when you read LeBlanc's work, you get a sense of how it all connects together. In particular, she does a superb job of illustrating just how mind-crushingly boring life in a project is -- and how it drives kids to do something, anything, just to feel vaguely alive. LeBlanc does something quite difficult: She makes boredom interesting to read about -- makes it something people can understand.
Moreover, LeBlanc avoids a classic trap in writing about poverty: The idea of "blaming the parents." There was a terrific piece in the early 90s in the New Yorker about this problem. (Sorry, I can't remember who or when, precisely, just the details of the piece.) Back then, there was a boomlet in stories and movies about the urban poor -- unusually sensitive and sympathetic ones. But as the New Yorker writer noted, each of the books and movies focused exclusively on children. Children, the writer argued, are considered "innocent" in American ideas about poverty; they're born into it, so they can't be blamed, and the books and movies and stories were thus extremely sympathetic to them. But when it came to the parents, the sympathy vanished. Parents were adults, and by the covert Republican logic of these otherwise pretty cool books, adults are always to blame for their poverty: They've made poor choices, screwed things up, dropped out of school, whatever. And this is true: Historically, the only way anyone can write something sympathetic about poverty is to write about the kids, the "blameless." Those adults? Screw them; they can pull themselves up by their own damn boostraps. It's the same tacit assumption that's behind the drive to end "child poverty". Because what the hell does "child" poverty mean, precisely? There is no child poverty; there's just, well, "poverty", and that afflicts the parents as much as the kids.
Against this backdrop, LeBlanc's writing is almost breathtakingly incisive in understanding how low-income, crime-addled families really work -- and the actual reasons the parents make their life choices. I really can't overstate how amazing her writing is.
In fact, I won't even quote from the piece here, because you really have to read it as a whole. But read it! Then go buy the book.
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 13, 2003 04:49 PM
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... and thus we see in Canada the same dynamic: JC and his happy gang have promised billions in child poverty initiaitives, ignoring the fact that the best way to lift a child out of poverty is to get his/her parents a job. Can't sell that in Alberta (or the 905), 'tho.
Posted by: M-J Milloy at January 14, 2003 12:13 PM
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Posted by: Clive at January 14, 2003 12:56 PM
I wonder if the term "child proverty" indicates a rheotrical and conceptual shift of staggering proportions. The pre-war phrase for a poor person who merited assistance was "deserving poor." It seems that nowadays being poor is a moral failure and that anyone who is poor, anyone who dares disturb our techno-SUV-mall utopia, is committing some sort of moral crime. So we have the phrase "child poverty" to indicate a small class of poor person who deserves sympathy or assistance. I wonder how much longer before that category is shrunk even further. After all, what about those kids who are congenitally predisposed toward violence, those carrying anti-social memes, etc.
Any hope for change down there in the U.S.?
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at January 15, 2003 3:39 PM
God, yes. The sneering, moral cadences of those who've climbed the greasy pole in this country can freakin' amaze me. Not everyone's that way, of course, but the Republicans are just remarkable in this way.
Posted by: Clive at January 15, 2003 6:45 PM
that doesn't surprise me at all...
Posted by: sonnerie at January 8, 2004 8:20 AM
Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 2:39 AM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Jane at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Roman at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
But some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.
Posted by: Eliza at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.
Posted by: Melchior at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.
Posted by: Charity at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Osmund at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Pompey at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Martin at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Roland at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
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... and thus we see in Canada the same dynamic: JC and his happy gang have promised billions in child poverty initiaitives, ignoring the fact that the best way to lift a child out of poverty is to get his/her parents a job. Can't sell that in Alberta (or the 905), 'tho.
Posted by: M-J Milloy at January 14, 2003 12:13 PM
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Posted by: Clive at January 14, 2003 12:56 PM
I wonder if the term "child proverty" indicates a rheotrical and conceptual shift of staggering proportions. The pre-war phrase for a poor person who merited assistance was "deserving poor." It seems that nowadays being poor is a moral failure and that anyone who is poor, anyone who dares disturb our techno-SUV-mall utopia, is committing some sort of moral crime. So we have the phrase "child poverty" to indicate a small class of poor person who deserves sympathy or assistance. I wonder how much longer before that category is shrunk even further. After all, what about those kids who are congenitally predisposed toward violence, those carrying anti-social memes, etc.
Any hope for change down there in the U.S.?
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at January 15, 2003 3:39 PM
God, yes. The sneering, moral cadences of those who've climbed the greasy pole in this country can freakin' amaze me. Not everyone's that way, of course, but the Republicans are just remarkable in this way.
Posted by: Clive at January 15, 2003 6:45 PM
that doesn't surprise me at all...
Posted by: sonnerie at January 8, 2004 8:20 AM
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Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 2:39 AM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Jane at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Roman at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
But some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.
Posted by: Eliza at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.
Posted by: Melchior at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.
Posted by: Charity at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Osmund at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Pompey at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Martin at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Roland at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM
Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 7:07 PM
Ad hominem - Appealing to a person's physical and emotional urges, rather than her or his intellect
Posted by: watersport at July 10, 2004 10:14 AM
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