Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America
How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

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Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America
How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

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Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America

Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America

by Jennifer Tilton
Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America

Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America

by Jennifer Tilton

Paperback(New Edition)

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Overview

How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814783122
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 10/03/2010
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Tilton is an anthropologist and assistant professor of Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Redlands.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Who's Responsible for Kids? 1

Chapter 1 Back in the Day 25

Disciplining Youth and Families in the Flatlands 31

Chapter 2 Trying to Get up the Hill 69

Dangerous Times: Reconstructing Childhood in a Volunteer State 75

Chapter 3 Protecting Children in the Hills 113

Youth in a "Private Estate" in the Oakland Hills 117

Chapter 4 Cruising down the Boulevard 153

Potential Thugs and Gangsters: Youth and the Spatial Politics of Urban Development 159

Chapter 5

What Is "the Power of the Youth"? 191

Conclusion: Hope and Fear 229

Notes 243

Bibliography 265

Index 285

About the Author 296

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Tilton has written a lively, compelling book that calls for a progressive politics of youth which also values human connections and interdependency. Richly rooted in the social geography of Oakland, the ethnography illuminates how youth and their parents struggle against the ways they are pathologized and feared. The book makes a critical contribution to urban studies, criminal justice and anthropological theory and practice.”
-Brett Williams,professor of anthropology, American University

“This compelling book reveals a disturbing trend towards widening, racialized social class divisions among children growing up in U.S. cities. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in affluent and impoverished areas of Oakland, Tilton maps varied forms of community mobilization around children and youth. Beautifully observed, astutely analyzed, and directly relevant to current debates about ways of restoring a sense of the public good in an era of privatization.”
-Barrie Thorne,author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School

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