Code of the Street

Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. This unwritten set of rules—based largely on an individual's ability to command respect—is a powerful and pervasive form of etiquette, governing the way in which people learn to negotiate public spaces. Elijah Anderson's incisive book delineates the code and examines it 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.

“"This is the best treatment we have of the tormented inner life of young people wrestling with nihilism in a society indifferent to their plight and predicament."”

"A brilliant diagnosis of the internal factors that hold blacks back." -- Wall Street Journal
"One of the most interesting examinations of poverty, violence and sociology to emerge in recent years." -- Boston Herald
"One of our best ethnographers.... Anderson is excellent in explaining how the criminal element, through a numerical minority, comes to dominate public space." -- New York Times Book Review
"Important.... [Anderson] demonstrates, time and again, how optimism, ambition and decency can sprout in the most unlikely places, given even the slimmest chance." -- Newsweek
"Eloquent and moving.... A strikingly powerful work that rings with urgency." -- Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
-- Cornel West

Elijah Anderson is Sterling Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University. His most prominent works include the award-winning books Code of the Street and Streetwise. He lives in New Haven and Philadelphia.

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