Against the Wall

Elijah Anderson is William K. Lanman, Jr., Professor of Sociology at Yale University and the author or editor of many books, including A Place on the Corner and Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. Cornel West is Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion, Center of African American Studies at Princeton University. Among his books is the best-selling Race Matters.

"A brilliant young black man has been elected President, while our prisons are crowded with black men and millions of others are on the street with no future. President Obama, who has seen the crisis on the streets of Chicago's south side, needs to send his Cabinet copies of Elijah Anderson's powerful new book, with its all-star collection of penetrating studies of the dynamics of the crisis and its possible solutions." --- "With A-to-Z thoroughness, Elijah Anderson and colleagues foreground the destructive legacies of centuries of systemic racism for today's young black men. Life histories on harsh streets, structural bars of job-flight and employer profiling, yeoman attempts at social-program redress, innovative thinking about future policies are webbed together in data-based, readable essays for all seeking answers to U.S. racism's chronically inhumane consequences." --- "In a time when much of white America is in economic pain, Against the Wall is a timely and wide ranging reminder of the much greater and centuries longer pains which have been inflicted on poor young African Americans." --- "Anderson has consolidated what is known about the dire and worsening social situation of young black men in the U.S. Against the Wall brings together a set of cutting edge empirical studies from sociology, economics, and cultural studies to present a nuanced and sobering picture." --- "The hazy glow of Barack Obama's election has made it too easy to forget the plight of millions of young black males in inner cities who live in desperate circumstances. In his earlier work, Elijah Anderson has conveyed impressive insights about their lives; in this volume, he has collected excellent authors who have described with considerable sensitivity and detail the factors contributing to their circumstances: poverty, discrimination, joblessness, crime, incarceration, suicide, drugs, poor schools, preoccupation with sports, and handguns. Against the Wall documents the problems admirably and offers some suggestions for improvement."