Reading: Chapter 7: Adolescence

Chapter 7

GROWING UP URBAN

THE POWER OF THE CODE

She cried all the way home.

Our weeklong summer youth camp in the mountains was over. What a difference a week makes! The van ride to camp had been loud and raucous—kids were excited beyond belief. Now, as we headed home, their demeanor was quiet and subdued. Some slept, while others watched as the mountains grew smaller in the distance. We were on our way back to the city. Overall, the mood was one of contentment.

Except for her. She sat in the very back, trying to go unnoticed. But the glistening tears on her face and the slight heaving of her shoulders revealed that she was sobbing. When I asked others about her, they said she was alright. No one seemed overly concerned. It was as if I were among family members of someone who had just lost a loved one. People around her knew she needed space to grieve. As I pondered the situation, a Scripture passage came to mind.

It was Jesus’ final assessment of the man from whom an evil spirit had left—only to return with friends:

And the final condition of that person is worse than the first (Luke 11:26).

Had I, through this wonderful (albeit brief) camping experience, set the stage for despair? By exposing inner-city youth to the joys of summer camp, was I making their return to life in the ’hood even more painful?

Years later, I asked Paulette about that experience, and she re- called the moment this way:

As you know, Ted . . . I didn’t like coming home. There was the yellin’, the arguin’, the cursin’, the fightin’. And when I was at camp, I didn’t have none of that. I woke up to a peaceful voice: “[lyrically] It’s time to get uh-up!” We’d wake to a bell or something . . .

I felt safe at camp. I was around lovely people. I didn’t hear no yellin’, no cursin’, no drinkin’ alcohol: no, none of that. And it was exciting for me to go to camp and to come to club.

The sobbing girl in the back of the van was not shedding the tears of joy and gratitude that are common after an intense mountaintop experience. Rather, her tears were those of despair and hopelessness. They were the cries of an urban adolescent returning home.

Adolescence

The term “adolescence” comes from the Latin adolescere, which means “grow to maturity.”¹ Until the late nineteenth century, adolescence was not singled out as a distinct stage of human development. But it was there. As far back as the fourth century bc, the Greek philosopher Aristotle observed:

They [young people at this stage of life] are changeable and fickle in their desires, which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep-rooted.²

Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, made similar remarks. Centuries later, in 1904, G. Stanley Hall would advance for the first time a definition of adolescence. Human development, Hall proposed, traveled through a series of stages, from primitive (childhood) to savage (adolescence) to mature (adulthood). Writing about Hall’s characterization of adolescence, Rolf Muuss, in his work Theories of Adolescence, explains:

He perceived the emotional life of the adolescent as an oscillation between contradictory tendencies. Energy, exaltation, and supernatural activity are followed by indifference, lethargy, and loathing. Exuberant gaiety, laughter, and euphoria make place for dysphoria, depressive gloom, and melancholy. Egoism, vanity, and conceit are just as characteristic of this period of life as are abasement, humiliation, and bashfulness. One can observe both the remnants of an uninhibited childish selfishness and increasing idealistic altruism. Goodness and virtue are never so pure, but never again does temptation so forcefully preoccupy thought.³

It is no accident that the recognition of this unique phase in life coincided with the rise of the American  Industrial  Revolution. As Larry Brentro and Scott Larson point out in their book ReclaimingOur Prodigal Sons and Daughters: A Practical Approach for Connecting with Youth in Conflict, America’s shift from an agrarian to an industrial society brought adolescence out of the shadows into plain sight.

Prior to the industrial revolution, it was necessary that everyone in the family, from age 5 up, work. . . . The transition from childhood to adulthood was relatively smooth, as young people were naturally apprenticed into the adult world of work and responsibility. But with the dawn of industrialization, modern society began segregating young people from the world of adults. . . . Beginning in 1890, scientists began formulating the concept of adolescents.⁴

Among the volumes of research on the nature of adolescence, one person’s findings stand out as most definitive: Erik Erikson’s theories on identity development.

Mankind, Erikson asserts, goes through stages of human development. Each stage is dominated by a developmental “crisis”—a life-shaping, character-defining issue. He calls these the Eight Stages of Man:

• 1. Infancy: Trust versus Mistrust (the crisis: whether one be- comes a trusting or mistrusting person).
• 2. Eighteen months to 3½ years: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt (the crisis: whether one becomes an autonomous, creative individual or a dependent, inhibited, self-doubting individual).
• 3. 3½ to 6 years: Initiative versus Guilt (the crisis: whether the child engages life with activity, curiosity and exploration, or experiences immobilization by fear and guilt).
• 4. Pre-adolescence: Industry versus Inferiority (the crisis: whether one develops a sense of industry or feelings of inferiority).
• 5. Adolescence: Identity versus Identity Confusion (the crisis: the extent to which one establishes a sense of personal identity and avoids role diffusion and identity confusion).
• 6. Post-adolescence: Intimacy versus Isolation (the crisis: whether one finds either intimacy or isolation in interpersonal relationships).
• 7. Adult life: Generativity versus Stagnation (the crisis: wheth- er one experiences productive creativity in terms of vocational contribution to society, or stagnation marked by egotism, self-absorption and self-indulgence).
• 8. Old age: Integrity versus Despair (the crisis: the final stage in the human life cycle, where the developmental challenge is achievement of ego-integrity versus disgust and despair).⁵

Each stage in life has a dominant life issue. The crisis of identi- ty can indeed surface during other stages in life (in fact, some may struggle with it throughout their lives), but it is most prominent during the time of adolescence. Adolescents are wired to seek an- swers to identity questions: “Where did I come from?” “Who am I?” “What will I become?” The search for identity is, for the adolescent, a key driver and motivational issue.

Urban Adolescence

Urban youth must navigate the already stressful adolescent experi- ence within the pressurized context of a ghetto environment.

Early in their teen years, urban youth are dealing with chal- lenges most middle-class American adults have never had to face. One day a school social worker asked me to meet with her. When I arrived at her office, she said, “I told E— I was meeting with you today. He asked me to show you these.” She handed me a stack of about 20 test papers and homework assignments. They were graded: one B and the rest As. She explained: “He’s proud of these. His grades seemed to improve around the time he joined your pro- gram.” (This was interesting, since at the time we had no educa- tional component, only the weekly club gathering.) “But they’ve dropped recently. Do you know why? Has something changed?”

Something had changed—twice. First, after years of living in the Five Points projects, E— and his family had moved to an adja- cent neighborhood. For a single mother raising young boys, dis- tancing her family from the gang and drug activity dominating the projects was like escaping a war zone. But she had struggled with rent payments. What the social worker had witnessed were the ripple effects of trauma surrounding the second change: About a month before our meeting, E—’s family had been forced to move back into the projects.

On another occasion, two of our youth group members—Mar- vin and Anthony—did not come to club. I later learned they had gotten into a fight. Marvin, as he was prone to do, lost control (he “lost it,” the kids said) and found a brick. Next thing they knew, Anthony was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

One night after club, Glen confronted me. “Jesus may be fine for you, but I’m not turning out any different from my stepdad.” Glen’s stepdad had taught his boys how to steal. He would take them to a store and say, “Steal all you can. If you get caught, don’t worry. I’ll bail you out and tell them I’ll beat you when I get you home.”

Author and poet Useni Eugene Perkins describes a summer experience in what he calls the “ghetcolony of the city.” Speaking not only as a sociologist but also as someone who grew up in the Bronzeville community on Chicago’s south side, Perkins captures an arresting snapshot of city life:

Summer mornings never appear to change. They quickly be- come a part of ghetcolony tradition, a pervasive episode of hopelessness and poverty. What was true yesterday is more than likely to be true today. . . .

On hot days one can see fatigued ebony faces protruding out of windows to gain relief from the morning humidity. And the stenchy alleys covered with broken wine bottles, emp- ty beer cans, urine, and the feces of stray dogs and unwanted people. And the weary people waiting on street corners to catch the crowded buses which take them to work. And the school aged children who leave home before they have eaten breakfast. And the whimpers of babies who are still hungry from yesterday’s shortage of milk. And the dispossessed men who mill in front of taverns waiting to quench their hunger with anything that can help them escape their pain and frus- tration. And the hustlers, pimps, street men and other social outcasts who serve as models for the young.⁶

Contrary to the media’s obsession with the violent nature of the city, there is a richness to urban life that is rarely displayed on the big screen. It can be found in relationships, shared history, and the resil- ience of the human spirit. One of the cable television networks touts as its slogan “Characters welcome.” This could just as easily be the slogan for many an urban community. I am constantly amazed at the creative and fascinating characters that reside in the city, particularly among its young. There are wonderful people living here. Sharing life as neighbors has brought great joy to my family over the years.

Yet passersby who observe children playing on the streets of the as- phalt jungle and conclude, “They are happy; there is nothing wrong,” are perhaps guilty of seeking justification for indifference. There are many things wrong, and those who grow up urban, despite moments of reprieve or celebration, are highly vulnerable to the influence of the streets.

Code of the Streets

Useni Perkins describes this unique aspect of growing up urban, which, in my estimation, poses the greatest challenge to urban youth ministry:

And it is on the streets where the Black child receives his basic orientation to life. The streets become his primary ref- erence. . . . For a child to survive the “ghetcolony” he must undergo a rigorous apprenticeship. He becomes a student f the “asphalt jungle.”⁷

The black child’s worldview—his/her understanding  of  how life works—is indelibly shaped by a culture dominated by violence, crime, instability and fear. This is true for all who grow up urban. The “ghetcolony” is more than an experience. It is an orientation. Elijah Anderson, in his signature book by the same name, refers to   it as the Code of the Street:

Although there are often forces in the community that can counteract negative influences—by far the most powerful is a strong, loving, “decent” (as inner-city residents put it) family that is committed to middle class values—the despair is pervasive enough to have spawned an oppositional culture, that of “the street,” whose norms are often consciously opposed to those of mainstream society. . . .

The street culture has evolved a “code of the street,” which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, particularly violence.⁸ (emphasis added)

Anderson’s description of urban life is vivid and powerful. The city is filled with all kinds of people: “street” kids and “decent” kids, working parents and gang members, faithful grandmothers, single moms, drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like. What boggles the mind is the extent to which all are impacted by the code of the street. The code has an identity-shaping influence on the lives of every person in the urban community.

In his review of Anderson’s book, researcher and educational policy expert Kevin R. Kosar describes the phenomenon in this way:

One might wonder just how this self-destructive environ- ment perpetuates itself. . . .

Anderson explains that the ghetto regenerates itself through “the code of the street.” The code is a hierarchy of values that exalts impudence, machismo, and regular displays of violence while it denigrates manners, respon- sibility, and compassion. Children born in or brought to the inner-city face the inescapable “dilemma of the decent child”; either be a good kid like your parents and teachers tell you and get beat up by other kids, or start behaving like a thug or “gangsta.” Understandably, a great many youths choose the latter path. Thus the “hood” lives on, transcending individuals and sucking in more and more children into criminal behavior, despite the best efforts of some parents.⁹

Much has been written about the dynamics of city life and urban culture’s impact on its residents. The influence of the code is far more pervasive than one might think. It creates a mindset—a value system—that, for many, shapes destinies.

For years I led a weekly Bible study with men transitioning out of incarceration and/or drug addiction. Some were in their twen- ties, while many were in their forties and fifties. In ways similar to a youth setting, I confronted belief systems and values born out of the culture of the streets. At the heart of the Bible study was a com- peting for minds—urging the replacement of street paradigms with kingdom-of-God values.

Among its many tenets, the code has a way of defining race. What does it mean to be black? By what standard is “blackness” measured? For many young blacks in urban America, to resist the code is to deny one’s racial identity. Embracing the rules of the street gives credence to your racial affiliation: you’re “acting black.” Re- sistance—choosing to be a good kid, get good grades, etc.—signals  a denial of race: you’re “acting white.” This creates an unresolvable dilemma if one accepts the premise that identity is determined by response to the cultural mores of the day.

I think back to my friend at the church missions conference who could not bring himself to co-teach the class on urban mission (see chapter 4, “Tapestry”). His response seemed irrational: “My neighbor- hood was terrible. . . . I’ll never go back     I’m not going in there [the classroom!].” Then I realized: Of course it’s irrational! It is part of the identity struggle. I know blacks for whom the thought of returning to the city evokes great fear, as if some negative force might engulf them.

Urban Politique

Politics has a way of seeping into every social dilemma. Most ana- lysts cannot talk about city problems without injecting politicized opinions as to why they exist—or proposing solutions that favor a particular political agenda.

This is clearly expressed in Elijah Anderson’s and Eugene Per- kins’ assessments of urban issues:

The inclination to violence springs from the circumstances of life among the ghetto poor—the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, limited basic public services (police response in emergencies, building maintenance, trash pickup, light- ing, and other services that middle-class neighborhoods take for granted), the stigma of race, the fallout from ram- pant drug use and drug trafficking, and the resulting alien- ation and absence of hope for the future.¹⁰ (Anderson)

The streets become his primary reference because other institutions have failed to provide him with the essential skills he needs to survive in the “ghetcolony”.¹¹ (Perkins)

Toward the end of his book, Anderson highlights what he deems an important solution: provide jobs with a living wage. When compared to the depth of the urban challenge, a response like this seems anemic, almost laughable. Good economic policy is important, but applied in isolation it hardly scratches the surface of addressing the influence of the code on the young.

Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the Univer- sity of Chicago, wrote an article on the violence that took place in Chicago over the 2014 Independence Day weekend. Eighty-two people were shot; 17 died. Most of the victims were in their late teens and twenties. “Who knows how many innocents were hit by stray bullets or huddled under their beds for protection?” he asks. “How many children think gunfire is a normal background noise?”

Later in the article, Lipson touches on the failure of public policy and the need for more grassroots solutions:

We have not ignored the fundamental social problems that lie behind this cycle of violence, poverty and family disintegration. We have tried hard to address them, but we’ve failed. Over the past 50 years, we have poured trillions of dollars into Great Society programs that experts said would alleviate poverty, strengthen fam- ilies, build job skills and reduce crime. These costly programs were dreamed up in Washington, passed by well-meaning legislators and administered by increas- ingly powerful bureaucrats. The programs haven’t just failed, they often have made the problems worse. The catastrophic rise of out-of wedlock births and the col- lapse of nuclear families have gone hand-in-hand with those “helpful” programs. What the laws, regulations and subsidies did was create dependency, encourage single parenthood and undermine the private institutions that once buttressed communities.

We are now reaping the whirlwind. It’s time to be- gin fundamentally rethinking how we spend money for schools, social services and police. We should begin by scaling back the dead hand ofWashington and encouraging more local experimentation.¹² (emphasis added)

A significant private institution that has been undermined is the local church and its youth ministry. Sadly, it is an undermin- ing of our own choosing. How have we allowed this to happen? By allowing highly politicized socio-political perspectives on the urban youth crisis to overshadow Christian perspectives and resources.

As I consider the current state of the American inner city, two illustrations come to mind. A defining story within Star Trek lore is how James Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru—an impossible-to-win Starfleet exercise designed to test the character of cadets training for command positions. In effect, Kirk cheated: He changed the conditions of the test, declaring, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” Trekkies understand this to mean that discovering a solution often requires redefining the problem.

A second illustration comes from Bobb Biehl’s Masterplanning Arrow—a tool used to map the direction of an organization. A preparatory step in the goal-setting process is identifying your top three roadblocks and top three resources. Leadership requires an awareness of both, to the end of utilizing one’s resources to overcome roadblocks.

If the solutions to today’s urban issues lie solely within  the realms of the political and the socioeconomic, then what can a lowly youth worker accomplish? Likely very little. But if there are spiritual and relational aspects to the situation, then there are resources uniquely available to the Christian leader that have been overshadowed and underutilized. As with the Kobayashi Maru, achieving success in this arena requires redefining the problem.

I remember distinctly my first Christmas after giving my life to Christ. I had already made plans to fly home for two weeks. Fear of returning to my home environment gripped me. I was terrified to go back, for fear I would somehow lose this “feeling” of new life within me. With great anxiety, I shared my dilemma with the man who had led me to Christ.

I tried as best I could to describe the source of my fears—the harsh realities of my neighborhood. As I talked, I noticed Bud smiling. I thought to myself, He’s not understanding what I’m saying. So I continued, adding graphic detail to the description of my city. But the more I talked, the bigger he smiled.

Finally, in vintage Bud fashion, he burst out in a hearty laugh. Then, in a strangely reflective yet joyful tone, he said, “What a tremendous opportunity!”

I thought he was crazy.

In actuality, he was right. I survived my stay at home. I even made new Christian friends who introduced me to a wonderful local church body. When I returned to Vienna after the holidays, I made a plaque and hung it on my wall. It read, in big bright letters: “What a Tremendous Opportunity!”

So much focus is given to the pragmatic nature of problems, we fail to look for (or recognize) divine solutions. We miss the “Tremendous Opportunity.” It is time to look at the urban community from another perspective. We must answer the strategic question, Where is God in all of this?

Notes

1. New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
2. Rolf E. Muuss, Theories of Adolescence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), p. 5. 
3. Ibid., p. 16.
4. Scott Larson and Larry Brendtro, Reclaiming Our Prodigal Sons and Daughters: A Practical Approach for Connecting with Youth in Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree, 2000), p. 4.
5. Muuss, Theories of Adolescence, pp. 47-57.
6. Quoted in Jawanza Kunjufu, Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys (Sauk Vil- lage, IL: African American Images, 1985), pp. 16-17.
7. Ibid., p. 17.
8. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), Kindle edition.'Kevin R. Kosar, “The Underclass Up Close,” in The Wagner Review (New York: Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Spring 2000), p. 141.
9. Anderson, Code of the Street.
10. Kunjufu, Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, p. 17.
11. Charles Lipson, “Summer Weekend 2014 Worse than St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” in The Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2014.

Questions for Thought

1. In what ways do you see the code of the streets affecting the behavior of people in your neighborhood? Families? Kids? Your church? You?
2. In relation to coping with life in the ’hood, what do you hear youth saying are their greatest felt needs?
3. Describe the Kobayashi Marus (i.e., the seemingly impossible situations) you and your ministry face as a result of the code of the street.