The Code of the Street

CODE(S) OF THE STREET

Put simply, the “code of the street,” which according to Anderson is

prevalent in the inner city ghetto, functions as a way for African American

youth to maintain social order in neighborhoods that have been abandoned

by formal institutions such as the police. Unlike other social codes that informally

regulate public space in mainstream American culture (in Jacobs’

era or our own), a violation of the code of the street can put an individual

at potentially life-threatening risk. According to Anderson, these norms of

the street grow out of an opposition to mainstream culture, which itself is a

response to the alienation of black inner-city residents from the economic

and social institutions of a predominantly white society (p. 323). The code

ensures some amount of physical protection in an environment where a violent

drug economy poses a sense of danger in everyday public life. Ambient

threats to personal security, combined with a distrust of the police, lead youth

to develop their own policing mechanisms through which respect must be

demonstrated toward those who have built reputations based on their toughness.

These informal rules “prescribe both proper comportment and the