Getting There: Navigating Personal Mobility
"Getting There" focuses on the aspects of personal mobility, personal impediments of getting ahead, and the special place of race in class. Chapter seven briefly touches on and concludes the men's discussion on the modern-day America and the American Dream. They touch on the emphasizing factors of, discipline, hard work, education, and motivation.
The men believe that a high school diploma is a bare essential towards minimal success in the working world, but that the only useful education was direct training to one's career interests. The men then move on to confronting and acknowledging their own self-induced barriers. Men like Gus and Casey talk about their struggles with substance abuse, and the problems that it caused for them as far as being motivated let alone difficult to acquire any type of working opportunities.
Additionally men that had been previously incarcerated such as Devin, Earl, Lester, and Casey, talk about the disadvantages to having a criminal record, and the difficulty of trying to find and take advantage of working opportunities as a result of that. The men then move on to discuss the difficulty of personal mobility. They discuss how being African American puts them in a lower class with less resources and opportunities, thus making it harder for them to mobilize and to make something of themselves with less difficulty. In conclusion this chapter has a very present theme of social isolation.
Read more about this topic: The Minds Of Marginalized Black Men, Chapter 7
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or mobility:
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