Why are so many black boys disrupting class?

It's an inflammatory-sounding question, isn't it?

I've been reading the 1999 book "Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City," by Elijah Anderson, an African-American sociology professor at Yale. Anderson shows that for young people from the violent, impoverished inner city, behavior that's disruptive, oppositional, anti-social and sometimes explosive is not due to poor impulse control or acting out. It's a calculated and effective survival mechanism, completely rational and essential in those kids' life context.

Anderson studies and writes about the segregated African-American inner-city community. I don't know enough to discuss how his portrayal is similar to situations among other demographics that often face economic and other challenges — Latinos, Pacific Islanders, and quite a few Asian sub-subgroups (not to mention poor whites).

I'll quote some snippets from the book:

Of all the problems besetting the poor inner-city black community, none is more pressing than that of interpersonal violence and aggression. This phenomenon wreaks havoc daily on the lives of community residents. ... Simply living in such an environment places young people at special risk of falling victim to aggressive behavior. ... (T)he street culture has evolved a "code of the street," which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, particularly violence. The rules prescribe both proper comportment and the proper way to respond if challenged. They regulate the use of violence. ... Knowledge of the code is thus largely defensive, and it is literally necessary for operating in public."

It is this Code of the Street that motivates — perhaps requires — young people, especially males, to display certain behaviors and modes of dress and comportment. Inner-city residents deeply believe — perhaps accurately — that their own behavior can mark them as a victim or as a person to be respected and not messed with. Boys and young men who affect the requisite look and behavior, all of it aimed at credibly presenting themselves as someone who will fight and do damage if threatened, are keeping themselves safe.

A second theme of the book is that inner-city residents are divided by a blurry line into "street" and "decent" people. Anderson writes:

Almost everyone residing in poor inner-city neighborhoods is struggling financially and therefore feels a certain distance from the rest of America, but there are degrees of alienation, captured by the terms "decent" and "street" or "ghetto," suggesting social types.

Yet to survive in the dangerous, alienated street culture, "decent" people must adopt some "street" behavior. An example that makes sense to anyone (even if we abhor it) is parents who teach their kids to fight back physically if bullied.

The greater world — the mainstream culture — doesn't easily distinguish between street and decent when it comes to African-American youth, especially because the decent kids adopt the mannerisms of the street kids. I had wondered why so many young black males dress flamboyantly in ways that seem likely to attract negative attention from the police. Anderson shows us that's because it keeps them safer from another threat, the most violent street elements.

Oakland parent activist Sharon Higgins, who introduced me to this book, has blogged that the divide between "street" and "decent" explains why many disadvantaged African-American families are enthusiastic about charter schools, private schools and other options that will shelter their kids from the more-dangerous street kids. But, as Sharon points out, this also shows why those stopgaps are not a true solution to the greater problems — the academic disengagement of low-income young people, truancy and dropouts, and such pathologies of the ghetto as drugs, crime, violence and single motherhood.

Here's some of what Anderson writes about schools:

The inner-city school is an outpost of the traditions of the wider society. ... During their early years, most of the children accept the legitimacy of the school, and then eagerly approach the task of learning. As time passes, however, in their relentless campaign for the respect that will be meaningful in their public environment, youth increasingly embrace the street code. By the fourth grade, enough children have opted for the code of the street that it begins to compete effectively with the culture of the school, and the code begins to dominate their public culture — in school as well as out — becoming a way of life for many and eventually conflating with the culture of the school itself. ... For many alienated young black people, attending school and doing well becomes negatively associated with acting white. ... "(S)treet knowledge" is esteemed, and the quest for it ... begins to predominate, ultimately competing with, if not undermining, the mission of the school.

With each passing year the school loses ground as more and more students adopt a street orientation, if only for self-defense in the neighborhood. But often what is out on the streets is brought into the classrooms. The most troublesome students are then encouraged by peers to act out, to get over on the teacher, to test authority. ... (M)any students in the upper grades attend school sporadically or stop coming altogether, because street activities effectively compete for their time. Even while in school, they walk the halls instead of attending class, and their encounters there often mirror those on the streets, marked by tension and fights.

... (M)ost of the young people in these settings are inclined toward decency, but when the street elements rule, they are encouraged to campaign for respect by adopting a street attitude, look, and presentation of self. In this context, the decent kids often must struggle to maintain their credibility.

I think of two African-American girls who started my kids' diverse middle school, both from middle-class-oriented families, both identified as Gifted and Talented and placed in honors classes. Both were victimized by harassment and threats by other African-American girls, and their parents moved them to other schools. One switched to another SFUSD middle school that has an almost entirely Asian and white student population; the other went to a parochial school.

Some of this has always been apparent to anyone with any contact with diverse communities. It's easy for the completely out-of-touch to blame teachers and schools for not turning kids who live the street culture into well-behaved scholars, heading diligently toward graduation and college. Obviously, it's not that simple.

We middle-class types might wonder: Well, why can't these people just stop acting like that? But Anderson makes it clear that this isn't so simple either.

For the individual, the "street" behavior, with its edge of a threat of violence, is "a practical code geared toward survival in (the) community." So it's not so easy for that individual, or lots of individuals, to decide to embrace the behavior of the mainstream middle-class. They feel, credibly, that their very safety is at stake.

To the community, it's "a vicious cycle ... The hopelessness many young inner-city black men and women feel, largely as a result of endemic joblessness and alienation, fuels the violence they engage in. This violence then serves to confirm the negative feelings many whites and some middle-class blacks harbor toward the ghetto poor, further legitimating the oppositional culture and the code of the street for many alienated young blacks."

Anderson follows two young men, raised and immersed in the culture of the street yet struggling toward the decent.

One has a conviction for possession of a gun (his mother's gun that he carried when he was passing through a dangerous area in a time of gang violence). His struggle (including with his own worst impulses) to pay the fine for that conviction and deal with probation officers who are un-charmed by his cluelessly offensive demeanor ends up undermining his attempt to go legit with a union maintenance job.

The second, who has a drug-dealing, violent gang past and a prison record, has decided to leave his criminal past behind. He becomes an inner-city entrepreneur, running a fruit stand, a hot-dog cart and eventually a deli counter inside a neighborhood store. But he faces struggles with an array of forces: drug dealers who stake out the sidewalk outside the deli's door; bureaucrats who harass him over petty technicalities (the two described are African-American); his old homies who taunt him and try to lure him back. Anderson describes the businessman's battle of wills with the drug dealers outside his door and eventual, if likely temporary, victory. (I thought of that when I read an article on West Oakland in yesterday's Chronicle magazine that mentioned — without question — holding the owners of a corner store responsible for drug dealing outside their business.)

Are the problems of such a damaged community really something we expect teachers and schools to just magically fix?

Anderson does not present any easy solutions — of course, there are none. He does call for "political leadership that articulates the problem." Well, I'm not "political leadership," but here it is articulated, for what that's worth.

Sharon Higgins is calling for a system that separates disruptive, violent young people from other students and provides intensive intervention and help for them. With millions of private dollars being poured into her school district, Oakland Unified, by well-meaning (if, in my opinion, misguided) billionaires, it doesn't seem so farfetched to wonder if some of that money might be directed toward such programs.

Yet at least in my district, a lot of racial head-counting goes on. We have school board members complaining that a disproportionate number of school suspensions are of African-American students, for example. Yet if those students live in a community that encourages — all but requires — them to behave in oppositional ways that disrupt classes — while young people from other communities don't have that motivation — is that so surprising? Perhaps the problem is more that we punish uselessly rather than intervening in ways that might make a difference and help break the cycle.