Pattillo-McCoy looks around the cafe crowded with UC Berkeley students of every ethnic background, sipping lattes and smoothies, studying, talking. Apparent winners, so far, in the rough game called life. There are special problems for kids growing up in today's materialistic world, problems that every middle-class family faces, she said. But they're magnified in black neighborhoods. Kids are looking for excitement, whether they're white, black, Hispanic or Asian.
Popular culture romanticizes poverty's desperate life.
It's cool to imitate the gang bangers and gangsta rappers. That's perhaps OK if a kid lives in a safe white suburb. But for most middle-class black kids, trouble can be right next door, she said. In my book I tell a story about a young man whose parents were professionals with jobs in the Chicago public schools. There are gangs who hang out at a park near his house, selling drugs.