URBAN AFRICAN-AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR PARENTS - PERCEPTIONS OF VIOLENCE WITHIN AND AGAINST THEIR COMMUNITIES

Over the past decade, within cities throughout the United States, the numbers of homicides continue to rise, and increasing numbers of minority youths are victims of this violence. At the same time, in many of these same cities a third or more of minority children under 18 years old are living below the poverty line. In the following paper, we examine the perceptions of violence and poverty as articulated by African American urban adolescents, their parents and other guardians, and recreation center workers. These urban residents describe and discuss their experiences with acts of physical violence in the home, at schools, and on the streets, as well as their concerns about decreasing services and programs for minority urban youths. We present data from four years of both ethnographic and survey research conducted by members of an interdisciplinary team in Baltimore City. We argue for a research and intervention framework whereby the current crisis in physical violence, (i.e., homicide, aggravated assaults) within U.S. cities can be integrated with research at the political and economic level, (i.e., the structural violence inherent to the class structure within the post-industrial city). Furthermore, we suggest that the urban residents with whom we work have already integrated these issues in a meaningful way, and that it is only through community-based collaborative research with both youths and adults that relevant programs and salient changes can be effected.