A common perception, often fueled by pop culture, is that street culture is only engaged in, observed, and experienced on the streets of our large cities, in particular places where low-income or working poor live. In principle this perception is justified. In reality, however, we can see, hear and/or watch (hereafter experience) street culture in a variety of settings.
To begin with, street culture can exist in nonurban locales, such as suburbs or near suburbs. Although these locations typically have lower population densities than inner cities, areas like the low-income banlieue of Paris and the Jane-Finch corridor of Toronto do not. These neighborhoods have a heavy concentration of low-income, unemployed, or working class people, including refugees, immigrants, and single family households, thus both population densities and opportunities for interpersonal conflict can be relatively high.
Additionally, street culture can be seen, watched, and represented in numerous physical environments located in various urban areas. These can include, but are not limited to bars, gyms, nightclubs, restaurants, stores, and transportation hubs, like bus, subway, and train stations. Street culture is also evident in our schools, especially the locker room or school yard where young men and women may engage in social comparison and neighborhood bullies may attempt to express their dominance. Street culture can also manifest inside our correctional facilities where in these typically hypermasculine environments, responses to norms about the street, especially who has power and who does not are played out on a daily basis.
Finally, we can experience street culture in numerous items made by our cultural industries, like books, movies, and television shows, episodes and series, that pervade our daily lives. In fact, so much that interests and engages the public are songs and fashions that have their origins on the street. A considerable amount of street wear and street style (e.g., brands like Supreme), for example, use the imagery and iconography of street culture in their messaging with the hopes that consumers will purchase their garments.
The more interesting question is not where and when does street culture exist, but how does street culture change when it enters different environments, and how do people adopt various aspects of street culture, and interact with others, inside these structures? For example, a homeless person who is trying to get out of the cold or rain may seek temporary shelter in a bus or a train station until a security guard or police officer instructs them to leave, or more typically chases them away. In the context of the transportation hubs, that homeless person may consciously or unconsciously subtly change their behavior in order to navigate the rough waters and give themselves a few moments of peace from the elements outside. Although this may be a result of socialization, or scripts, this behavioral accommodation is frequently referred to as “passing” or “code switching.”
Street culture is relatively pervasive, and here to stay. It’s not going away or being replaced by digital culture, and despite the COVID-19 global pandemic a stay at home culture. That’s why, at the very least, we need to understand its various types, locations, how it is presented to us, how it changes, and how it is used.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/30614306975_cbdb45939a_o-1-scaled.jpg17072560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-08-15 17:02:012021-08-29 11:10:03Street Culture isn’t only experienced in urban centers
One of the American Criminal Justice system’s most cherished legal norms is the assumption that serious crime, like murder, will be thoroughly investigated and, regardless of the victim or alleged suspect/s, judiciously prosecuted and punished. That is to say, in theory.
But when police are accused of the law breaking, how do we ensure impartiality and minimize conflict of interest in the investigation and charging process? To this end, there are a number of safeguards at our disposal. The case can be taken over by a neighboring jurisdiction, by a law enforcement agency in a different part of the state, or even by a different state entirely. The state attorney general’s office can also do its own investigation, as can the Federal Bureau of Investigation (upon request) and especially if there is a possibility that the crime was one that is federal in nature.
A lack of expediency in situations where law enforcement are themselves the perpetrator causes the public to lose confidence not only in the police department, but the criminal justice system and the state as a whole. This situation has unfortunately become all too common in recent times.
We have seen this process play out with increasing regularity through a litany of cases of police use of excessive force: Eric Garner in New York City, Michael Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and most recently with Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
In brief, right after midnight on March 13, 2020 (almost six months ago), three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers executed a no knock warrant on Taylor’s apartment. The Louisville PD initially claimed that officers identified themselves as police before entry; Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend and neighbors dispute this. Suspecting a break-in, (a plausible scenario in that part of town) Walker, opened fired once on the officers. The officers returned fire with 20 shots shooting both Walker, and killing Taylor.
It’s important to note that the warrant was neither for Walker nor Taylor. It was for Jamarcus Glover who was incidentally in custody, but the police did not know this at the time.
Other unsettling things to note in the context of this tragic incident: Taylor was not initially killed by the gunfire, she bled out after approximately 20 minutes, and officers neither attempted to save her nor call paramedics. Taylor’s mother was given a bureaucratic run around by the LMPD and not informed that her daughter had been killed for hours after the LMPD knew.
And the initial incident report indicated that Taylor did not have any injuries.
On May 20, 2020 the report of an investigation by the Louisville Police Department was handed over to State Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Three months have passed, daily protests have occurred, multiple protesters have been arrested, and still no charges against the officers have been laid. In June the Steve Conrad, LMPD chief of police under intense criticism resigned.
By any standard, the optics for this case are not great. Neither the state nor local prosecutors have filed charges against any of the officers, and the judge who signed off on the warrant has not been sanctioned. Meanwhile we have had two bills in congress one titled the Justice in Policing Act sponsored by the Democrats that has included a provision that police cannot use no knock raids, and another sponsored by Kentucky senator Rand Paul titled Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. Both have stalled.
Still no charges have been laid. It’s possible that the gears will turn and Taylor’s murder will find justice.
At the very least this incident is sloppy police work and judicial malfeasance, at its worst a state crime, a crime of the powerful.
In the meantime, for Taylor’s mother and loved ones, and the people who have come out to protest her killing, justice continues to be delayed, and that means justice is denied.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/50028231651_55934997a2_o-1-scaled.jpg16962560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-08-09 04:45:382022-12-15 12:13:38Delaying Justice in the investigation and charges in connection with the murder of Breonna Taylor
The clock is ticking and maybe you are too late? But still there may be some time to make a better informed decision.
Like most undergraduate and graduate students, and some of their parents who are footing the bill, you have weighed the pros and cons of going back to classes this fall. You are trying to answer a bunch of questions connected to the quality of instruction and campus life: Should I go back full time? Can I go back part-time instead? Do I have enough money to pay for classes? Am I putting myself at risk of contracting COVID-19 if I return to campus? Will I put the health of my family and friends in danger? Are on-line classes worth the money? Will classes, if in person, remain in person for the entire semester? How many of my classmates/teachers will die from the virus? Should I sit the semester out?
Now that COVID-19 is enveloping the United States with alarming speed, universities are preparing, some better than others, to put into place safeguards for either face-to-face instruction or methods to enhance on-line instruction, that can will enable education in various formats, while at the same time ensuring the health of students, faculty, administrators, and other essential staff.
Some students argue that they want a “real” university experience, the one they had last year, or the one their parents or friends attending other universities had. This “real” experience might include an active Greek life, students socializing in circles on grass lawns, attending classes in person, and having fun outside of classrooms. This scenario, is no longer is possible. So what can we do?
What I do know is that unless you are familiar with on-line instruction and learning, from now on university instruction will not be the same.
Perhaps you don’t function well online. This may be because you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t learn unless the instruction is face-to-face, you prefer face-to-face instruction more, or the result of a learning disability. Again, I understand and empathize with you. But things have changed.
The presence of COVID-19 is the new normal, for now and you should get used to it. Maybe your experience last semester was less than ideal. Your instructor was not great on-line. But he or she is hopefully going to get better. It takes time for both instructors and students to shift over from face-to-face to online teaching and learning.
Maybe you are thinking that you will go back to campus in the spring semester, because, after all, a vaccine will have been developed by then. In a perfect world this might happen, but in reality we do not know when the vaccine will be invented, when you’ll finally end up receiving it, and how much adoption among the wider community there will be. In other words, it’s going to be a long time before typical face-to-face university classes resume to normal if there ever was such a thing.
Here is another downside to taking a semester or two off. You will be half a semester, or one year behind. Thus your lifetime earning power will have decreased. And you are taking a gap semester or year off to do what? Play videogames from the comfort of your bed?
Alternatively, maybe because of job loss or economic insecurity, you will have a tough time paying for next year‘s bills, and consider post-secondary education a luxury item. But you are forgetting that education, especially a college or university education from an accredited (e.g., Middle States) educational institution is one of the best assets that you can purchase that’s worth getting into debt for.
The take away is that there are lots of situations that are not ideal. If you want to succeed in life it’s important that you learn this lesson now. Good employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs need to be flexible to adapt to new situations including challenges and crises. If the only way you can learn is through face-to- face instruction you are missing out on lots of opportunities to learn and to grow. Your ability to tough it out during these uncertain times should also bode well when your application comes in front of employers as it demonstrates that even though conditions were not ideal, you toughed it out. Employers like this sort of thing.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Pomona-campu-scaled.jpg25601707Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2020-08-01 16:36:212021-08-27 20:44:52A message to our students: If you are thinking about sitting out the fall semester, please reconsider
Street Culture isn’t only experienced in urban centers
/by Jeffrey Ian RossA common perception, often fueled by pop culture, is that street culture is only engaged in, observed, and experienced on the streets of our large cities, in particular places where low-income or working poor live. In principle this perception is justified. In reality, however, we can see, hear and/or watch (hereafter experience) street culture in a variety of settings.
To begin with, street culture can exist in nonurban locales, such as suburbs or near suburbs. Although these locations typically have lower population densities than inner cities, areas like the low-income banlieue of Paris and the Jane-Finch corridor of Toronto do not. These neighborhoods have a heavy concentration of low-income, unemployed, or working class people, including refugees, immigrants, and single family households, thus both population densities and opportunities for interpersonal conflict can be relatively high.
Additionally, street culture can be seen, watched, and represented in numerous physical environments located in various urban areas. These can include, but are not limited to bars, gyms, nightclubs, restaurants, stores, and transportation hubs, like bus, subway, and train stations. Street culture is also evident in our schools, especially the locker room or school yard where young men and women may engage in social comparison and neighborhood bullies may attempt to express their dominance. Street culture can also manifest inside our correctional facilities where in these typically hypermasculine environments, responses to norms about the street, especially who has power and who does not are played out on a daily basis.
Finally, we can experience street culture in numerous items made by our cultural industries, like books, movies, and television shows, episodes and series, that pervade our daily lives. In fact, so much that interests and engages the public are songs and fashions that have their origins on the street. A considerable amount of street wear and street style (e.g., brands like Supreme), for example, use the imagery and iconography of street culture in their messaging with the hopes that consumers will purchase their garments.
The more interesting question is not where and when does street culture exist, but how does street culture change when it enters different environments, and how do people adopt various aspects of street culture, and interact with others, inside these structures? For example, a homeless person who is trying to get out of the cold or rain may seek temporary shelter in a bus or a train station until a security guard or police officer instructs them to leave, or more typically chases them away. In the context of the transportation hubs, that homeless person may consciously or unconsciously subtly change their behavior in order to navigate the rough waters and give themselves a few moments of peace from the elements outside. Although this may be a result of socialization, or scripts, this behavioral accommodation is frequently referred to as “passing” or “code switching.”
Street culture is relatively pervasive, and here to stay. It’s not going away or being replaced by digital culture, and despite the COVID-19 global pandemic a stay at home culture. That’s why, at the very least, we need to understand its various types, locations, how it is presented to us, how it changes, and how it is used.
Photo credit
Photographer: nhatnguyen
Title: Chinatown Photo Essay
Delaying Justice in the investigation and charges in connection with the murder of Breonna Taylor
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOne of the American Criminal Justice system’s most cherished legal norms is the assumption that serious crime, like murder, will be thoroughly investigated and, regardless of the victim or alleged suspect/s, judiciously prosecuted and punished. That is to say, in theory.
But when police are accused of the law breaking, how do we ensure impartiality and minimize conflict of interest in the investigation and charging process? To this end, there are a number of safeguards at our disposal. The case can be taken over by a neighboring jurisdiction, by a law enforcement agency in a different part of the state, or even by a different state entirely. The state attorney general’s office can also do its own investigation, as can the Federal Bureau of Investigation (upon request) and especially if there is a possibility that the crime was one that is federal in nature.
A lack of expediency in situations where law enforcement are themselves the perpetrator causes the public to lose confidence not only in the police department, but the criminal justice system and the state as a whole. This situation has unfortunately become all too common in recent times.
We have seen this process play out with increasing regularity through a litany of cases of police use of excessive force: Eric Garner in New York City, Michael Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and most recently with Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
In brief, right after midnight on March 13, 2020 (almost six months ago), three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers executed a no knock warrant on Taylor’s apartment. The Louisville PD initially claimed that officers identified themselves as police before entry; Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend and neighbors dispute this. Suspecting a break-in, (a plausible scenario in that part of town) Walker, opened fired once on the officers. The officers returned fire with 20 shots shooting both Walker, and killing Taylor.
It’s important to note that the warrant was neither for Walker nor Taylor. It was for Jamarcus Glover who was incidentally in custody, but the police did not know this at the time.
Other unsettling things to note in the context of this tragic incident: Taylor was not initially killed by the gunfire, she bled out after approximately 20 minutes, and officers neither attempted to save her nor call paramedics. Taylor’s mother was given a bureaucratic run around by the LMPD and not informed that her daughter had been killed for hours after the LMPD knew.
And the initial incident report indicated that Taylor did not have any injuries.
On May 20, 2020 the report of an investigation by the Louisville Police Department was handed over to State Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Three months have passed, daily protests have occurred, multiple protesters have been arrested, and still no charges against the officers have been laid. In June the Steve Conrad, LMPD chief of police under intense criticism resigned.
In June the Mayor of Louisville announced that Brett Hankison, one of the three officers involved in the case had been terminated, while the other two have been placed on “administrative reassignment.” (
By any standard, the optics for this case are not great. Neither the state nor local prosecutors have filed charges against any of the officers, and the judge who signed off on the warrant has not been sanctioned. Meanwhile we have had two bills in congress one titled the Justice in Policing Act sponsored by the Democrats that has included a provision that police cannot use no knock raids, and another sponsored by Kentucky senator Rand Paul titled Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. Both have stalled.
Still no charges have been laid. It’s possible that the gears will turn and Taylor’s murder will find justice.
At the very least this incident is sloppy police work and judicial malfeasance, at its worst a state crime, a crime of the powerful.
In the meantime, for Taylor’s mother and loved ones, and the people who have come out to protest her killing, justice continues to be delayed, and that means justice is denied.
A message to our students: If you are thinking about sitting out the fall semester, please reconsider
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe clock is ticking and maybe you are too late? But still there may be some time to make a better informed decision.
Like most undergraduate and graduate students, and some of their parents who are footing the bill, you have weighed the pros and cons of going back to classes this fall. You are trying to answer a bunch of questions connected to the quality of instruction and campus life: Should I go back full time? Can I go back part-time instead? Do I have enough money to pay for classes? Am I putting myself at risk of contracting COVID-19 if I return to campus? Will I put the health of my family and friends in danger? Are on-line classes worth the money? Will classes, if in person, remain in person for the entire semester? How many of my classmates/teachers will die from the virus? Should I sit the semester out?
Now that COVID-19 is enveloping the United States with alarming speed, universities are preparing, some better than others, to put into place safeguards for either face-to-face instruction or methods to enhance on-line instruction, that can will enable education in various formats, while at the same time ensuring the health of students, faculty, administrators, and other essential staff.
Some students argue that they want a “real” university experience, the one they had last year, or the one their parents or friends attending other universities had. This “real” experience might include an active Greek life, students socializing in circles on grass lawns, attending classes in person, and having fun outside of classrooms. This scenario, is no longer is possible. So what can we do?
What I do know is that unless you are familiar with on-line instruction and learning, from now on university instruction will not be the same.
Perhaps you don’t function well online. This may be because you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t learn unless the instruction is face-to-face, you prefer face-to-face instruction more, or the result of a learning disability. Again, I understand and empathize with you. But things have changed.
The presence of COVID-19 is the new normal, for now and you should get used to it. Maybe your experience last semester was less than ideal. Your instructor was not great on-line. But he or she is hopefully going to get better. It takes time for both instructors and students to shift over from face-to-face to online teaching and learning.
Maybe you are thinking that you will go back to campus in the spring semester, because, after all, a vaccine will have been developed by then. In a perfect world this might happen, but in reality we do not know when the vaccine will be invented, when you’ll finally end up receiving it, and how much adoption among the wider community there will be. In other words, it’s going to be a long time before typical face-to-face university classes resume to normal if there ever was such a thing.
Here is another downside to taking a semester or two off. You will be half a semester, or one year behind. Thus your lifetime earning power will have decreased. And you are taking a gap semester or year off to do what? Play videogames from the comfort of your bed?
Alternatively, maybe because of job loss or economic insecurity, you will have a tough time paying for next year‘s bills, and consider post-secondary education a luxury item. But you are forgetting that education, especially a college or university education from an accredited (e.g., Middle States) educational institution is one of the best assets that you can purchase that’s worth getting into debt for.
The take away is that there are lots of situations that are not ideal. If you want to succeed in life it’s important that you learn this lesson now. Good employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs need to be flexible to adapt to new situations including challenges and crises. If the only way you can learn is through face-to- face instruction you are missing out on lots of opportunities to learn and to grow. Your ability to tough it out during these uncertain times should also bode well when your application comes in front of employers as it demonstrates that even though conditions were not ideal, you toughed it out. Employers like this sort of thing.