NCJ Number
124174
Date Published
1989
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Northton-Village, a community area of "Eastern City," has a reputation as one of the most culturally and racially mixed areas of the city.
Abstract
However, there are signs of racial and class divisions, if not alienation and hostility, in this supposedly tolerant community area. This is complicated by increasing changes in the racial and class composition of the area. The transition of the area is a source of community concern; at times, it results in tension on the streets, if not increased street crime. Residents tend to live according to strikingly different cultural traditions and inhabit cultural areas. The residents are competitors for status in the area, and they measure themselves by reference to each other. This social measuring involves conceptions of both neighborhoods and thus links them into a single ecological unit. Interdependent as they are, they have a symbiotic relation; but it is not totally symbiotic. There is a high level of self-consciousness about relative status, ambivalence on both sides, and a neighborhood awareness of the discrepancy between aspiration and reality.