Long Bomb

September 16, 2005

This chapter focuses on a man named Sudhir Venketesh who was an economist major at the University of California at San Diego with a degree in mathematics. Venketesh later began to pursue his PhD in sociology, at the University of Chicago, where he wanted to learn how young people form their identities. A well known advisor of his William Julius Wilson sent him on an assignment with a just a clipboard to go to the poorest black communities in Chicago and have them answer a seventy question multiple choice survey. When Venkatesh found some of these black inner city youths he found out quickly that they would not cooperate and feared for his life when they threatened him and ridiculed his survey. J.T. was the leader of this gang who actually graduated from college with his degree and that along with so much he had already learned from being around the gangsters was enough to make him go back and learn even more. Traveling back and forth learning the ways of life of these crack dealers and their customs he found out that much of the way they executed their street strategy drug deals were very similar in many ways to standard American businesses. It was a much harsher environment and it many of the people in the line of the gang did not last long but they had people they answered to and percentages that had to be given to a board of directors and so on.

Overall I think that the title Drug Dealers living with their moms referred to the fact that you can't learn or judge a group of individuals unless you have gone and lived among them like Sudhir Venketesh did. He was thrown in with the wolves but through constant interaction and probably seeing things and watching what these people experienced on a day to day basis, he was able to combine his outside knowledge of the business world and combine it into street smarts. This knowledge would then give him the best of both worlds and he will be able to understand and apply his experiences to whatever challenge was set before him.