Code of the Street

The focus of this chapter is on another key figure within the context of inner-city families: the Black grandmother. Anderson argues that “the black grandmother holds a special place among her people, both in folklore and in real life” (206). Consequently, the role of the grandmother in the inner-city has become institutionalized, to the point where being a Black grandmother in inner-city communities has its own accompanying set of expectations and traditions, such as the expectation of providing economic stability for the whole family or serving as its emotionally resilient backbone. Anderson argues that grandmothers have become especially important to Black families as crack cocaine has spread through neighborhoods. When a grandmother’s daughter develops a drug addiction, the grandmother must now step in, offering her daughter “tough love” while also becoming a de facto mother to her grandchildren. Anderson tells the story of Betty, a grandmother whose first-person account addresses many of the key issues of the chapter, including her own daughter’s drug use. Despite the adversity she faces, Betty fully accepts her role as grandmother, even to the point where she must quit her job and rely on welfare in order to adequately care for her grandchildren while her daughter struggles with drug addiction.

Throughout this chapter, Anderson exalts the sacrifices that countless Black grandmothers have made while also lamenting that so many of them have to do so at the expense of their own financial and emotional well-being. Thematically, The Hopelessness of Poverty and The Complexity of Family are the most evident ideas here. In Betty’s story, for instance, she reveals the following insight, about the impact of poverty on her circumstances: “Life is hard, it’s really hard. It’s always somethin’, always, always somethin’” (228). Ironically, the “somethin’” referenced here is not chance or circumstance, but the lived reality of her own family, adversity made worse by her own daughter’s inability to care for her children. Anderson sets up the events in Betty’s life as a chain reaction, which goes something like this: Systemic urban poverty leads to desperation, which then turns people toward the underground economy, which then increases their chances of developing drug addictions, which then limits their ability to find gainful employment, which then limits or eliminates the possibility of raising and caring for their children.