Urban America as a context for the development of moral identity in adolescence

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1998 by Daniel Hart, Robert Atkins, Debra Ford

The concentration of poverty and income inequality in American cities has severely affected the ability of individuals living in these areas to generate social capital, such as informal associations, civic participation, norms of reciprocity, and trust in others, that facilitates cooperation for mutual benefit (Putnam, 1996; Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, & Prothrow-Stith, 1997). Communities lacking in social capital and community attachment place children living in these neighborhoods at special risk (Hawkins, 1995) and cannot provide the wide range of institutions that allow adolescents to experiment with moral identities.

Wilson (1987, 1991, 1997) emphasizes the significance of decreasing social capital on the socioeconomic integrity of Black neighborhoods, where the concentration of poverty due to the out-migration of the more affluent has been especially profound. As the working- and middle-class Blacks leave these neighborhoods, they take with them key structural resources such as conventional role models for neighborhood children (Wilson, 1991). Opportunities to interact with nonparent adults improve life chances for children and adolescents, and in the analyses we reported earlier, increased the likelihood that adolescents would join social institutions such as teams and clubs. However, these opportunities are in short supply in urban, minority communities because of the factors noted above, and even programs designed to offer these opportunities are strained beyond capacity. For example, for some urban neighborhoods it is impossible to recruit enough volunteers for extremely successful programs like Big Brothers/Big Sisters (Mendel, 1996).

Not only is social capital at a premium in urban, minority neighborhoods, but fiscal resources are as well. For example, in Camden, New Jersey, the site of much of our work, the school district spends less per pupil on extracurricular activities than 99% of the school districts in the state. This means that a city with enormous unmet need for opportunities for adolescents to become involved in social institutions lacks both the social capital and the financial resources necessary to offer structured opportunities to adolescents.

The problem, then, is clear: Urban, minority neighborhoods lack the social capital and financial resources necessary to offer enough opportunities to adolescents for attachment to society and exploration of moral identities. Given that minority adolescents value moral goals highly, that minority adolescents can, when given the opportunity, make important contributions to the welfare of the community, and that many urban, minority adolescents are in genuine need of the protective advantages that the formation of moral identities confer, the failure of society to provide growth-promoting opportunities is deeply discouraging.

In Search of a Solution

Although the problem is clear, the solution is not; we offer no simple answer to the question of how to provide poor, urban, minority adolescents with more opportunities so important in the development of a moral identity. Clearly, financial investment can address parts of the problem. For example, there is no good reason that extracurricular activities should be funded at higher levels in suburban school districts than in urban districts where the need is clearly greater.