“Race is a lazy mind’s tool for identifying culture”.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word culture as the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time; a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc.; a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization (such as a business). The Free Dictionary define the word race as a group of people identified as distinct from other groups because of supposed physical or genetic traits shared by the group. While these definitions may sound similar they are different due to the fact that they don’t represent the same ideals.

Many essays in the novel, “The Cultural Matrix”, discuss the social functions of black youth and the life they live. The book “Black Cool” edited by Rebecca Walker is a book that details the lives of different African American people and how certain elements of being black have shaped their lives. Black youth has changed a lot throughout the years because of the consistently evolving society people live in. As the line between culture and race gets blurrier by the minute the society of black youth falls further into a state of possible disrepair that may not be fixable.

Andrew Clarkwest is a Senior Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Alexandra A. Killewald is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and Robert G. Wood is a Senior Fellow at Mathematica Policy Research. These three were professors in the field of sociology with specialty in the world of African American culture. Clarkwest’s thesis from Harvard University was titled “Change and Continuity in African American Marital Disruption from Reconstruction to the Present”. The thesis of their essay is that people have different family lives that may not be considered the norm. The again the definition of family is ever changing. To say that anyone follows conventional family norms is almost a lie. While the family is a mecca for youth to learn about the world around them. Many people just have opinions about the family that are just perceptions, but unless you immerse yourself in a certain family’s structure it’s difficult to understand how they work.

Rajeev Deheija is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Thomas DeLeire is a Professor of Public Policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Erzo F. P. Luttmer is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dartmouth University. Josh Mitchell is a research Associate at the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute. The thesis of their essay is that religion doesn’t have a correlation to the income of people.

Kathryn Edin is a Professor of Sociology at John Hopkins University. Peter Rosenblatt is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University in Chicago. Queenie Zhu is a Doctoral Student in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University. While people do reject life on the street they don’t consider it before they start their life on the street. Margo Jefferson’s essay, Eccentricity, in the book, Black Cool, discusses the many ways that black eccentricity has effected American culture. She focuses on the ways that language, nomenclature, and the terms used to define African Americans in society. First of all, I intend to say Negro rather than Black. Negro is eccentric now. Removed from the orbit of high-end racial brand names like Black or African American, always popping up in pointed or playful ways to inflect, add the overtone or undertone, the historical aside to our discourse

She also goes on to say “Once you’re five fifths of a woman, you can do anything you want with nomenclature." This nomenclature can possibly be connected as a reason that some black youth have trust issues today.

Ethan Fosse is a Doctoral Student in Sociology at Harvard University. The thesis of his piece is that disconnected black youth have lower levels of trust in other human beings. While a series of group projects can do the same thing to anyone this is different because black men have repeatedly been cheated out of a fair chance at the “American Dream”. Sam Cooke’s song “A Change is Gonna Come” This song was released posthumously and became an anthem the Civil Rights Movement. The lyrics to this song demonstrate how black men have been betrayed through times of need. “Then I go to my brother And I say, "Brother, help me please.", But he winds up knockin' me, Back down on my knees.”

From dating to marriage to parenting these are things that make the family what it is today, and provide children with the necessary things for people to adapt to society. There’s just one thing about the family that people normally never analyze… the simple fact that the family can be broken up from a unit and examined using psychology to view the family as people rather than a social group. One major part of the family is the development of the child, and the relationships he/she has with people around it. Psychologist Eric Erickson adapted Sigmund Freud’s child development theories and added on new relationships to adapt them for a lifespan rather than just for a child and it holds for modern people.

The theory is called Trust v. Mistrust and this theory deals primarily with a child’s relationships with others. If the child is treated well he/she will develop a great trust in humanity. If the child develops mistrust than that means that they weren’t properly cared for and weren’t treated well. This theory branches off from the original 8 and shows the meaning and truth behind John Bowlby’s attachment theories. In 1969 John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist to do research on the patterns of children. He observed children in orphanages, daycare centers, hospitals, and nurseries and developed attachment theories and disorders. This theory allowed insight into the human mechanism that causes people to form bond, and break them as well.

Simone Ispa-Landa is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. The main idea of her essay is that affluent schooling is that affluent schooling is a hard standard to live up to. As a student who previously attended private school and then went to public school there are vast differences between the two. Mat Johnson’s essay, "The Geek", talks about how people are afraid of being who they really are when they feel that they can’t be who they are.

The main line that establishes Johnson’s claim says, “It took me years to be as brave as my cousin Alex." He describes the intricate life of living as black geek, but he also describes the fear of living as a black geek. The life that he had was in fear because he never let anyone really know who he was. He just kept his inner geekiness bottled up until he realized that he could be like his cousin Alex and reveal his true self. Why did Mat Johnson feel that he couldn’t be a geek in public?

The world around him kept him from being who he really was. In due time he was able to express himself as a geek. “It took me years to be as brave as my cousin Alex. To flaunt my inner geek. To reach the self-acceptance necessary to reach cool. I had an hour bus ride from the shop, but I wouldn’t take the comics out until I was safely at home, hidden.”

Joseph Krapnick is a doctoral student in Sociology at Harvard University and Christopher Winship is a Dicker Tishman professor of Sociology at Harvard University. The main thesis of the piece is that people use a "mask" to disguise the truth behind who they are. Helena Andrews discusses this topic further in her essay, Reserve, from the book, Black Cool. , “My mask saved me, cloaking whatever was going on underneath with an autopilot I’m okay that spoke volumes."

This helps my research and paper through the way it discusses how today's youth aren't trying to be real with themselves. She talks about a Yoruba tradition of the oloju foforo. The description Andrews gives of the oloju foforo is, “Among Yoruba women there is a mask called the oloju foforo, which means “the owner of the deep-set eyes.”

Helena Andrews goes onto say, “It’s as if the woman wearing the oloju foforo has two sets of eyes: the one the world sees, which stays immutable and wooden, and the one that the wearer uses to see the world battle against their oppressors, men, is difficult because of a quote made by actress in the film, the “Imitation of Life”, Claudette Colbert. “It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it”. Colbert’s quote can be shown through Andrews’ essay in respects to the fact that she speaks about the mask women have been forced to wear throughout time.

“All this made sense to me when I met a writer I admired in the cafeteria at the New York Times’ headquarters in Manhattan. We talked about how I was so over being professional while Black. How I constantly felt as if I had to circumscribe the stereotypes of my race within the confines of my job description, making sure to use my “white- people voice,” smaller than my real one.”

Orlando Patterson is a John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He is a sociologist known for his work regarding the issue of race. The main thesis of the first chapter is that the only people hurt by the violence and chaos of the ghettos. The second chapter's main thesis is that the structural integrity of Black culture is a rigid structure.

Dayo Opolade’s essay from Black Cool, “The Hipster”, it discusses how after the people of Mali were freed from French colonial rule they adapted a culture of being themselves rather, and left the ideals that oppressed them. “Yet the country’s unusually young, urban population spent the first decade of Mali’s freedom from French colonial rule smoking Marlboros and drinking locally brewed Castle lagers, doing the eyebrow-raising things that hipsters do.

The people of Mali were celebrating the break for the Colonial rule and introduced them to the idea of having your own persona. The break is used in music of the African diaspora to ease the life of the person leaving Africa. “The break in African diaspora music and cultural expression is a transformative technology that mirrors the vitality, dissonances, and underlying coherence of diasporic cultural processes."

Tommie Shelby is a Professor of African American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University. The main thesis of his piece is that in ghetto’s life is unpredictable, and may not be able to live up to the moral code society has provided for the world. A moral code in society can be found, but many people confuse them with having a set of ethics. People are so quick to try and establish their character, but they don’t take a looking at the character they have established sometimes.

Orlando Patterson’s book, The Cultural Matrix, goes into a great deal of analysis to discover the trends that black youth follow. The book Black cool, edited by Rebecca Walker displays different parts of the “black experience”. Both books demonstrate being black in different ways, but the essentially share the same message that it’s difficult living as a black person in society.

Black people are sometimes outcasts, and this can be demonstrated through the character of Agnes Gooch in the film, Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell. In the start of the film she is an unattractive woman and with Auntie Mame’s vibrant touch she blossoms into a delicate flower that can be appealing to the human eye. After arriving back to Auntie Mame’s apartment, and a few months later she is pregnant with her date’s child form that night.

While she was outcast from society because she didn’t have the father to assist the child in being raised. While she was considered a social outcast for not having a husband she soon found that she indeed married him that night. She relates to black youth in that they are outcast from society due to the fact that they are sometimes misunderstood through the idea as well as the perception of others.