As Macleod explains of the Hallway Hangers, in “Ain’t No Making It”, rejecting or failing to espouse the dominant ideology of upward mobility through education engenders negative social reproduction, which in some cases prescribes that one would be fated to become a future blue collar worker, much like one’s parents and peers. However, MacLeod also highlights the paradoxical discrepancy in the less than favorable outcomes of another group whose members do adhere to the dominant achievement ideology, The Brothers. MacLeod explains that, “If the Hallway Hangers [group of white boys] show that opting out of the contest is not a viable option, the Brothers [group of black boys] show that dutifully playing by the rules hardly guarantees success …show more content…
He discusses poverty – insofar as he suggests that money affords one access and the opportunity to receive more; with more opportunity comes more access and more access provides social capital. This is what explains the lack of fluid social capital among the lower class. While poverty is not necessarily an issue of race issue but more so class, racial inequality & racism still very pervades contemporary American society. Structure & agency are also enabling agents to inequality in America; adequate agency is required to surmount barriers created by certain structural forces designed by society. Macleod comes to the conclusion that individual agency is ostensibly inferior to social institutions and structural constraints. One’s outcome is more dependent on their social milieu, more than anything else; this, he purports, is what accounts for demographic patterns of