Throughout the reading there are different things that tend to come up often, sort of like the main idea of the article. Two of the trends that the author mentioned were the ages and the gender in the group. Before the change in  reasoning for this group, there were woman and men who talked and gave advice about dating. It was more of a safe space for questions to be asked and advice to be given. According to the article, after the change in the groups motives, the age range was from 16-30 and the gender of the group consists of mainly men. Woman were no longer allowed in the group because now they were the target. Another major trend that runs throughout the group is the fact that the men are not able to keep a girlfriend or get a date in the first place. They blame women for not being able to be socially and sexually acceptable in society. The members of the community are men who are down and out. They decide to take their anger out on woman because they feel less than or felt less than in the past and can’t handle it. It’s honestly a big pity party in my book but with more aggression and stupidity. In the end, the author shows how the group was one thing in the beginning and led to a whole other community solely off of toxic masculinity. Communities grow and expand in many different ways but this ones foundation was completely changed and thrown off course.

On March 11th, I decided to go to a local park setting in Harlem. When I first got to the park, I noticed a lot of people just walking and listening to music. At first I thought watching people in this park would be useless but then, a man walked through the park and he was talking on the phone. He walked extremely fast and shouted, “I don’t want to have to go over there and shoot up the place man, I really don’t want to do that.” This definitely made me laugh and feel concerned at the same time. After this man exited the park, a woman walked by and danced to her music and sang “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. By the looks of things, she was in a pretty good mood. On the left of me were two kids, a boy and a girl. They looked like good friends but they only looked about 8-9 years old. They were playing kid games and laughing while sitting on the bench. On the grass hill in front of me, there were two kids, another boy-girl pair. They were siblings and they were playing tag on the hill. The girl seemed very happy that she was wining the game and the boy just looked like he was happy to be outside. Their parents were waiting on them on the right side of me on the bench. They were in deep conversation but, they never took their eyes off of their kids. I think that something that I thought was very interesting was I saw a group of men smoking cigarettes. They were going to walk through the park but when they seen the kids they decided to stay far away from them and I thought that was interesting and also a gesture of respect towards the kids and their parents which you don’t really find now a days.

After reding the article, I believe that the culture that was included urban culture. This culture includes minorities, (any person who does not identify as white). Along with being minorities, the culture described are people who dwell in the inner cities. Within the people in the Urban culture, there are a lot of the shared beliefs and behaviors exhibited. Although it is sad, one major shared belief is that the police were a force against people of color. People of color back then believed that the police have a vendetta against them and if you ask people of color today how they feel, it is scary to hear how much they believe the same thing to this day. Something that I noticed while reading James Baldwins article was the fact that the word “Negro,” was a term loosely used to describe black people. To call a black person a “Negro” was the norm which is obviously not acceptable currently. A known behavior of black people back in those times were to shelter themselves in a way. For example, if something was happening to a black person involving the police, other black people tend to run away or close their doors and turn their backs. This is because black people didn’t want to reap the repercussions of trying to help their own. Police officers would assault everyone and anyone who got in their way. In the end, the overall article made me really think about how black people lived back then and how we live right now and what I concluded is what scares me the most.