For example, in discussing his childhood in "Southie" a poor neighborhood in Boston, Patrick MacDonald talks about the willful ignorance of the people in the neighborhood when he was a child. "They were all here now, all of my neighbors and friends who had died young from violence, drugs, and from the other deadly things we'd been taught didn't happen in Southie" (MacDonald, 1999, p.2). In other words, the reality of the poverty that defined the lives of the people in his neighborhood was less important than their concept of what it meant to live there.

However, while MacDonald makes it clear that the people in Southie considered themselves blessed to live there, he also makes it clear that they dealt with some very real struggles and that these struggles impacted how they viewed the world. They understood that they were disadvantaged compared to other whites. Therefore, like many groups...
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