Scott Jacques and Richard Wright: Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers

Excerpt

Jacques and Wright’s Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers offers a unique glimpse into the lives of several upper-class adolescent drug dealers. The authors delve into this distinctive world and use interviews with several of the dealers to share their findings as well as the youths’ perspective on their chosen lifestyle. The book focuses on a town called Peachville, which according to the authors “epitomizes what average Americans think of as the ‘suburbs’” (Jacques and Wright 2015, p 1). The authors seek to inform readers that the American idea of a typical drug dealer is not always what they might expect. When Americans tend to think of true drug dealers, they likely are inundated with images of a low-class neighborhood filled with minority individuals. Those same individuals are viewed as lacking a proper education and are pictured slinging guns and drugs around on filthy streets of some unknown, bullet-ridden community. This is in fact, according to the authors, not always the case. Code of the Suburb invites readers to explore an unimaginable world where kids of wealth, high education, and in the pursuit of college dreams, also double as drug dealers. However, even though society might choose to reject the portrayal, this unimaginable world is a realistic depiction of some suburban communities. …