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Runnin' Down Some Lines: Book Review

Deprived of opportunities for advancement in mainstream society, [black ghetto] teenagers elevate their personal style into a philosophy of life. Their exemplars are pimps and gangsters.... Gangs develop to bolster self-identity through psychological control of the streets; hip "threads" and "freaked out" cars also serve as outward signs of inner creativity. Both sexes consider coitus ("doin' the do") a natural and desirable part of adolescence; soft drugs, primarily marijuana ("tea"), also offer a temporary alternative to the harsh reality of ghetto existence. But embracing all of these is the vernacular itself - in its grace, flexibility, and strength it is a valuable tool for "gettin' down," for "blowin' fire," ultimately for staying alive...
(Anderson 1981:233-234).

Edith A Folb is a white woman who threw herself into the depths of one of America's most notorious ghettos for nearly nine years of fieldwork on the language and culture of African-American teenagers. She left the University of California, Los Angeles in 1964, midway through an increasingly dissatisfying Ph.D. program, to involve herself in a variety of community-based activities in the hopes of determining the future course of her life. After two years of working amongst the predominantly black inhabitants of South Central Los Angeles, Folb returned to school with a better subject of focus for her studies. She had found her calling in the last place most people would think to look; in the heart of the ghetto. "So, in 1967, [she] began the systematic study of black teenage vernacular vocabulary" (Folb 1980:viii).

In 1980, Edith A. Folb's first book, runnin' down some lines: the language and culture of black teenagers, was published. The book is based on her extensive first-hand research on the teens of South Central. She spent over eight years operating within the community, interviewing many teens and conversing less formerly with countless others. Folb feels that these youths are representative...