Beat the Streets: A Lesson

¶ … Beat the Streets: A Lesson in Determination

Davis, Sampson, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt & Sharon M. Draper. We Beat the Streets. New York: Dutton, 2005.

We Beat the Streets is a story of three young men from Newark who did the seemingly impossible -- although they grew up in one of the most notoriously crime-ridden areas in Newark, where black men were statistically more likely to go to prison than college, they were determined to beat the odds. They lived in a community with tremendous peer pressure to succumb to drugs, where drug dealing was a source of prestige rather than dreaming of succeeding at academics. But friendship became a source of positive inspiration and motivation rather than negative motivation in the case of these young men. "Most of the kids I grew up with didn't dream big," admits Rameck Hunt, but he and his fellow doctors did 'dream big' (153). While still in junior high, together they made a pact to become doctors.

The book contains many haunting incidents. It begins with Sampson, whose foot was broken as a six-year-old, after tagging along with his brothers as they got into mischief. Later, he was able to work at that same hospital as a doctor (10). Rameck was supposed to be put into special education classes, despite his evident intelligence, because he was perceived as a troublemaker at the Catholic school he attended as a young man (15). The Sisters did not fully apprehend what Rameck was struggling with -- he was the son of a drug-addicted single mother. He even gave his mother the money he had obtained to get acting headshots, although though he knew she would use the money for drugs (42). Seeing these early dreams dashed would have deterred some young men, but not Rameck.