ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of paid employment in the lives of African American and Latino youth who are working at the very bottom of the service sector in Harlem. Their minimum wage jobs are tiring, stressful, and poorly compensated. Harlem, long the cultural capital of African American life, is populated largely by Black families whose ascendant generations migrated to the area from the southeastern seaboard. American culture has always placed a high premium on work as a source of moral worth. Individual identity is rooted in occupational experience; communities often derive more from workplace social life than residential affiliation. This is no less true for the working poor than it is for the US middle class. In fact, it may be even more important for those who are excluded from much of the consumer culture that is also integral to the US experience.
