ABSTRACT
The escalation of social marginalization in the United States (US) has had grave consequences for how poor men 'do masculinity' as they take refuge in the underground economy and increase their levels of domestic and interpersonal violence. More inner-city African-American and latino men are under supervision by the criminal justice system than are enrolled in higher education. Although accurate figures for Puerto Rican males on the US mainland are usually not disaggregated in census statistics, their levels of violence and institutional incarceration probably parallel those of urbanized African-Americans. The polarization of formerly rural-based patriarchal masculine subjectivities toward greater public violence, widespread sexual abuse, and overt economic parasisitism on inner-city streets are merely symptomatic expressions of these basic political and cultural inequities. Unemployed or drug dealing/ addicted men find themselves flitting homeless from one sexual relationship to another, without the protection of a family or an economically viable community.
