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Do "neighborhood effects" help to explain life trajectories and residential destination choices of young adults? Drawing upon ethnographic and census-based data, I seek to find this answer through an examination of a cohort of residents who were raised in a middle class community called Co-op City, located in the Bronx, New York. Co-op city is the largest multiracial middle-income housing complex in the United States. I argue that due to the cohort members' experiences in Co-op City, their neighborhood of origin, their adult residential choices are primarily driven by class-based values and social, human, and cultural capital aspects of participants' lives, rather than the commonly cited race-based values. Through oral histories, census based data, and a survey questionnaire, I examine how class has become a social construction and premise for the collective and individual search for a new community. Based on my findings, I offer suggestions for a varied sociological approach to neighborhood and community studies. The implication of my findings directly contradicts many other scholarly works on residential segregation, and instead, suggests that class, rather than race, may be a deeper defining "social construction" for some young adults who move out from their neighborhood of origin. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the racial-ethnic diversity in the origins of hip hop in the South Bronx, in the US it is still largely considered a black art form, and the roles that Latinos, whites and especially Asian Americans play in the culture are largely invisible. Social constructions of race/ethnicity in the US often exacerbate black-Asian tensions, and prior work has substantiated the whitening/honorary white thesis in some ways by demonstrating a pattern of social distance between Asian Americans and blacks. These findings might lead one to expect not much Asian American interest in hip hop, but surprisingly, there is much involvement "behind the scenes." Through both survey and in depth interview data, we explore people's racial/ethnic perceptions about who is most/least likely to participate in hip hop and why, with special attention to the roles and perceptions of Asian Americans and how these perceptions/experiences are impacted by geographic location/place, ethnicity, generation, and social class. We ask "what kind of Asian" do people think is most likely to participate in hip hop, and what does that tell us about society's racial/ethnic constructions (of "Asian," "black," "white," and even "Latino")? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]