Nick And Ziggy's Impact On Society

In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii guadium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), Pope Francis contentiously lamented, “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.” Although the pope’s remarks were widely seen as an attack on capitalism and received a great deal of media attention, his criticism was by no means unique or radical (Scheer; Woodhill). Indeed, some of the most notable thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fervently denounced capitalism’s inherent inequality, from Karl Marx, whose Manifesto fueled
As Cherlin points out in Labor’s Lost Love, “There is still a connection between whiteness and the working class.” (169). A major component to working class culture, as detailed in The Wire, is the belief that there is virtue in performing an “Honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” Although Nick and Ziggy gradually descend into the underground economy as the second season progresses, their involvement in illicit, dishonest work is considered very taboo; both Nick and Ziggy go to great lengths to hide their drug dealings from their families. In stark contrast to white, working class culture which generally encourages licit work and discourages illicit involvement, black, inner city culture often shuns those seeking licit jobs. As one black woman laments in Newman’s No Shame in My Game, “‘What you will find… in the black community, is that if you are in the community and you try to excel, you will get ridiculed from your own peers.’” (92). Ultimately, it is reasonable to conclude that the support that a job-seeking white man would find in white, working class culture, in contrast to the discouragement that a job-seeking black man would receive from black, inner city culture, would affect one’s decision to pursue work in the licit