Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs And The Privileges Of Race And Class

by A. Rafik Mohamed, Erik D. Fritsvold

Why do affluent, upwardly mobile college students - who have everything to lose and little to gain - choose to sell drugs? Why do law enforcement officers largely overlook drug dealing on college campuses? With rich, lively details, A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik Fritsvold deliver unprecedented insight into the world of college drug dealers - and offer an important corrective to the traditional distorted view of the US drug trade as primarily involving poor minorities. Drawing on six years of fieldwork at a predominately white private university, their exceptional ethnography skillfully explores issues of deviance, race, and stratification in the US war on drugs.

199 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2011

Reviews

[Savannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction is not my cup of tea, but the book was super interesting! However, I had the same problems with it that I have with almost every non-fiction book: it was excruciatingly repetitive. Like, I get it! We don't need 3 pages of stating the same thing over and over and over and over in slightly different wording! That being said, for a non-fiction book, it was one of the better ones. I don't really have much to base off of considering I don't generally read non-fiction, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Worth the read if you're interested in criminal justice, and worth finishing if you're reading it for a class.

[Adria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I had to read this for one of my classes last semester, I'm glad I did. Accurate description of unchecked privilege and of social stratification.

[Wade, Rosario, and Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosario read this one for college and said it was good.