Gang Leader For A Day

I thought that  the story Gang Leader For A Day was very interesting.  In the story Sudhir Venkatesh sets out to study how young black people are effected by neighborhood factors.  In doing this he asked people to fill out surveys. One of the questions was, "how does it feel to be black and poor?", and the answers were multiple choice one word answers.  He met one gang, and the gang leader named J.T. laughed when he asked the question. He tells Venkatesh that this is not going to give him all the results he needs.  From this he learns that he has to also take the time to interact with them to understand where they come from.  After talking in class the other day about the story I realized that you can not just look at someone or a group of people one way and really understand what it is like to live or be like them. Sociologists call this  quantitative observations, which are surveys and data, and qualitative, which is observing and interacting with people.  I think that it is true that  both are needed to really understand and collect the best results. I recognize that in the world this sometimes happens. When people get interviewed for a job the person interviewing asks questions about the persons information regarding how they did in other companies and their numbers on how many deals they made. The interviewer also sits down and chats with the person to get to know who they are and about their family.  Many people tend to only look for the quantitative information when forming an opinion and never actually interact with people in an effort to better understand someone. I now understand the saying, that you should not judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. This means that until you have experienced what that person has gone through, you can't judge them because you don't understand what it is to be them.