The Wire Restaurant Scene

Tags:  race/ethnicity, class, inequality, cultural capital, privilege, 00 to 05 mins
Year:  2006
Length: 4:33
Access:  YouTube

Summary:  Ex-cop turned public school teacher Howard "Bunny" Colvin has taken it on himself to help reach the badly underprivileged children who have been deemed essentially unteachable by their West Baltimore junior high school. After his students do well on a project, Colvin decides to take them out to dinner at an upscale restaurant. Initially the students are excited and pleased--but over the course of the meal they become increasingly uncomfortable and discouraged. This is a good way to open a discussion of cultural capital in the context of class inequality, especially with an eye toward intersections of race and gender. Useful questions to ask: Why are Bunny's students so uncomfortable? What assumptions do they bring to their situation about what is expected of them? What if the situation were reversed and the people dining at the restaurant were on the streets of West Baltimore? The differences in the characters’ behavior at the beginning and the end of the clip are especially striking—why the change, and what does it say about what has happened in the scene?

Submitted By:  Sarah Wanenchak

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