Low-income urban youth of color frequently confront a wide variety of challenges and hardships that other young people do not experience. The prevalence of hardships that urban youth of color face has contributed to the notion that this group is by its very nature at risk, and promotes stereotypes depicting these youth as irresponsible, antisocial, and even dangerous. A more positive approach to helping urban youth avoid high-risk behaviors is engaging them in prevention programs. Although some programs are successful, many are not effective in reaching diverse urban youth. In this article, the authors focus on the delivery of substance abuse prevention programs and offer an alternative program strategy--one that places diversity with respect to culture, class, and environment at the center of prevention efforts. Such an approach, the authors argue, is effective not only in appealing to the sensibilities of urban youth but also in altering their behavior. (Contains 37 notes.)