Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day
The first chapter of Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For a Day gives a small glimpse of the everyday lives of African American street gang members. He describes in detail of their deplorable living conditions, as well as their immediate distrust of him. In some ways, his descriptions positively reinforce the conventional beliefs of gangs. Most people connotate gangs with crime - particularly "senseless" violence, drug dealing, and robbery. A lot of people are quick to judge, and rarely ask questions as to why gangs are so willing to participate in illegal, and often inhumane activities. The conservative assumption is that kids join gangs to be "cool," and that they lack a conscience. Some even blame rappers for glorifying gang activity. A more liberal explanation would be that the kids are misguided due to not having positive role models in their lives. A lot of people like making arguments to explain gangs, but not enough people contextualize the origins of street gangs to support their positions. …show more content…
South Central Los Angeles is home to primarily lower-class Latinos and African Americans. It is no coincidence that many communities within South Central have the most concentrated levels of poverty in all of Los Angeles, considering how marginalized and segregated it is. In You May Ask Yourself, Conley states that there is a culture of poverty where "poor people adopt certain practices that differ from those of the middle-class, 'mainstream' society in order to adapt and survive in difficult economic circumstances" (Conley, 379). For impoverished ethnic minorities, not only do they have to adapt to survive economic hardships, but also social
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454 Words | 2 PagesHow well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.
Summary Of Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day
1580 Words | 7 Pages“Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets” by Sudhir Venkatesh is a book that described the recollection of Venkatesh’s time with the Black Kings, a crack-dealing gang, in the Robert Taylor Homes. Venkatesh was a sociology student at the University of Chicago and began a project in which he conducted years of research in the urban poor of Chicago. He “ditched the questionnaire in favor of just spending time with his subjects…as he tried to learn about their lives on their terms, not his”. He wanted to discover how people, such as the crack-dealing gangs, tenant leaders, and cops in the projects buy, sell, and use drugs. Hierarchy and social structure was described in Venkatesh’s autobiography of what occurred in the Robert Taylor Homes.
Crips Made In America Analysis
171 Words | 1 PagesWatching the documentary, Crips and Bloods: Made in America, I learned that white people never gave black people in America the chance to succeed because they were constantly targeting them. I learned that people who grow up in south California really have no choice but to join a gang and result to violence because if they don’t they will not survive. Kids who are born in this part of LA are born into drug dealing families, broken homes, or to parents who are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. These children have no guidance and no one to show them the right way of life. They join gangs so they can feel protected and like they belong somewhere in this world.
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Dwight Conquergood: A Critical Analysis
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Todd Strasser's If I Grow Up
642 Words | 3 PagesAccording to CNN, “Criminal gang membership increased as much as 40 percent in the United States during the past three years, according to an FBI report released Friday. An estimated 1.4 million people are active in more than 33,000 street, prison and outlaw motorcycle gangs across the country, the report states.” Todd Strasser writes the book, If I Grow Up, the book shows the perspective of a kid that lives in the projects. DeShawn, a kid that lives in the projects of Chicago wanted to stay out of gangs, stay in school, and to support his family. But, the conditions got too bad for him, so he had to join a gang.
Teenagers In Gangs In The Outsiders, By S. E Hinton
998 Words | 4 PagesThere is a number of reasons that range from simple to complex, on why teenagers join gangs, and we can help by finding solutions to their specific problem before they choose to join one. To help someone get out of a gang, we as a society need to show there’s more out there in the world that they could do that will make a positive impact. Teenagers have different reasons to join gangs depending on their life situation. Everyone in the “Greasers” in The Outsiders had different reasons to be part of the gang. “We were used to seeing Johnny banged up-
Poverty In The Other Wes Moore
715 Words | 3 PagesIn the study “Racial and Class Divergence in Public Attitudes and Perception About Poverty in USA: An Empirical Study,” professor Francis O. Adeola analyzes existing data to determine if people themselves or a structural influence causes poverty (Adeola 56). Building upon the idea of structural poverty, Adeola contends “poverty rates tend to persist in the same neighborhood over many years” (61). For the other Wes Moore, this neighborhood was the Murphy Project Homes: one of the most dangerous places in Baltimore (Moore 18). Furthermore, he examines how “[t]he poor form a unique subculture,” reinforcing aspects of poverty (Adeola 61). The subculture that surrounded the other Wes Moore included the normalization of the presence of drugs and
Gang Violence In Chicago
833 Words | 4 PagesHowever the gang did bring some sort of structure to the Robert Taylor Projects, the only interest that JT, the gang leader, has was profiting off of the drug addictions of his community. Often throughout the book Venkatesh contrasts the effects of having low and high level of gang activity, arguing that teenagers with “appetites for crime” would have possibly been involved in misdemeanors, small crimes such as vandalism and shoplifting but with the emergence of JT and the heavy gang activity, they are more likely “to be involved in the drug trade”(72). One of the effects of having high gang activity is how more
Houston The Next Great American City Essay
748 Words | 3 Pagesmetropolitan areas, with the greatest percentage of rich people living among the rich and the third greatest percentage of poor people among the poor”. The majority of the upper class are whites and Asians who have attended college, while the lower class is usually labor workers, such as Latinos. This has created not only an ethnic divide but also a class divide in the community. There are neighborhoods in the city that are run by drugs and crime, but there are also neighborhoods with nice houses and great schools. This leads to a main political problem…education.
Racial Profiling Research Paper
1128 Words | 5 PagesWhat is the #1 thing that you see when you watch the news? If you were thinking racial profiling and oppression, then you are correct. Where did all of this come from though? Now, racial tension has been going on for a very long time, tracking all the way back to slavery. Slavery was abolished, yes, but the beliefs and some people’s mindsets have stayed the same.
Essay On Traditional Gang
1295 Words | 6 PagesGang Definition and Classification Classifying gangs is no simple task and to begin you must thoroughly understand the definition and requirements of being classified as a such. There are multiple definitions of a gang, according to The Modern Gang Reader but the one I will focus on is “A street gang is any durable street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity.” Now that the definition has been identified it needs to be broken down further to clearly differentiate why this definition is essential.
Persuasive Essay On Gang Violence
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