Youth gangs have been prominent features of urban life in the United States since late in the Nineteenth Century. Indeed, their importance has grown significantly, as has the attention paid to them.by news media, legal authorities and academia. These gangs originated as by-products of poor immigrant populations' attempts to cope with the conditions they encountered in American cities, confined as they were by both economics and social discrimination to the most run-down neighborhoods, deteriorating housing, and poorly paid jobs. As wave after wave of immigrants from different areas in Europe entered Eastern and Midwestern cities, the ethnicity and cultural details of youth gangs changed, but many structural similarities continued to characterize the various gangs. By the middle of the Twentieth Century this condition held true as black migrants from the rural South and Puerto Rican immigrants succeeded the Southern and Eastern European immigrants. In addition, gangs also had emerged (1940s) in the Mexican immigrant barrios (neighborhoods) in Southern California.
Repeatedly, then, generations of poor newcomers to the cities have had to adapt not only to often severe economic conditions, but also to institutionalized hostile attitudes toward them. Remarkably, most families in each wave of new urban residents were able to function productively and managed to raise their children to be even better prepared to cope with life's problems. Unfortunately, if not unexpectedly, a considerable number of families were, instead, overwhelmed by the magnitude and complexity of the problems they faced. The children in these families received inadequate supervision and socialization at home, and the schools to which they were sent proved inadequate for inculcating relevant strategies for coping with urban poverty and discrimination. With family and school failing them, generations of such children turned to their peers and older youths they encountered in the streets for guidance. Thus, the contemporary debate on the existence and persistence of the underclass (segments of the poor who have suffered prolonged and concentrated poverty, and in response have routinized patterns of behavior greatly at odds with predominant mores) emanates within the roots of the gang problem.
Family stress or strain, or what others have referred to as family dysfunction, is one of the ripple effects of such social and economic maladies as unemployment, underemployment, low education levels, lack of skills and training, and so on. This is especially the case when these factors are joined by discriminatory attitudes and behavior. Among the most common family difficulties is the inability of parents to dedicate energies to childrearing and caretaking duties. Single-parent, usually mother-centered, households tend to reflect this problem, but they are not alone in this. Often, both parents in a two-parent household have fallen on bad times and have been shorn of their coping skills, resulting in part in a lack of supervision and guidance of their children. Parenting is doubly difficult in such an environment because household earners and caretakers must operate under conditions of intense culture change and stress.
Ethnicity, Socialization, and Gang Variations
Crowded living conditions and attenuated parental supervision in many poverty-stricken areas have resulted in pushing children out of the home and onto the streets. In this crucible of the city streets, the idea of the gang begins to brew. When home socialization comes up short, then street socialization assumes command of the training and preparation of a youth for future life. The void in appropriate socialization in the home is now exacerbated by a similar missed opportunity to gain solid school socialization. In particular, schools and school personnel confronted with troubled youths from stressed families, have been unable to successfully address the problems of many of these inner city, ethnic minority children. In large part, the streets are filled by similarly disaffected and untethered youth; in effect, the youth new to the street encounters same age peers as well as older, more experienced role models who set the tone and direction for the novitiates.
In recent decades, Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrants as well as African American migrants, and their offspring, have made up the bulk of the new street gangs and have dominated American cities' street life. Asian-American gangs have also grown rapidly over the last two decades. As was true for the earlier generations of gangs, some gangs have continued to be conflict oriented, often engaged in rumbles and fights; while others have taken a route more oriented to profitable criminal pursuits. By the middle of the Twentieth Century, drug use and abuse had become a factor, establishing the "retreatist" gang as a new entity, and (more notably in recent years) the more dedicated, entrepreneurial gangs that are better organized for drug trafficking or other criminal activities. These drug-dealing gangs also reflect a steady increase in gang-related violence over the last two decades. Indeed, one form of street gang, which some experts have labeled "scavenger," seems to exist primarily for the purpose of aimlessly fighting any youths they encounter. The largest apparent increase nowadays is among gangs that get into and stay in conflict with other rival gangs. There is even a noted increase in "wannabes", that is, individuals who desire to be a gang member in the absence of positive role models, even though they hardly share the background, personal situations and attributes of the typical gang member.
The increase in violent activities has led to variation in levels of participation among gang members. The resultant "hardcore/fringe" dichotomy in levels of participation over the years has evolved into finer shades of attitudinal and behavioral characteristics. These characteristics, in turn, forge a gang member into such categories as regular, peripheral, temporary, or situational. The regular gang member has had the most problematic early life and is consequently oriented to street life at a very early age. The peripheral member is as intensely involved as the regular, but because of a less troublesome beginning will more often retain the option of pursuing a conventional life. Temporary and situational members are simply what the words suggest, and as a result are less apt to develop deep-rooted gang affiliations.
The Gang as Family: Levels of Analysis
Ethnographic research on gang issues and the gang's interrelationships with family life, either real or recreated, shows that both an insider and outsider point of view helps our understanding. Some authorities suggest that social scientists studying youth gangs should systematically shift from outsider to insider perspectives, and then back, in order to cross-check the validity of their findings. Learning the rules and regulations of gang behavior in different settings directly from the participants' actions and words is important. Hearing gang youths talk about helping one another out and showing consideration and attention provides color and depth. However, the outsider perspective, which relies on taxonomic principles and the evidentiary rules of science, broadens and contextualizes the meanings within universal patterns. Thus, both views are necessary, because the details which show that the gang has become a surrogate family are understood within the context of a wider world that has failed them, including families that have broken down under intense social, economic, and cultural pressures. Gang youths may not comprehend why the gang has become such an important source for identification and support, for they are too close to the reality.
In the context of the streets, where fear, anxiety, and the unknown often dominate one's concerns, youngsters seek protection, friendship, assurance, acceptance, support, and especially sources of identity wherever they can.
Street children have to deal with pervasive fears with which their parents and other authorities cannot help them. These children's ties with family, schools, and police have by now become strained. Many of them will have dropped out of school in junior high and most of the others will not complete high school. It is in this context that street socialization introduces heretofore new and unexpected activities. While gang members spend large amounts of time doing the things that most American adolescents do--joke and play, date and celebrate--they must also learn to participate in specific gang sanctioned behaviors. All of these new experiences operate in the shaping of an identity. In time, individuals become the street culture carriers and street socializers. At this point, group psychology begins to make its contribution to the gang reality. The introduction of signs, symbols, rituals, and ceremonies, and other group features marks this phase. In general, they function to incorporate the youth into the group as a whole-hearted participant.
For large numbers of such youths, the gang thus has become a surrogate family and caretaker, a type of fictive kinship network. Among Mexican American, other Latino, and black gang networks, it often is stressed that the unit operates as a family. Members often call one another "brother" or refer to each other by other kinship terms, and profess a familial form of love for fellow gang members. In addition to the emotional support and nurturance they find in daily common interactions, gang members regularly maintain that when trouble of whatever kind is afoot, they turn to close confidants within the gang. It is clear that the gang has emerged as a competing force to family and schools because of the failure of those caretaking units. Often, the support includes providing transportation, lending money, sharing resources, and at its most extreme, laying down one's life for a friend. When a fellow gang member is slain, it is quite common for the other members and their affiliates to raise money through carwashes, collections, and what not, to pay for the funeral expenses, as if they were "family."
Conversely, the establishment of a gang subculture over many decades has tended to create a feedback effect into family life in ways that have reshaped what barrio or ghetto families are like and what they must readapt to. Studies show that the existence of a street gang in the neighborhood alters how low income families raise their children, either in ways calculated to help their children to avoid gang members or in other precautions that interfere with normal childrearing methods. Various types of cholo (marginalized) and gang families have resulted from this readjustment. As each generation repeats the living and working conditions that have created gangs, the gang becomes a fixture and a strong socializing agent in the family's external world. For instance, in increasing numbers of families, an older family male member who is gang affiliated is a household regular and perhaps one of the most important sources of role modeling for the younger children; sometimes one or both parents might be gang members. In older gang neighborhoods, there are family households with two or even three generations represented by gang members.
Immigration and the Gang Life Style
Also significant, is how this gang subcultural force has affected new immigrants or newcomers. In previous eras of immigration, as noted, people had to adjust to both economic and social hardships. Today, the processes and directions of acculturation and assimilation have been sharply reformulated. The presence, example, and pressure of the street gang has worked to further undermine immigrant adaptation, especially for the children who wish to be Americans and view the gangs as a part of this cultural reality. Both parents and children, in neighborhoods where the street gang has a prominent presence, must come to some sort of modus vivendi with the gang. This situation often simultaneously weakens parental authority and increases the gang's attractiveness to youth.
When the street gang becomes the strongest force in your life, there are ways to dress, talk, walk, and so on that must be learned, and these customs and habits are acquired from a "multiple-age peer group" rather than one's parents. How you associate with and integrate yourself into the group is part of the experience. Clique formation and allegiance organizes different age sets or cohorts in a way that levels of leadership are established and avenues of succession marked out. Gang (or neighborhood or barrio) names and personal nicknames are acquired for identification. To insure that everyone knows what these affiliations and designations are, gang graffiti in the form of spray paint scrawls on public and private surfaces, and personal graffiti, or tattoos, advertise the gang and personal nickname for all to see.
Perhaps the most significant transformation under the auspices of the group occurs with the rite of passage for gang newcomers. Known as "jumping in" or "courting in," this ordeal involves a usually pro forma beating by other gang members who are already established. As an integral part of this ritual, and in the absence of a household based and/or sanctioned role model, the event serves to clarify one's gender and age to thereby expedite a certain masculine and disciplined behavior. Gang initiations with such emphases address any ambiquities in gender identity that young males raised in fatherless or ineffective father households may have developed. The gang initiation also symbolizes the fact that membership is a hard-won status. For this reason, youngsters who have not yet demonstrated their worthiness as fighters or in some other valued role, may find the "pro forma" beating to be much more than that. The ordeal simultaneously makes membership "hard-won" and demonstrates that the newcomer "can take it."
By aiding the individual to become group-oriented, the gang provides certain services (e.g., protection from street threats, friendship, and so on), but also, in return, expects to receive the loyalty and devotion of the new gang member. The latter is an addition to the mystique and power that is the gang, and is readied for combat and defense of neighborhood turf when rivals approach. One interesting and destructive activity that the group as a gang inspires and admires is the ability to act crazy and carry out daring and violent acts, referred to as locura (playing with quasi-controlled insanity). A person who acts loco at appropriate opportunities gains prestige and status in the eyes of other gang members. Another person who does the same on a regular basis, with deep aggressive convictions born of trauma and anxiety, is looked upon another way: A loco actor to be feared, respected, and avoided. Indeed, one advantage of gang membership may be to interpose the gang's family-like mutual respect between oneself and a loco member of the same gang.
In summary, the relationship between the street gang and the family is complex and fraught with difficulties. The origins of the street gang stemmed, in part, from the stresses and strains that some low income families experienced as immigrants to American cities. The gang, in turn, came to partially supplant the family and the school as socializing agents, a feature of gang life reflected in members' familial-like terms of reference for each other. Repercussions and ripple effects of these developments over time have led to the establishment of gang subcultures, with gangs becoming an element to which newcomers must adjust and respond. In gang neighborhoods families headed by gang members or former gang members are increasingly common, the result of generations of a deeply rooted gang tradition. Gang signs and symbols in the form of graffiti now cover nearly every available surface in gang neigborhoods, while other disaffected youths have also taken to spraying similar, though not gang-related, messages and symbols on walls. Similarly, dress and music styles popularized in gang circles have diffused throughout much of the youth subculture in America. Thus, the gang has become an influence with which families in most American cities must contend, whatever their station in life.
References:
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Vigil, James Diego. A Rainbow of Gangs: Street Cultures in the Mega-City. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
_____________. Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.
James Diego Vigil can be contacted at via email at vigil@uci.edu.
Families and Gangs
By James Diego Vigil, for Streetgangs.com Magazine
Posted February 26, 2003