The Mystery of the Yakes Yakes (original) (raw)
Encyclopedia of Gangs, 2008
In light of Los Angeles' gang state of emergency, ethnic and minority gangs are arguably more high profile now than at any other time in our history. News media typically focus on the crime and violence associated with gangs, but not much else. This encyclopedia seeks to illuminate the world of gangs, including gang formations, routine gang activities, aberrations and current developments. One hundred essay entries related to gangs in the United States and worldwide provide a diffuse overview of the gang phenomenon. Each entry defines and explains the term, provides an historical overview, and explains its significance today. As the following entries demonstrate, gangs are part of the fabric of American society. They are not only in our communities but also our schools and other social institutions. Understanding the world of gangs is therefore needed to understand American society. Entries include: Bikers, Bloods, Cholas, Crips, gang mythology, gang warfare, graffiti, Hell's Angels, Hong Kong Triads, Latin Kings, law enforcement, occultic gangs, mafia, media, prison gangs, rites, Skinheads, Streetgang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act, tattoos, trafficking, Wanna-bes, West Side Story, Witness Protection programs, and youth gangs.
Fraser: Urban legends: gang identity in the post-industrial city
In this captivating ethnography, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City, Alistair Fraser reports findings from five years of fieldwork in Glasgow. This city is generally known for violent and hard masculinities and has a reputation for gang activity. Fraser portrays a more nuanced picture, focusing particularly on socialization into gangs and their historical character. He focuses on the life of a group of 14-to 16-year olds whom he calls the Langview boys. Several of them identified as the Langview Young Team, a name that has been used by gangs in this area since the 1960s. Living in the area and working as a social and youth worker, Fraser presents them as part of a vibrant but vulnerable society. His study also includes a group of school leavers less streetwise than the Langview boys. The social and economic context of the study is one of boredom, relative poverty and the challenges of post-industrialism. In the middle of this, like youths the same age all over the world, the boys are struggling to get by and trying to have a good time.
Race Not Space: A Revisionist History of Gangs in Chicago
The Journal of African American History, 2006
this crypto-social Darwinist perspective: "Human ecology. .. assumes that the origin of social change. .. would be found in the struggle for existence and in the growth, the migration, the mobility, and the territorial and occupational distribution of peoples, which this struggle has brought about. "F or Park and the Chicagoans, African Americans were following European nationalities on a long, tough road to assimilation. All ethnic groups, including African Americans, the Irish, Italians, and Poles, were subject to the same natural, ecological processes. Immigrant and migrant groups stayed together after arrival in Chicago, gradually integrated into the broader economy, and moved into more prosperous zones of the city, shedding their traditions as they assimilated.'' The Chicago social scientists were also familiar with the concept of a "ghetto," but they applied it mainly to Jewish immigrants. Louis Wirth's classic text, which examines "the ghetto as an institution" is filled with insights for African Americans, but Wirth never considers the ghetto in Chicago to be anything but Jewish.^ Wirth and others believed that Chicago was filled with "ethnic enclaves" where each group chose to segregate itself before it departed for its suburban Valhalla. The ghetto, for Wirth, was a resonant name for a temporary Jewish enclave. Historian Thomas Philpott, in a controversial study of early 20th century census tracts, demolished the cherished Chicago School belief in a rough equivalence of ethnic experiences. Whether neighborhoods were labeled Jewish, Italian, Polish, or Irish, none concentrated a majority of that ethnic group's population, nor was any single census tract overwhelmingly composed of one nationality. What was purported to be an ethnic enclave, Philpott concluded, "was in fact an ethnic hodgepodge."N ot so with Chicago's black population, which according to Philpott lived in "Chicago's only real ghetto." In 1930 nine out of every ten African Americans lived in areas that were at least 80 percent black. No other group experienced levels of segregation anywhere near this. Both Philpott, and the even more devastating critique of the racial blindspot of the Chicago School, Arnold Hirsch's Making of the Second Ghetto, demonstrated the intentional violence and discriminatory practices that went into shaping and maintaining a ghetto for African Americans alone. While other ethnic groups followed a path of invasion, succession, dominance, and assimilation, black Chicagoans were forcibly segregated.'' Park and his colleagues might have avoided the more egregious weaknesses of their theory, but they curiously ignored the one voice in sociology at the time who was speaking clearly and loudly on race-that of W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, whose Souls of Black Folk was at the time wellknown in academic circles, plumbed the depth of the social and economic forces that separated the black and white worlds.^ Park worked closely with Booker T. Washington and, in opposition to Du Bois and other black voices. Park declared that the race relations' cycle was "progressive and irreversible."P ark's "fatalistic" notions about African Americans and the "naturalness" of
1970
AbSPRACT The unit deals with the violent ,'any, not the soc!,al or delinquent yang. It is aimed at junior high and senior high school students. The student for whom violent gangs are an urgent, everyday concern should gain perspectives that will help him cope with the probl,Jm personally. Other students should be able to correct misconceptions and to deepen understanding of a serious urban problem. The four lesson plans focus on the inner needs which membership in gangs fulfills, on the risks inherent in gang activity, on locating or Initiating alternative sources of stimulation and fulfillment for potential yang members, and on the nature of prejudice and discrimination and their role in producing violent gangs. The unit may be used in a variety of ways: 1) to relate the unit to current events; 2) to work the unit into the direct study of prejudice and discrimination; 3) to use it in the study of 4;ity problems. Classroom activitios are suggested, however, a great deal of background information on gangs in Philade177hia has been included for those teachers who wish to develop their own activities. Bibliographies of short stories, films, books, and community resources are appended along with the Bopping Gam,i: A Gang War Recent Sociological Theory on Gangs* Several significant efforts have recently utilized general sociological concepts and theories to explain the emergence and or;:anization of gangs. A few of the theories will be presented in a coLde.med form here. The reader should remember that the following explanations are theories, not hard fact, and are open to question. Albert Cohen (Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang; Glencoe, Ill. The Free Press, 1955) views the gang as a subculture with a value system different from the dominant ones found in American culture. Cohen see this subculture arising out of class conflict.