‘The first thing one notices about the gang world is this: There are no fathers’
“The toughs Venkatesh stumbled on were low-level foot soldiers with the Black Kings, an enormous regional outfit whose Lake Park operations were controlled by a formidable gangland general named J.T…
“The first thing one notices about the world Venkatesh describes is this: There are no fathers. Everyone at Lake Park — even J.T., who commands 200 gangsters and, in a good year, makes six figures from crack-dealing — lives with their momma.
“The young men don’t dream of settling down with a family. Rather, they seek to emulate the polygamous J.T., who uses his drug proceeds to lodge various girlfriends in separate apartments. With no father figures to guide them, these men internalize the juvenile conception of manhood peddled by rap videos, and fritter away their adolescent years pursuing it through streetcorner posturing and brawling.”
Some fascinating commentary on the effect of fatherlessness on teenage boys and young men. Thanks to John, a reader, for sending it.
Ghetto godfather
For seven years, Sudhir Venkatesh studied the workings of a Chicago street gang. His new book explains why gangs flourish–and how to get rid of them
Jonathan Kay
National Post
February 12, 2008
In 1989, a University of Chicago graduate student named Sudhir Venkatesh decided to leave his cocoon-like campus, and find out what life was like in his city’s notorious public housing projects. So he wandered into the decrepit Lake Park projects in Chicago’s Oakland neighborhood, introduced himself to a group of teenagers shooting dice, whipped out a clipboard, and asked them this question: “How does it feel to be black and poor? Very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good?”
“You got to be f-cking kidding me,” the ringleader said. And the whole dumbstruck group convulsed with laughter.
Hearing how ridiculous his own question sounded, Venkatesh realized then and there that he was wasting his time. The residents of this squalid building were living lives completely alien to his middle-class upbringing. He wasn’t going to get inside their heads with patronizing multiple-choice questions.
But foolish as he felt, Venkatesh caught a break that day, one that eventually set him on a path to a rock-star reputation within sociology, and a professorship in the Ivy Leagues.
The toughs Venkatesh stumbled on were low-level foot soldiers with the Black Kings, an enormous regional outfit whose Lake Park operations were controlled by a formidable gangland general named J.T. Against all odds, Venkatesh struck up an instant bond with the man. Unlike just about everyone else who lived at Lake Park, J.T. had been to college, and had even studied sociology in preparation for a short-lived career in the legitimate business world.
A narcissist, J.T. imagined his life to be worthy of biography, and invited Venkatesh into his inner circle as a sort of court scribe. For the next seven years, Venkatesh would become eyewitness to the inner workings of gang life. His remarkable account of those years — contained in a newly released book, Gang Leader for a Day: A rogue sociologist takes to the streets– is required reading for anyone who wants to understand why gangs continue to thrive among the West’s underclass.
The first thing one notices about the world Venkatesh describes is this: There are no fathers. Everyone at Lake Park — even J.T., who commands 200 gangsters and, in a good year, makes six figures from crack-dealing — lives with their momma. The young men don’t dream of settling down with a family. Rather, they seek to emulate the polygamous J.T., who uses his drug proceeds to lodge various girlfriends in separate apartments. With no father figures to guide them, these men internalize the juvenile conception of manhood peddled by rap videos, and fritter away their adolescent years pursuing it through streetcorner posturing and brawling.
The nature of the local economy is the second thing that stands out: Except for the corner stores (which are run by Arabs), there is little legitimate free-market activity. Virtually all of the money coming in to Lake Park comes from two sources: government welfare and drugs. The few people who apply actual market-able job skills within the community — such as the mechanic “C-Note,” who gets his name because he has “a hundred ways to make a hundred dollars” — are so rare as to be minor celebrities.
As a result, criminality is normalized: The idea of studying hard, going to college and getting a respectable job — the formula for success applied by waves of European and Asian immigrants to North American since the late 19th century — is dismissed as a white man’s fantasy.
Gang life is at the centre of all these pathologies. But as Venkatesh explains, the local residents’ attitude toward the Black Kings is actually quite conflicted. Because violence attracts police, and police scare away customers, J.T. has an economic interest in keeping life in the projects peaceful. For a small cut of the action, his henchmen provide a security detail for the local crack dens, and protection for prostitutes. They also drive sick residents to the hospital, organize basketball games, and even stage get-out-the-vote drives on behalf of the local black political machine. There is plenty of violence in Gang Leader for a Day. But it is not random. Like all petty tyrants, J.T. understands that his legitimacy rests on providing some semblance of order.
Read the full article here.
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Stumble It!
February 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Some comments (bear in mind I teach an occasional university course on criminal justice):
1) One reason there are so few fathers in the inner cities is because of the wars on drugs and crime. Increasing numbers of young men are arrested for trivial offenses and removed from the populace. When they return from jail, they find they can not get employment or are otherwise disenfranchised as an ex-felon. So gangs and drug dealing are a viable alternative. The point is, to end this cycle we would have to end the war on drugs. But Americans have their fear over drugs, so any talk of decriminalizing drugs is inevitably met with the, “But what about the children” argument. Let us also note that feminists are in their usual state of mass hysteria over so-called date raype drugs.
2) A distinction has to be made between drug dealing gangs (as described in the article), and youth gangs. The latter tend towards random violence. The former are, as noted, a stabilizing influence. So they may not necessarily be a bad thing. Certainly they provide more services to the inner city than does the government or corporations. So why then do we want to see these gangs eliminated?
3) The logical conclusions of this article is that, ghee whiz, we need to get fathers back into young men’s lives if we want to solve the gang problem. But this is anathema to the state. Why? Because the state’s solution to the gang problem is more laws, more cops, more jails, more disenfranchised citizens. The politics of law and order are not about fighting crime, they are about consolidating the power of the state. So the fathers’ movement is a non-starter for the politicians. Politicians want crime to be suppressed by giving themselves more power.
4) The gangs may not be a bad thing for the MRA movement. Experience in radical politics demonstrates that one of the prerequisites for the famous paradigm shift is the disruption of society. The more society disintegrates, the more opportunity there is for radicals — and that is what MRAs are these days, radicals — to bring down the system.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Society destruction 101 First kick out and disenfranchise the fathers. Once those pesky men are out of the way , the state can have complete control.
No matter what it does to society or how many people it hurts.
Once boys have no man around, ie a good man to show them how to act, they go looking for someone to emulate. And that is usually bad, bad for the “lost men” these boys turn into and the society they will often ravage.
I have often said if I had a nickle for every woman who said she could raise kids all by herself and do a good job, then I would not need a job ever!
The horrible truth is they( the women) and the government thugs who empower this act of family destruction are going to cause the downfall of this society. And those ” lost men” who will ravage society, will ravage them! They will be destroyed by their own evil and selfish behavior.
The only bad part ,is for things to get that bad and for them to ultimately get the punishment they deserve, others will also have to suffer and alot of those others are innocent. We will be rid of them, but at a great price in human suffering.
February 14th, 2008 at 4:58 am
But is the system, entitling supremist victim-parasites to bastardise children and exile fathers for profit not staffed by males themeselves ?
Whom initially proposed the system of females first, females only, females forever in the first place ? Not these self same biggots of men, whom came to believe and enforce the lie that social justice for women necessarily means social injustice to men ?
At every level of mendacity through societies institutions, you will find very well renumerated males. Deluded males of a contaminated mind whom effectively take mutual part in depriving each other of their children. Particularly sons !!!
And the mens movement will do well to stop howling and wailing at an injustice against males a majority of its own members blindly support simply by doing their day to day activities and proffessional work. That is as policemen, judges, lawyers, socialworkers, probation officers etcetera, etcetera.
Our own house needs to be got in order first !
February 14th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
But is the system, entitling supremist victim-parasites to bastardise children and exile fathers for profit not staffed by males themeselves ?
Sure. And they are doing what people in power have always done, which is destroying the rights of those below them on the feeding chain. Men in power use feminism as an ideology to justify more laws, more prisons, more bureacracy, more money for government coffers. Same old racket.
Society destruction 101 First kick out and disenfranchise the fathers. Once those pesky men are out of the way , the state can have complete control.
True enough. And this is why reasonable arguments by MRAs fail. When we argue that we need fathers in children’s lives to stop social disintegration, we are stepping on the prerogatives of the power elite. So they respond with even more repression. This is why it will take a major movement, akin to the civil rights revolution, to change things.
One thing MRAs can do is leverage the situation against the state. If society is disintegrating, then we can use the increasing numbers of disenfranchised as our own power base.
Look at the bigger picture: we have more Americans being disenfranchised owing to outsourcing of jobs, illegal immigration, taxes, etc. Noam Chomsky, in his book “Deterring Democracy”, has an interesting chapter on how the government has used the war on drugs to dispose of surplus populaces in the inner cities. Now the government is expanding this disposal to the middle class.
The question is, are Americans willing to fight back?