Gangs

Studies of Urban Gangs

As did young men of other ethnic groups, African Americans probably began to form street gangs in the aftermath of the Civil War to protect urban neighborhoods from outsiders. Around the turn of the century, the most visible urban gangs comprised Italians and Eastern Europeans. African American gangs attracted little attention from law enforcement agencies or from researchers before the 1950s. Beginning in the early 1960s, however, urban African American gangs received increasing attention from sociologists, who began studying the relationship between gangs, class, and race.

Studies published in these years investigated various minority gangs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Researchers concluded that gangs were products of economic and social alienation. Youth who joined gangs tended to lack access to community resources, had few positive role models, and saw little hope of escaping from poverty. Throughout the 1960s, an explosion of research on African American gangs built on these early observations.

Researchers uncovered certain patterns of gang organization. Many gangs had both core members and casual members, whose ranks depended on age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Women tended to be casual members, and there were few gangs composed exclusively of females. Researchers also observed that gang culture invoked concepts of toughness and masculinity. Several theories attempted to explain this pattern. One theory suggested that gang members sought to rebel against female-headed households. Another considered the possibility that gang members were making rational choices in response to urban realities. Yet another theory asserted that gangs provided alternatives to broken family relationships.

Increased Gang Activity

In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of gangs in U.S. cities multiplied. Before 1965, forty-one American cities reported gang activity; by 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, all cities with populations greater than 250,000 reported gang activity. Nearly 25,000 gangs are active throughout the United States today.

Reflecting a changing innercity population, most gang members are minorities. In 1990, for example, Los Angeles reported that 45 percent of gangs in the city were Hispanic and 41 percent were African American. Studies suggest that new gangs are not national organizations that spread to new cities. Rather, as conditions worsen in cities across the nation, more youth are drawn to the gang lifestyle.

The Bloods and Crips, notorious rival street gangs that arose in Los Angeles beginning in 1969, followed this pattern of loose affiliation. Individual gangs chose to ally themselves with one of the two groups, but a central organization as such did not exist. Gangs in other cities sometimes claimed affiliation with the Bloods or the Crips, but these links were largely symbolic. Despite weak organizational ties, the gangs showed their loyalties through distinctive clothing, vocabulary, and gestures that attracted national media attention.

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