BEHAVIOR OF STREET GANGS

Offering a "substitute for what society fails to give," (Thrasher, 1927, p. 33) the urban gang attracts youth through the promise of alternatives and opportunity not found elsewhere. Once the gang is created, its behavior--activities and attitudes--generally reflect the failures and absence of opportunity found in the social and economic structures of American society. Alienation and restriction of gang members (and the entire communities in which they develop) from participation and success in middle-class society forces a search for alternative,

innovative means with which a sense of dignity, purpose, and accomplishment can be experienced. The gang behaves in many varied ways, from violent and illegal exploits to actions and beliefs considered middle-America conventional. Four categories of gang behavior emerge as significant in the understanding of the street gang phenomenon: recreation, violence, economic activity, and conventional activity. However, the gang chooses to behave, it does so in reaction and response to perceived levels of social and economic opportunity.

The image of a street gang as a social group, a peer group, is one rarely, if ever, portrayed by media sources to the public. While the gang's violent or illegal behaviors are greatly publicized, the majority of the gang members' time is spent simply hanging out, talking, socializing with, and supporting each other. Like other s

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llion illegal aliens cross our boarder from Mexico each year. And many Chicanos who inhabit the ghettos are often first generation Mexicans and people from Central America, who have not assimilated to speaking and writing the English language proficiently for a well paying job. And often children of these poor immigrants do not have support at home for a successful education at school, as most of the people fleeing Mexico and Central America are the poor and uneducated who can not find adequate jobs in their own country. And in America these first generation immigrants find that all their dreams of prosperity do not magically come true. They find that without the language and job skills they can become locked into the cycle of poverty. The secondary job market has jobs that nobody wants, especially not the middle-class. And thus by performing these jobs their race and their people, whether Chicano or Black, become treated as second class citizens by the middle-class and upper-class who they often wait on and serve. For example, a poor Mexican-American mother, who speaks little English and has few job skills, may work at a plush luxurious hotel as a maid, who cleans rooms for the upper class, who in turn treat her as ina
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Los Angeles, American Moore, LIMITATION Offering, Oakland Watts, Chicano Black, Central America, Harlem York, United States', Watts California, street gang, Mexico Chicanos, street gangs, labor market, social economic, secondary labor market, secondary labor, gang youth, moore 81, moore 28, american society, drug market, street gang youth, secondary job market, schools produce workers, ghettos oakland watts,
Approximate Word count = 2608
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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