Justifications of Deviant Behavior

Sykes and Matza argue that the will to delinquency arises from the feelings of desperation of lower class urban males. Such males attempt to deny their roles as passive victims of social processes through positive acts of delinquency. Such a theory could certainly be supported by the criminal activity of the founding members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Furthermore, Sykes and Matza also note that delinquents remain committed to the social order they offend, demonstrated by their application of legitimate legal defenses to their crimes though they may have to distort the defenses to fit their own situation. Party lead

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ns was a criminal and violent oppression of the civil rights and human dignity of American blacks. They had the right to bear arms to defend themselves against such injustice. Consider, for example, the ideology of the Party's intellectual leader in its early stages, Eldridge Cleaver. Eldridge Cleaver educated himself in California's Soledad prison while serving a sentence for assault with intent to murder. However, Cleaver argued that black-white relations in America were governed by the historic violence of white people against nonwhites: There seems to be no end to the ghastly deeds of which [white] people are guilty. GUILTY. The slaughter of Jews by Germans, the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese people -- these deeds weigh heavily on the prostrate souls and tumultuous consciences of the white youth. The white heroes, their hands dripping with blood, are dead. Cleaver argued that this historic treatment of blacks by whites had created a culture, and a black culture in particular that was inherently sick. He argued that he "became a rapist" because he was willed to do so by white culture. He argued that any black man who did view whites with hatred and violent feelings was an "Uncle Tom" who did not know his true se
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Approximate Word count = 2794
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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