Gangsters

50 Years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America

Lewis Yablonsky

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9780814797280
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Violence in Society
• Index: Social Sciences

The effects of gang violence are witnessed every day on the streets, in the news, and on the movie screen. In all these forums, gangs of young adults are associated with drugs and violence. Yet what is it that prompts young people to participate in violent behavior? And what can be done to extract adolescents from the gangster world of crime, death, and incarceration once they have become involved?

In Gangsters: 50 Years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America, Lewis Yablonsky provides answers to the most baffling and crucial questions regarding gangs. Using information gathered from over forty years of experience working with gang members and based on hundreds of personal interviews, many conducted in prisons and in gang neighborhoods, Yablonsky explores the pathology of the gangsters' apparent addiction to incarceration and death.

Gangsters is divided into four parts, including a brief history of gangs, the characteristics of gangs, successful approaches for treating gangsters in prison and the community, and concluding with a review and analysis of notable behavioral and social scientific theories of gangs. While condemning their violent behavior in no uncertain terms, Yablonsky offers hope through his belief that, given a chance in an effective treatment program, youths trapped in violent behavior can change their lives in positive ways and, in turn, facilitate positive change in their communities and society at large.

PART ONE
GANGS: NOW & THEN

1.
The Current Gang Problem

ON ANY GIVEN EVENING, along with the weather report and sports scores, the TV evening news in large and small cities throughout America present the horrendous toll of assaults and deaths that result from gang violence. The incidence of gang violence has escalated, and the patterns of gang violence have become increasingly lethal in the past fifty years.

Contemporary gangs differ significantly from gangs of the past with regard to several significant factors:

1. Gun Firepower. Today’s gangs have access to and pack more lethal weapons than at any time in the history of America.

2. Intraracial Violence. In the first half of the twentieth century, minority gangs tended to band together and fight gangs from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Today’s gangs, especially black and Chicano gangs participate in internecine warfare with black on black and Chicano on Chicano violence.

3. The Use and Commerce of Drugs. In the past fifty years there has been a marked increase in the involvement of gangsters in the use and dealing of drugs.

4. The Multipurpose Gang. In the past gangs tended to have more simple functions for its participants. Youths joined gangs for a sense of belonging and to “protect” their territory. Today’s gangs provide more deviant opportunities for their participants—including violent activities, drug use, the commerce of drugs, and the possibility for participating in the illegal activities of organized burglary and robbery.

Since there are diverse definitions of the term “gang,” before analyzing each of these factors in more depth, it is useful to clearly define my perception of the contemporary gang. The contemporary violent drug gang incorporates the following basic characteristics and activities:

1. All gangs have a name and a territorial neighborhood base, and they maintain a fierce proprietary interest in their neighborhood. They will fight for the territory they claim as their own and will attack any interlopers who come into their “hood” who belong to an enemy gang.

2. Joining a gang often involves a “jumping in” ritual that ranges from informal verbal acceptance to a violent initiation rite, and leaving the gang takes many forms.

3. Delinquent and criminal acts involving burglary and theft are important gang activities for achieving a “rep” (reputation) and status in the gang.

4. Senseless violence, including drive-by shootings and “gangbanging” (fighting other gangs), is a basic gang activity.

5. The commerce of drugs, their use, and violent acts for the maintenance of drug territory are part of the gang configuration.

6. Gangs provides a form of social life and camaraderie that usually involves gambling, getting high, hanging out, and partying.

THE IMPACT OF MORE LETHAL WEAPONS

A significant factor about contemporary gangs compared to earlier gangs is the enormous increase in lethal weapons. During my years in the mid-1950s of researching and working with gangs in New York City, I observed and noted many acts of violence. Most of it involved stabbings and hand-to-hand combat. Manufactured handguns were seldom used in gang warfare, and there were no automatic weapons on the street. Occasionally, a zip gun would be employed in a gang fight. A zip gun, often referred to as a “homemade,” would be manufactured by an enterprising gangster in his shop class. This unreliable weapon was comprised of a metal pipe as a barrel, a wooden handle, and a bunch of heavy elastic bands to provide the power to shoot a bullet. When the trigger was pulled on the mishmash of wood, pipe, and elastic bands, the bullet was as likely to shoot the shooter as the intended target. There were very few real guns in the possession of gangbangers in the 1950s.

In recent years, increasingly lethal weaponry like AK 47s and Uzi assault guns have become the gang’s weapons of choice for retaliation and drive-by shootings. In the maniacal foray into “enemy territory” of a drive-by, gangbangers inaccurately spray and kill as many innocent people as the enemy gangsters they are attempting to kill. Various research, including police reports, reveals that only about 50 percent of gang-related murders hit the target of enemy gangsters. The other 50 percent of victims of gangster drive-bys and street violence are innocent children and adults who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

BLACK-ON-BLACK AND CHICANO-ON-CHICANO VIOLENCE

Despite the fact that they miss their intended targets half the time, gangsters are still shooting at replicas of themselves. One of the mysteries of the contemporary violent gang problem is that black and Chicano gangsters murder gangsters from their same racial and ethnic background. This phenomenon is a social-psychological enigma that I have explored in my research interviews with black and Chicano gangsters in both the community and in prison.

On a number of occasions in my gang prison therapy groups where the gang members were trying to change their behavior, I have sat a black L.A. Crip in a chair directly facing a black L.A. Blood and posed the question, “Why do you guys want to kill each other?” The response is usually a garbled commentary about gang turf or a simple and direct, “I don’t know.” The gangster’s responses are usually cryptic and irrational, and they have no logical explanation.

One of my speculations about the phenomenon of internecine black-on-black or Chicano-on-Chicano gang violence is that there is a hidden fear that generates a reluctance to directly take on the larger white society’s power structure. Gangsters who have the feeling that they are an oppressed minority may feel safer venting their rage on each other, in the same way that angry family members too often act out their anger inside their family situation.

Another possible explanation for this curious phenomenon would be the self-hatred theories of the social psychologist Kurt Lewin. Lewin posited the theory that self-hatred anger is often committed against people from the same minority group because they see in these others a hated reflection of their self.

A true authority on gangs is Stanley (Tookie) Williams, who is forty-one and is on death row for murder at San Quentin. Tookie was a cofounder of the L.A. Crips with the notorious South Central L.A. gangster Raymond Washington. Williams is a legendary figure in the world of Los Angeles gangsters, and the 400 gangsters who convened in a hotel ballroom for a gang summit peace meeting in 1993 vociferously cheered him when he addressed them with a videotaped message on a huge television screen from San Quentin. His message condemned urban violence and urged a peace treaty among L.A. gangs. A portion of his message that cogently comments on black-on-black violence was reported in a later interview with a Los Angeles Times reporter:

A black youth may participate in a gang because of his need to vent anger, or the need for love, protection, retaliation, a sense of security, recognition, discipline, psychological gain, sex, drugs or a surrogate family. Also a black youth may join a gang because his relative is a member. So that individual gravitates to it automatically, because he grew up into it. But of all the possible reasons for gang participation I can empathize with is a black youth’s desperate need for psychological comfort. And gangs provide that by providing a vehicle—gang membership—that allows him to feel that finally that youth really belongs to something, or is a part of something.

In other words, there is a place for a black youth in this country when he joins a gang, as opposed to that youth feeling left out in a white-dominated society. I really believe that’s the underlying current for all gang participation. In fact, I believe that need, the need for psychological comfort, cuts through every other reason why gangs are so popular among black youths.

(Why then do you think so many young black men harm and kill each other?) I believe the core of it is an embedded sense of self-hate. What I mean by that is, an individual who has been spoon-fed so many derogatory images of his race will, after a period of time, start to believe those images. The images I’m talking about are stereotypes that depict the majority of blacks as being buffoons, functional illiterates, violent and promiscuous, welfare recipients, indolent criminals. . . . Unfortunately, too many black people have been brainwashed into believing these stereotypes. And when an individual gets to believing such things, that individual gets to believing, “Well, hell, if it’s true, then I must be just as disgusting as those images that are being depicted.” So you end up lashing out at the individuals [other gang members] that you consider to be part of those stereotypes. In desperation, you’re trying to obliterate that negative image to rid yourself of this self-hate monster that subconsciously stalks you. In a sense, you’re trying to purify yourself, your environment, your race.

(How did you purge your self-hate?) I learned that basically all the negative stereotypes about black people aren’t true. Those stereotypes aren’t applicable to the whole race. There is no stereotype that can depict a whole race. So, after I studied and learned about the great individuals there are in my race both men and women—I woke up. Plus, I started acknowledging my own abilities to achieve minor things—self-accomplishments like being able to read well, to articulate well, to be disciplined, things of that nature. Nothing spectacular, but still they were self-accomplishments. So my feelings of self-hate gradually changed. It didn’t happen overnight, it took some time and effort on my part.

Maturity has something to do with it and the gaining of knowledge. I’ve been studying a lot since I’ve been in prison—economics, politics, black history, math, English, philosophy, psychology. And what I’ve learned has taught me to appeal to logic. If something’s counterproductive, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. If it’s for black betterment, then I’m all for it. Period.¹

In my view, Williams’s observations on the gang phenomenon are most perceptive. It is regrettable that his apparent exceptional intelligence has been wasted through his lifelong involvement with gangs and imprisonment.

FAMILY ISSUES

Most youths who become gangsters have had no positive adult role models in their lives. Although it is not as prevalent in Chicano families, around half of America’s black children grow up in a family without the presence of a positive adult male role model. The role models they have are fathers, older brothers, and uncles who have been involved in the drug and gang scene. In too many cases, their adult role models are frequently in and out of prison.

The issue of absentee prisoner fathers as negative role models was dramatically and concisely revealed in a psychodrama session I directed for men attempting to change their criminal lives in a California prison therapeutic community project. The subject in the session was Fernando (not his real name), a fifty-year-old longtime Chicano gangster in and out of prison.

In the process of changing his way of life in a positive direction in the program, Fernando developed a sincere concern for his three teenage sons who had become gangsters, following in his footsteps. The essence of a two-hour psychodrama session I directed with him was that, despite the fact that Fernando had been away from them in prison half of his life, they wanted to emulate their criminal father who was their role model and hero. Fernando, as a result of his change of perspective, now felt helpless and guilty about his negative influence on his sons, and the insights he achieved in his therapy motivated him to try to change their behavior.

In the psychodrama session I directed with him, the sons were role played by several prisoners in the group, who understood from their personal experience how his real sons would react to their father’s new perspective on life. Fernando opened the psychodrama session by tearfully telling his “sons” how terrible he felt about the negative influence he had on their lives and how he was now changing his life. To his gangster sons, Fernando had been a hero who had established a strong reputation as a veteran drug dealing and murderous gangster in their barrio. In the psychodrama session, his “sons” were appalled at the new message he was giving them that essentially said “crime doesn’t pay.” One role-playing convict “son” aptly said, “Man, we got our reputation on the streets from you. We have a rep because we are known as your sons. And now you’re punking out on us. You’re talking like a pussy.”

In the psychodrama, after being rebuked by his “sons” several times for his new viewpoint on life, he was ready to give up and quit the session. The other inmates in the group chastised him and told him, “Hang in there.” One sharp member of the group opined, “You know, Fernando, you have been a terrible father and role model for your sons for many years. You’re not going to change them overnight. But if you demonstrate a new positive role in here and when you get back to your family and the community—that’s the best way to change their behavior.”

After he was released from prison, Fernando did change his way of life. When he was paroled, he entered a therapeutic community and later on became a drug counselor. He reconnected with his sons as a positive role model and had a positive affect on them. In a follow-up on Fernando’s progress, I met with him and one of his sons about a year after his release from prison. In our discussion, I learned that at least this son was now in a positive relationship with his father and that Fernando was attempting to establish a similar relationship with his other two sons. Fernando’s rehabilitation and his impact on his son is, unfortunately, a rare exception. For too many youths growing up in the barrios and hoods without positive male role models, the gang has an irresistible attraction.

Most black youths growing up in the inner city have maternal figures in their family who provides the necessary nurturing for the youths’ proper socialization. However, most of the youths who participate in gangs tend to have mothers who are besieged by their own problems. The film Sugar Hill opens on a black child who witnesses his mother fixing heroine and then dying from an overdose. This abrupt portrait of the child’s socialization dramatically, if melodramatically, reveals the causal context that too often in the real world produces a sociopathic gangster/drug dealer.

Elijah Anderson, an African American social scientist, succinctly delineates how a mother in a fatherless home, besieged by her own problems, can affect the negative socialization of her child. According to Anderson,

The overwhelming majority of families in the inner city community try to approximate the decent-family model, but there are many others who clearly represent the worst fears of the decent family. Not only are their financial resources extremely limited, but what little they have may easily be misused. The lives of the street-oriented are often marked by disorganization. In the most desperate circumstances people frequently have a limited understanding of priorities and consequences, and so frustrations mount over bills, food, and, at times, drink, cigarettes, and drugs. Some tend toward self-destructive behavior; many street-oriented women are crack-addicted (“on the pipe”), alcoholic, or involved in complicated relationships with men who abuse them.

In addition, the seeming intractability of their situation, caused in large part by the lack of well-paying jobs and the persistence of racial discrimination, has engendered deep-seated bitterness and anger in many of the most desperate and poorest blacks, especially young people. The need both to exercise a measure of control and to lash out at somebody is often reflected in the adults’ relations with their children. At the least, the frustrations of persistent poverty shortens the fuse in such people—contributing to a lack of patience with anyone, child or adult who irritates them.²

I have observed the fatherless family situation described by Anderson in the many family groups I have directed. Single-parent mothers can be quite violent with their children in an effort to get them to behave. They will scream at them or hit them for the least little infraction, partly out of the frustration and anger they have about their own lives. A youth growing up in this type of family intuitively learns that interpersonal problems are solved by violent behavior, and this in part accounts for their violent gang behavior.

DRUG AND VIOLENCE FACTORS

Atrocious violence is one way of “putting in work” and rising in the hierarchy of the contemporary gang. Another pattern of significant “work” for a gangster is involved with the commerce of drugs. The gangs I studied and hung out with in the 1950s in New York City had a different connection to drugs than contemporary gangs. In earlier gangs, drug addiction was a side note to the social narcotic of violence that pervaded gang behavior. Most gangsters between the 1950s and the 1980s were not involved in the commerce of drugs.

In the 1950s, heroin was the major drug of gangsters. Rather than consolidating the gang, as occurs in contemporary gangs involved in the drug trade, drug use tended to break up early violent gangs. Their main activity involved gangbanging for kicks, and some measure of camaraderie, and drugs interfered with the effective performance of these tasks.

In the 1950s gang period, I observed that when a gangster started using heroin, he tended to drop out of the gang since his involvement with heroin addiction was an all-consuming activity. Heroin addiction tends to be a loner activity that requires daily forays into the community to commit thefts, burglaries, and muggings for the purpose of supporting an expensive habit. Feeding a heroine habit was a full-time job and didn’t allow much time for gangbanging. Several gangs I was researching and working with in the 1950s broke up because a number of the gang’s core gangsters became heroin addicts.

The contemporary gangster’s role in the business of drug dealing is related to his status in the gang. The L.A. Crips, which incorporate a number of different subgroups or “sets,” provide a typical example. In the Crips, the “OGs” (the designation for original gangsters or older gangsters) are usually the prime managers of the gang’s commerce ...