Promised a helping hand, security, and affordable living, residents of Chicago’s public housing soon found themselves in dilapidated, drug-infested, crime-filled, isolated centers of despair. During a time in which most American citizens could easily turn their eyes from the struggles of the poor, Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day took readers into the depths of the world in which the poor resided. Through Venkatesh’s work, readers are inadvertently introduced to broader sociological concepts such as, collective efficacy within communities, the concentration effect, recurring themes of morality, and the underlying power of race, class, and gender as it related to the crime that took place during Venkatesh’s ethnographic like research.
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Race, class, and gender have been described as the Gordian knot of social inequality because of how interconnected the identities are (Sernau, 2014). The same connection can be applied to Gang Leader for a Day because all of the ways in which those forces influenced everything from which neighborhood a person was allowed reside in to the kind of medical care they received. Historically, race has played a monumental role in the nearly impenetrable boundaries of many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. Up until the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 there was blatant housing discrimination throughout the country; although our laws may have made an effort to catch up to the times, the ideology behind housing discrimination remained the same (Moser, 2014). Considering the time period, even if the residents in Gang Leader for a Day could afford to leave public housing, because of the color of their skin, they would still more than likely be confined to the poorer black neighborhoods in the city. This practice effectively binds black residents to neighborhoods where socioeconomic status tends to be lower, and because of that, crime tends to be higher. The longer people are denied better life chances, the more likely they are to deviate from the traditional …show more content…
Within the Robert Taylor Homes, women were often restricted to certain roles that were not as lucrative compared to the positions that men held. Women like Ms. Bailey had social status, but her economic activities depended on the activities of the men who ran the local Black Kings gang (Venkatesh, 2008). There was a general air of misogyny within the gang’s culture. Women were not taken seriously, as illustrated by J.T.’s when he says, “Your auntie?! Are you kidding me? Ain’t no women allowed in this thing!” when a potential gang recruit asked if his aunt could join. Exclusion and vulnerability also lead to a lot of physical and sexual violence. Venkatesh says, “Every single woman had been beaten up by a boyfriend, some fatally. Every one of them had lived in fear for days or weeks, waiting for the same man to return” in reference to the women who joined his writing workshops. Since women were excluded from the power of the gang, several turned to prostitution as a means to make money. Venkatesh makes reference to two categories of prostitutes, “hypes” and “regulars” (Venkatesh, 2008). Hypes were the women that turned to prostitution as a means of getting drugs, and regulars were known as the women who usually turned to prostitution as a means to feed their children. Generally, since women were so ostracized from the power of the gang, with the exception of figures like Ms. Bailey, they were often
Race, class, and gender have been described as the Gordian knot of social inequality because of how interconnected the identities are (Sernau, 2014). The same connection can be applied to Gang Leader for a Day because all of the ways in which those forces influenced everything from which neighborhood a person was allowed reside in to the kind of medical care they received. Historically, race has played a monumental role in the nearly impenetrable boundaries of many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. Up until the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 there was blatant housing discrimination throughout the country; although our laws may have made an effort to catch up to the times, the ideology behind housing discrimination remained the same (Moser, 2014). Considering the time period, even if the residents in Gang Leader for a Day could afford to leave public housing, because of the color of their skin, they would still more than likely be confined to the poorer black neighborhoods in the city. This practice effectively binds black residents to neighborhoods where socioeconomic status tends to be lower, and because of that, crime tends to be higher. The longer people are denied better life chances, the more likely they are to deviate from the traditional …show more content…
Within the Robert Taylor Homes, women were often restricted to certain roles that were not as lucrative compared to the positions that men held. Women like Ms. Bailey had social status, but her economic activities depended on the activities of the men who ran the local Black Kings gang (Venkatesh, 2008). There was a general air of misogyny within the gang’s culture. Women were not taken seriously, as illustrated by J.T.’s when he says, “Your auntie?! Are you kidding me? Ain’t no women allowed in this thing!” when a potential gang recruit asked if his aunt could join. Exclusion and vulnerability also lead to a lot of physical and sexual violence. Venkatesh says, “Every single woman had been beaten up by a boyfriend, some fatally. Every one of them had lived in fear for days or weeks, waiting for the same man to return” in reference to the women who joined his writing workshops. Since women were excluded from the power of the gang, several turned to prostitution as a means to make money. Venkatesh makes reference to two categories of prostitutes, “hypes” and “regulars” (Venkatesh, 2008). Hypes were the women that turned to prostitution as a means of getting drugs, and regulars were known as the women who usually turned to prostitution as a means to feed their children. Generally, since women were so ostracized from the power of the gang, with the exception of figures like Ms. Bailey, they were often