Defensive localism in white and black: a comparative history of European-American and African-American youth gangs

The activities of European-American and African-American youth gangs have been closely linked to the operation of changing racial and class structures. In this article, I compare European-American and African-American youth gangs in four historical periods: the seaboard city, 1787-1861; the immigrant city, 1880-1940; the racially changing city, 1940-1970; and the hypersegregated city, 1970-1999. I show that the differences between European-American and African-American gangs can be traced to the race-specific effects of labour, housing and consumer markets, government policies (especially crime control policies), local politics and organized crime on European-American and African-American communities. I conclude that European-American youth gangs facilitated cultural assimilation because of their close ties with formal and informal political authorities and organizations which commanded substantial social and economic power, whereas African-American youth gangs reinforced cultural separation because of their embeddedness in racially segregated, economically marginalized and politically powerless communities.