Jonathan Kay on Sudhir Venkatesh's
extraordinary eyewitness account of life with a Chicago crack
gang
In 1989, a University of Chicago graduate student named Sudhir
Venkatesh decided to leave his cocoon-like campus, and find out what
life was like in his city’s notorious public housing projects. So he
wandered into the decrepit Lake Park projects of Chicago’s Oakland
neighborhood, introduced himself to a group of teenagers shooting
dice, whipped out a clipboard, and asked them this question: “How
does it feel to be black and poor? Very bad, somewhat bad, neither
bad nor good, somewhat good, very good?”
“You got to be f-cking kidding me,” the ringleader said. And the
whole dumbstruck group convulsed with laughter.
Hearing how ridiculous his own question sounded, Venkatesh
realized then and there that he was wasting his time. The residents
of this squalid building were living lives completely alien to his
middle-class upbringing. He wasn’t going to get inside their heads
with patronizing multiple-choice questions.
But foolish as he felt, Venkatesh caught a break that day, one
that eventually set him on a path to a rock-star reputation within
sociology, and a professorship in the Ivy Leagues.
The toughs Venkatesh stumbled on were low-level foot soldiers
with the Black Kings, an enormous regional outfit whose Lake Park
operations were controlled by a formidable gangland general named
“J.T.” Against all odds, Venkatesh struck up an instant bond with
the man. Unlike just about everyone else who lived at Lake Park,
J.T. had been to college, and had even studied sociology in
preparation for a short-lived career in the legitimate business
world.
A narcissist, J.T. imagined his life to be worthy of biography,
and invited Venkatesh into his inner circle as a sort of court
scribe. For the next seven years, Venkatesh would become eyewitness
to the inner workings of gang life. His remarkable account of those
years — contained in a newly released book, Gang Leader for a Day: A rogue sociologist takes to
the streets — is required reading for anyone who wants to
understand why gangs continue to thrive among the West’s
underclass.
The first thing one notices about the world Venkatesh describes
is this: There are no fathers. Everyone at Lake Park — even J.T.,
who commands 200 gangsters and, in a good year, makes six figures
from crack-dealing — lives with their momma. The young men don’t
dream of settling down with a family. Rather, they seek to emulate
the polygamous J.T., who uses his drug proceeds to lodge various
girlfriends in separate apartments. With no father figures to guide
them, these men internalize the juvenile conception of manhood
peddled by rap videos, and fritter away their adolescent years
pursuing it through streetcorner posturing and brawling.
The nature of the local economy is the second thing that stands
out: Except for the corner stores (which are run by Arabs), there is
little legitimate free-market activity. Virtually all of the money
coming in to Lake Park comes from two sources: government welfare
and drugs. The few people who apply actual marketable job skills
within the community — such as the mechanic “C-Note,” who gets his
name because he has “a hundred ways to make a hundred dollars” — are
so rare as to be minor celebrities.
As a result, criminality is normalized: The idea of studying
hard, going to college and getting a respectable job — the formula
for success applied by waves of European and Asian immigrants to
North American since the late 19th century — is dismissed as a white
man’s fantasy.
Gang life is at the center of all these pathologies. But as
Venkatesh explains, the local residents’ attitude toward the Black
Kings is actually quite conflicted. Because violence attracts
police, and police scare away customers, J.T. has an economic
interest in keeping life in the projects peaceful. For a small cut
of the action, his henchmen provide a security detail for the local
crack dens, and protection for prostitutes. They also drive sick
residents to the hospital, organize basketball games, and even stage
get-out-the-vote drives on behalf of the local black political
machine. There is plenty of violence in Gang leader for a
day. But it is not random. Like all petty tyrants, J.T.
understands that his legitimacy rests on providing some semblance of
order.
The portrait that emerges from this book therefore complicates
the simple black-and-white way we normally think of the gang
problem. Yes, gangs act as a criminal evil that act in opposition to
the law-and-order culture that pervades mainstream society. But in
very poor areas that are bereft of the basic sociological building
blocks of middle-class society — stable families, legitimate
employment, job skills, respect for education — an established gang
can, in some instances, take over some of the functions normally
served by police, employers, and even social workers.
At the same time, Gang leader for a day implicitly
suggests a strategy for tackling this underlying subculture:
overhauling the drug laws and welfare programs that serve as its
two-pronged economic power source.
As Canadian gang expert Michael C. Chettleburgh wrote in a June,
2007 National Post op-ed, our criminal prohibition of recreational
drugs permits gangs to capture the massive economic premium
associated with illegal enterprise. By treating drug use as what it
truly is — a health problem — instead of a criminal-justice problem,
we would force gangs to fall back onto far less lucrative
activities, such as prostitution and loan-sharking.
At the same time, implementing a draconian welfare reform of the
type the United States enacted under Bill Clinton could serve to
eliminate the state’s role in subsidizing a ghetto culture in which
permanent unemployment is seen as a viable lifestyle choice.
Ultimately, all social reform begins with responsible people
making individual decisions: No government policy can force people,
of whatever skin colour, to live their lives in a responsible way.
But we can do a better job at setting up the right incentives, so
that teenagers and young adults find themselves more inspired by
Venkatesh than the gang leader he’s written about.
jkay@nationalpost.com
