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    The Gang As an American Enterprise

    Felix M. Padilla (Author)

    9780813518060

    Paperback / softback, published 1 April 1992

    214 pages
    22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.286 kg

    "Padilla has dealt with gang drug dealing-one of the more sensationalized features of urban life-n a down-to-earth and realistic fashion. The reader begins to understand poor minority adolescents in a broad sociological context. This book is a significant contribution to urban ethnography."
    - Joan Moore (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
    "Padilla has dealt with gang drug dealing-one of the more sensationalized features of urban life-n a down-to-earth and realistic fashion. The reader begins to understand poor minority adolescents in a broad sociological context. This book is a significant contribution to urban ethnography."
    - Joan Moore (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

    The Diamonds are a Chicago Street gang whose members are second-generation Puerto Rican youths. For Felix Padilla, the young men who join the Diamonds have made a logical choice. The gang is an alternative and dependable route to emotional support, self-respect, material goods, and upward mobility. Although Padilla shares the same ethnic background as the gang members and also grew up in a Chicago barrio, gaining the trust of the Diamonds was not easy. Eventually, however, he was able to get close enough to the members to interview and observe them.

    Padilla shows us his decision to join the Diamonds. From early childhood, boys develop positive images of the gang. They realize that the dominant culture promises mobility, but that their paths to that mobility are blocked. By joining a gang they can creatively oppose the dominant culture. Padilla does not paint a romanticized picture of the Diamonds. Some members come to understand that when they sell drugs, they benefit the gang's leaders and suppliers more than themselves. Further, they recognize that the gang is also subject to problems of domination and inequality. Padilla shows that though the Diamonds are sometimes violent, they are not psychopaths. While we need not approve of what they do, he urges us to understand it as a rational response to the doors these young men see closed around them.

    Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    Chapter 1. In Search of a Gang to Study
    Chapter 2. A Changing Neighborhood
    Chapter 3. Turning: Becoming a Gang Member
    Chapter 4. The Diamonds as a Business Enterprise
    Chapter 5. Becoming a Street-level Dealer
    Chapter 6. Future Aspirations and Limitations: The Catch-22 Consequence of Gang Participation
    Conclusion
    Reference List
    Index
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