INVOLVEMENT OF AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH IN GANGS
Virtually nothing is known about the involvement of American Indian youth in gangs. However, recent evidence suggests that a gang culture and gang membership have diffused to many Native American Indian communities. The purpose of this article is to examine the results of a self-report study among American Indian youth from several western states. The results indicate that about 5 percent of males, but less than 1 percent of females reported actual gang membership. In addition, about 10 percent of male and female respondents reported hanging around with gangs. When compared to non-gang Indian youth, level of drug involvement and involvement in delinquent activities washigherforin-gang youth and those who hang around with gangs. Youth who reported hanging around with gangs also reported higher drug use and involvement in delinquent activities than non-gang youth, but lower than those who reported actual membership in gangs. Conditions of poverty, lack of economic opportunities, discrimination, and the erosion of cultural identity provide the structural conditions for the attractiveness of gangs to Indian youth. The actual diffusion of gang culture is dependent on contact between Indian youth and non-Indian youth with knowledge about gangs. The article considers several important areas for research on gang emergence in Native American Indian communities.
ISOLATION AND STIGMATIZATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN UNDERCLASS: THE CASE OF CHICANO GANGS IN EAST LOS ANGELES*
A good deal of our concern in the study of social problems has to do with the emergence in American society of a predominantly minority urban underclass. Generally, social scientists rely on one or a combination of two approaches in explaining this phenomenon. The first approach the culture of poverty-argues for the existence of a tangle of pathology which is ". . . capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world" (Moynihan, 1967:47). All that is required to sustain this underclass culture is a welfare state. An alternative approach, equally oversimplified here, argues that the minority underclass is a product of institutionalized racism, which operates in education, the job market, the housing market, and the criminal justice system. But both the culture of poverty and racism explanations focus on categories of people rather than on communities. The culture of poverty approach emphasizes individuals and their families. The discrimination argument looks at individuals in relation to their roles in the institutions of the larger society. Neither recognizes the dynamics working within the communities in which underclass families live. I suggest here that it would be fruitful to focus on differentiation within poor minority communities. Further, since deviance and potential deviance are also part of our image of the underclass, we may borrow from the labeling perspective to understand how deviants, and by extension, underclass families come to be differentiated further in their own minority communities. A case history-the development of Chicano youth gangs-shows some of these processes at work, and also demonstrates that it is possible for these trends to be reversed. Thus we can also identify some of the dynamics involved in the reabsorption of members of the underclass into a less deviant or stigmatized segment of the minority poor.
A system of neglect: Indian boarding schools.
This paper examines the frustrations and dilemmas present in maintaining separate schools for Indian children. The diversity of approaches in these schools, the problems of acculturation, and a history of poor individual academic and emotional adjustment suggest that a reformulation of tasks and priorities be undertaken that emphasizes creative solutions to special needs. Counseling services that are more peer-oriented, as well as multifaceted supportive services, are recommended. The authors also discuss such issues as intertribal rivalry and student apathy.