What It All Means

A few final thoughts to complete my Gang Leader for a Day triptych.

The projects as described in the book are essentially a smaller, more concentrated version of the urban ghettos in which a huge percentage of our educational problems lie. Looking at them and the kinds of solutions that might work to help alleviate poverty, neglect, and the poor conditions in those projects can help point us in the right direction for how to solve the broader issues in the larger neighborhoods.

I want to turn again to the concept of the vaccuum because that seems to be the key to all this. Where there is a power vaccuum created by the withdrawal/removal of traditional authorities, alternative powers will insert themselves. This is part of the power of the gangs. Where there is a vaccuum in terms of economic possibilities, it will be filled. In the book we learn about drugs, prostitution, and the various other hustles that become the basis for the project economy.

Up and down the line, wherever there is an absence, it will be filled. A vaccuum does not last. Given this, it's pretty tough to try to educate children as if they're operating in a world that plays by the same rules and has the same opportunities as middle class neighborhoods.

The answer, then, is to plug the holes. It means increasing the presence of police and public safety officers while making clear that these people are here to help, not harass. (There's some interesting stuff about police harassment in the book too.) It means making sure that basic social services - health care, sanitation, etc - are provided at the same levels they are in more affluent areas. It also means major economic investment to create actual opportunities for people outside of the alternative, underground economy. Projects like the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, started by Robert Kennedy, are the kinds of things we need to be looking to expand and support.

We can talk about people needing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps all we want. But until they actually have some boots to start pulling on, it's not going to make much difference.

Filling the Vaccuum

I wrote on Monday about the book Gang Leader for a Day and how a power vaccuum in the projects creates an opportunity for gangs and powerful (though perhaps immoral) tenant leaders to step in and fill the void. This contributes to a further breakdown of the traditional power structure which creates more opportunities for these alternative groups to increase their power.

This is no small problem. Researchers from New York University have found that students who live in public housing fare worse in school than their counterparts who live outside of public housing, even when factors like race and economics are figured into the equation. Read the book and it's not hard to see why.

The question about how to fix it is obviously much more difficult than identifying the problem. In fact, it would probably take a master's level dissertation to really get to the heart of it. Here's my version in a paragraph.

Just like a castle can't have two kings, a housing project can't have two true authorities. Part of the reasons that gangs and gang life is so prevalent in the projects is that the people tolerate them, not so much because they approve of the crack trade (the book was researched in the 1990s), but because the gangs provide a level of stability by regulating the activities - both legal and illegal - that take place in the buildings. That regulation provides a kind of order that would otherwise be lacking. However, if that order were to come from police, the housing authority, etc. (the way it does in other, more affluent neighborhoods), the tolerance for gang activity declines. In doing so, the power of the gang declines which provides a greater foothold for the traditional power structures to assert themselves.

Simple enough on paper, at least. Of course, actually doing it is where the trouble begins.

Life in the Projects

I just finished reading an incredible new book that I'm officially recommending to everyone I know who is interested in urban poverty. The book is called Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets. In the book, Sudhir Venkatesh describes the years he spent hanging out in the Chicago projects with gang members, crack dealers, prostitutes, and people just trying to get by. The book isn't filled with great writing, but it's better than it had to be given how interesting and compelling the story is. I'll be sharing some of my insights on the book throughout the week, but in the meantime, I'd really recommend checking it out.

The biggest point that struck me about the book is how the absence of traditional power structures affects all life in the project. Out in the suburbs where Venkatesh and I grew up, there are the traditional models of authority: parents, police, teachers, etc. For a variety of reasons, those figures are largely absent from life in the projects. Into their places slide alternative power structures like the gangs.

The gangs as they are presented in the book are not as purely bad as they might otherwise be assumed to be. Yes, they sell crack and engage in drive-bys. Yes, they encourage the various forms of illegality that seem to thrive in the projects. But they also act as the defacto landlord, police, and general regulators of life in the projects. Their presence acts as a stabilizing force in the projects. The irony is, of course, that it is the gang's illegal activities that act to destabilize things in the first place.

The main idea I'm trying to get across here is that nature abhors a vaccuum. Where there is a power vaccuum left by inefficient government or policing, something else will step in to fill those roles. That it has been gangs in these low-income ghetto communities speaks to the very clear need to ensure that the kinds of services taken for granted by more affluent citizens are at least available to those on the other end of the social spectrum.