By: Connor Liu and Animesh Joshi In last month’s blog post, we decided to delve into Asian American and Pacific Islander gang culture. Although initially prompted by the vandalization of our community healing space, the more research we did, the more light was shed on information we hadn’t been exposed to previously. The struggles API youth face are shocking, and the violence they are exposed to as a result of gang culture often leads to consequences beyond physical violence as it’s typically associated with. Teenagers with impressionable minds often join gangs that work in crime-based circles, creating cycles of violence that revolve around money, drugs, and alcohol. And it’s this association that leads to unforeseen and harmful effects. The cycles of violence created by gang culture perpetuates underlying notions of patriarchy and socio-cultural conflict, leading many of the involved API youth to adopt and struggle with serious internal conflict. So, if we know all of this to be true, the question then becomes why? Why do API youth join gangs and immerse themselves in its culture if they know of the consequences? In this post we will attempt to figure out the answer to just that, going through the various different factors that motivate API youth into joining a gang. Why API JoinAt its core, for many API youth, the experience of inclusion constitutes one of the main reasons to join a gang. Whether it be a family to interact with or a place to stay at, API teens seek something (tangible or intangible) from gang culture that they’ve been deprived of in the past. A common phenomenon—many immigrant parents feel pressured to work multiple jobs to simply make a living. But, in many of these households with “over-working” parents, children feel pushed to the margins, and ultimately feel forced to seek acceptance and familial ties elsewhere. Moreover, API youth who grow up witnessing their parents live paycheck to paycheck develop a great desire to build a better life for themselves. As a result, gangs become extremely attractive for API youth, as they provide both a source of family and financial security for them and their families. Moreover, the desire for inclusion in a gang often times stems from a disconnect with the external society. This phenomenon is ever present in the immigrant experience, especially in teenagers who are stuck between the two hard walls of their parents’ culture and “American” expectations—resulting in a quasi-assimilation that leads to confusion on their true identity. This confusion, and resulting tension, is exponentially increased by negative stereotypes created by white society like the “model minority”. This myth portrays Asians as always being successful in the United States despite their minority status by emphasizing the community’s perseverance and natural intelligence. There are obvious flaws with this myth—its cherry picking of certain individuals, using inductive reasoning, and assuming some homogeneity for “Asians”—but it also creates expectations that most API youth can’t live up to. And when youth can’t live up to these high expectations, they are shunned by white society as not “real Asians”. Similar exclusion occurs in on both smaller and larger scales. Whether it involves being told your food smells weird, experiencing bullying due to an accent, or race-based conflict—API youth are often alienated in white-dominated spaces, prompting them to find someplace new. This someplace can be gangs, groups of individuals generally formed around shared identity that offer a familial setting for searching API youth. Thus, forms of exclusion from mainstream society become an incentive to join something which radically departs from everything—motivating API members to join gangs in an effort to find a place where they truly belong. Masculinity, patriarchy, and violenceAdditionally, the predominant expectation of masculinity in both API households and society writ large presents another underlying influence that draws youth towards gang culture. However, expectations of masculinity are often rooted in patriarchy, a system of maintaining male privilege by perpetuating forms of violence and oppression. These structures exist in many API communities—where cultural traditions are used to justify its maintenance—and work to ingrain the importance of values such as power and domination in API youth from an early age. But the internal effects are not isolated to patriarchy. API youth also struggle due to the differences between what traditional and Western culture expects of them. Often, Western culture depicts Asian youth as timid, obedient, smart, and hard-working while also portraying Pacific Islanders as a “warrior race.” These contradictions in cultural and societal expectations only push API youth to internalize and adopt traditional hyper-masculine beliefs has their own, and ultimately, feel pressured both internally and externally to join communities such as gangs to accumulate power and cultural status. symbols of masculinity power include weapons, violence, and a defiance of authority—all components of gang culture that can attract API youth. Hope and an alternativeWith such an apparent problem, the immediate question becomes, “How do I fix it?” or “How can we steer our youth away from this life?” Historically, community-based outreach events have been most successful at connecting with API youth and adults. Examples of successful outreach events include Long Beach’s Gang Reduction in California, where gang violence and trafficking has remained a serious plight to the local residents. While government policies and systematic programs are capable of creating change, they were largely ineffective—likely because they failed to address to root of the matter. Rather, community outreach events approached the problem from a grassroots perspective by reminding individuals who felt disconnected from their culture or family that their community was still there for them. Moreover, these events raise awareness of the potential consequences of joining a gang. Ultimately, these types of solutions are key for any sustainable solution in ending gang membership and violence among API youth and communities. It’s one of the many reasons why our work here at Monsoon is so important! So, please bring awareness to your communities—it all starts with us!
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Year ARchive
February 2023
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