By: Connor Liu and Animesh Joshi On November 4 our Monsoon community healing space was vandalized. We were one of the first people to show up at the scene and were surprised by the level of violence and wreckage. The most striking damage was to the house’s walls -- splattered floor-to-ceiling with signs and epithets -- which initially led Des Moines police to mark local gangs as potential suspects. This caused us to dig deeper into the meanings behind the graffitti, and although the handiwork was quickly pinned to teenage vandals unassociated with gangs, our research made us wonder about the origins of Asian gangs in the United States and prompted an exploration into their modern organization and their significance in the Asian American diaspora. A brief historyAsian youth gangs emerged in the late 1800s, and while they were not unique to the West Coast, their initial appearance coincided with sizable immigration from Asia to states like California that helped establish “Chinatown Gangs” as a distinctly West Coast phenomenon. The modern inflow of immigration from Asia, arriving from 1965 until today, can be separated into two “waves”. In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration Act which increased the quota placed on Asian and Pacific Islander (API) immigrants from 100 immigrants to 20,000 per country. This gave rise to a wave of highly educated, middle class immigrants, whose success contributed to the "model minority" myth--a tool later co-opted by white society to pit Asians against each other and other minorities. The second modern “wave” occurred in the mid 1980s, and comprised largely of refugees fleeing war and political persecution in Southeast Asia. Unlike their predecessors, this group was displaced not by choice, but out of survival, and thus carried significant trauma which remained widely unresolved among families. As a result, these immigrants were not only less prepared to face the language and educational barriers in the pursuit of the “American Dream,” but were also subject to serious psychological consequences which affected their everyday lives. The few prospects for employment consequently contributed to a growing percentage of Asian-Americans living in poverty-- ultimately pushing many Asian youth to resort to crime as a means of supporting themselves in ways their parents could not. Gangs todayMore recently, prominent Asian gangs such as the Triad and Yakuza have taken the spotlight among gangs in the United States, but countless other groups exist today. Many of these gangs are offshoots of organized crime syndicates based in Asia, and as a result, gangs present in the United States today tend to be culturally divided by their native roots: the Triad and Tongs consist of Chinese immigrants, the Yakuza of Japanese, the Asian Boyz of Southeast Asians, and the Sons of Samoa of Pacific Islanders. These gangs primarily operate in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York; however, gangs exist all across the United States, and even the most remote regions, including Des Moines, remain influenced by gang culture. Asian gangs are often a home for youth who feel out of place elsewhere. Gang culture is lucrative in that it provides an escape from their other troubles. Often, gangs become a second family for API youth. This bond can be both benevolent and destructive--older gang members can serve as guardian angels for youth but on the flipside, can also push them to a darker path. In Chicago, for example, the immigrant Chinese-American community often relied on tongs (gangs) as arbiters of social disputes because they didn’t have faith in the anti-immigrant American institutions or the law. However, this would often transcend smaller-scale disputes, with the two main tongs--the On Leong and Hip Sing--sworn enemies until the 1960s, causing violence and struggle in major cities against each other. The story of Julio Lee illustrates a similar story, highlighting Chinese American gangs’ abilities to be both a positive and negative influence on members over time. Lee was homeless at the age of five and joined a gang so that he could have money in his pockets. Although the gang prevented him from sleeping on the street, he also became a part of its culture: family, drugs, and violence. But wait, there's moreThis pattern often replicates itself--with some API youth feeling disconnected, and as a result, stepping into gang culture in an effort to find a home. The effects are varied, but most of the time, gang members will find (in some manner) what they were looking for: a family. Admittedly, even this analysis fails to understand the full complexity that is at play. No member has the exact same motivation for joining a gang--but we can all relate to their attempts to find love, compassion, empathy, and happiness--even if their paths diverge from ours and carry along some extra baggage. What is this baggage? And why are API youth motivated to join groups, knowing the inevitable burden they’ll have to bear? Our next blog post will attempt to analyze exactly that--sifting through the different factors that underpin the roots of API gang culture. Comment your ideas on what could potentially be the answers to these deep questions and stay tuned!
26 Comments
|
Categories
All
Year ARchive
February 2023
|