Christian Picciolini's White American Youth

White American Youth is a gruesome story that captures the physical and psychological changes a human can unveil through the exposure of the ideals of racism, discrimination, and categorization. We will examine Christian Picciolini: as he explores the journey of his own self identity, eventually securing himself as the most powerful, violent individual in all of Blue Island. Christian finds himself falling for the persuasive ideologies of the White Supremacy movement through the connections of the individuals he meets along the way, as well as the desire for self identity, respect and admiration he hopes to seek from all who knows his name.

Main Body
I. The Cultural Stereotyping of Christian’s Childhood & Self Identity
Christian Picciolini starts out in the story as just a no-named kid from the working class suburb of Blue Island. While attending St. Damien’s Catholic school in Blue Island, Christian placed himself as an outsider. “ The kids in Blue Island had each other, “they were all such good friends, a tight knit group of pals” (Picciolini, 2017 page 22). Christian “desperately wanted to be a part of something”, being confined to spending most of his early childhood days alone or

with his grandparents. Christian was tired of Jake the bully at school calling him “pick-my-weenie” and “dick breath” (Picciolini, 2017 page 25), he wanted to make something for himself that had meaning. We see the first occurence of Christian’s identity crisis when he gets tossed into a fight with Jake from school. When Christian swung at Jake and he hit the ground, Christian was shook but empowered. Immediately after the fight a new respect arose from the other students, Christian was “ Drunk with his new found significance” (Picciolini, 2017).
Christian’s search for self identity and acceptance can be drawn back to prior studies done by Erik Erikson in his stage theories of human development. According to Erikson, “the main and most important developmental tasks for adolescents are to solve the identity versus role confusion crisis, construct their own unique sense of identity, and find the social environment where they can belong to and create meaningful relationships with other people (”Ragelienė, T. , 2016 page 98). At just the peaking age of adolescence, Christian experiences the sort of theory portrayed in Erikson’s stages. It is in his realization that the fight gave him a sense of acceptance and identity from his peers, therefore, he craves for more.

II. Ingroup, outgroup discoveries and the formation of Christian’s identity
Christian’s entrance into the High Street Boy group was the start of his new identity: an identity that resisted all the personable attributes setup for Christian by his parents. “The shattered pieces of my childhood lay scattered across the St. Donatus parking lot”(Picciolini, 2017), stated Christian as he proceeded to destroy the remains of his bicycle with Little Tony, Big Tony, Chuck Zanecki, and Scully. “Research has shown that belonging to the “normal” - or - popular peer group is positively associated with better adolescent adaptation to the environment (”Ragelienė, T. , 2016 page 98).” It was also stated in the same article that “if adolescents are unable to resist peer pressure and negative influences, they may be more prone to delinquent
Behaviour” ” (Ragelienė, T. , 2016 page 98). The sort of cycle developing through these adolescent theories is what we see within Christian in his interactions. While at this point of Christian’s delinquency is only damaging a bike, later it will develop into extreme violence as he consistently seeks for acceptance in even more violent peer groups.
The identity Christian began to create for himself continued to prevail through his identification through white supremacist music, as well as the admiration of Blue Island skinheads: Carmine Paterno and Martell. Christian’s exposure to the skinhead world made him realize that they have an established identity: they all wore tough, sharp clothing, looked intimidating and had shaved heads. While Christian had little understanding at this point of the meaning of ‘white power’ and its violent denotations, he did however feel a sense of bonding with the music attached to the white supremacy culture. He found that “it spoke to us and allowed us to speak when we did not have a voice. It was uncensored and raw and proved it was okay to be lonely or angry or confused about being a teenager in the world.” ( Picciolini, 2017 page 41) We can draw back Christian’s connection to the music with his rebellious attributes as a adolescent boy. According to the following article, “ increase in mild conflicts accompanied by a decline in reported closeness, and especially, in the amount adolescents and parents spend together” (Steinberg, L., & Amanda, S. M. , 2001 Page 88). Christian had a minimal relationship with his parents in the story, making him anxious and angry as he began to grow up.
According to the follow article, “ adolescents in less cohesive and less adaptive families are more influenced by peers than parents ( Steinberg, L., & Amanda, S. M. , 2001 page 93).” Christian parents played a minimal role within Christian’s life, leading him to seek out influence from outside interactions: the skinheads. Christian wanted nothing more than to seek out an identity for himself: somewhere to feel like he ultimately “belonged”: the skinhead group did just that. According to the following interviewed individual also in the Nazi movement he states, “Before I joined, I felt like a nobody, I felt like a loser, I felt like, worthless,” says Robert. “Their world offered me a world where I was better—just because I was white.” (Kimmel, Michael. 2007) The Skinheads were able to entice the innocent mind of Christian Picciolini by connecting to him on the most personal level of understanding: his own neighborhood. Carmine made claims to Christian that Clark is going to clean up white neighborhoods like Blue Island and preserve the parts of it that mattered. “He wanted what was best for my future-so much that he’d smacked my head. Just like my dad did.” ( Picciolini, 2017 page 48). This line is crucial to Christian’s identity in that it is Christian’s gateway to accepting that no matter what vile meanings were behind the skinheads: “they disciplined him and explained their doings, just as a father would do so.” When Christian is presented with these blinded ideologies, little does he know that beneath the surface they would manipulate him to want to know more and more until it became apart of himself. We see Christian reacting in this way because “adolescents may seek to conform to behavioural norms of the peer group with, which they identify themselves with” (Ragelienė, T. , 2016 page 98)

III. The beginning of Christian’s stereotypical and prejudice ideologies
We see the beginning of Christian creating his own stereotypical ideologies of an outgroup when he is dealt with his first occurence of an “outer, situational factor” (Blaine, Brenchley, 2017) from another race.

Christian’s values were threatened when three black kids from the other side of Blue Island beat him up and stole his bike. Christian was enraged that “someone could come into my neighborhood and take what belonged to me”. (Picciolini, 2017 page 34), he states “ I got a black eye for it, but my pride was hurt more than anything” (Picciolini, 2017) . Without full realization Christian was subconsciously developing the racial stigma for non white individuals. He began to learn already that the influence violence had over people would make him notorious in his

actions.
Christian’s racist identity is further established when he is dealt with an “inner, disposition factor” (Blaine, Brenchley, 2017). On November 9, 1887, “white power skinheads stormed to the North Side of Chicago, smashing windows of shops they suspected to be owned by Jews and painting blood red swastikas on synagogue doors.” ( Picciolini, 2017) According to Christian, he “hadn’t had anything against Jewish people before”, however, because he wanted to be respected by the skinheads his viewpoints began to change. He states “ Jews indeed were evil masterminds trying to secretly undermine unsuspecting American whites into extinction by pushing their multiculturalist agenda” (Picciolini, 2017). It was that same day that Christian was rewarded with the ultimate key into the Skinhead crew: the lead skinhead role of Clark Martell due to his sentence to jail. Through this event we see the beginning stages of Christian’s aversive racist behavior. Christian began to believe that unlike the title of racial terrorists given by others for “skinheads”, he saw them as patriots. The skinheads to Christian were men of action and other white individuals not acting “were too complacent to take up”.
We further explore Christian’s developing Skinhead ideology when him and Scully attend a Skinhead meeting in Naperville Illinois. During the Skinhead meeting, Christian’s “heart pounded with purpose” (Picciolini, 2017 page 94) as the Skinhead leader chanted the fourteen words that would hold representation of what the group was all about: “We must secure our existence of our people and a future of white children!.” Christian feeds into the idea that the Skinheads were all about action; knowledge was gained here according to Christian. Provided in this passage from the text is what we can describe as the Skinheads holding the personality trait of Social Dominance orientation to Christian (Blaine, Brenchley, 2017) “Were Blacks and Mexican people- excuse me, niggers and wetbacks- all that bad? Well, not by my previous limited experiences, but the skinheads saying this were older, wiser” (Picciolini, 2017 page 73). “In adolescence, a self-comparison with peers becomes more important when adolescents try to associate their identities with their peers (Ragelienė, T. , 2016 page 98).” Christian feels a self of identity and security when he is able to associate the same behaviors and thoughts of the skinhead group.
We can tie in Christian’s actions with the social identity theory. Expressed in understanding the Psychology of Diversity: Third Edition, Attached to this theory is the following characteristics: 1. “Individuals want to be affiliated with social groups that are worthwhile and valued” , 2. “desire to share a groups glory, but avoid their disgrace”, and “follow in group bias, enhancing self esteem” (Blaine, Brenchley, 2017). The social identity theory becomes a huge factor for Christian as he continues to fall deeper and deeper into the white supremacy movement. We will further explore how Christian attempt to shield away the negativity of white supremacy and how his racist thoughts, beliefs and actions are connected with the self fulfilling prophecy and ego preservation.