Gang Leader For A Day By Sudhir Venkatesh

A strong sense of community is not usually an association one makes when thinking about the urban ghettos. It is assumed that inner-city neighbourhoods, which lack formal structures and services, are home to poverty and deviance. However, for Sudhir Venkatesh, author of “Gang Leader for a Day”, a community is what he encounters when observing residents of the largest housing projects in the United States, the Robert Taylor Homes. In poor, racialized neighbourhoods such as the Robert Taylor Homes, there is an idea that there is no social structure in place to provide guidance to young people, who end up getting in trouble. Neighborhoods lacking formal organizations are unable to provide essential services to the community and lack necessary

In a neighbourhood where there is a lack of formal institutions that regulate behaviour, the community relies on the gang to provide for its needs and services. Instead of formal social controls, such as the police, gang leader, J.T., acts as an authority figure and guardian of the community. J.T. and his gang maintain order and protect tenants, for example, by closing down crack dens to keep people safe. Astonishingly, one of the gang’s main focus is actually to keep kids in school. In order to be accepted into the Black Kings, prospective members must aim to complete their high school diploma and are disciplined if they are suspended from school (Venkatesh, 2008). “The gang [is] simultaneously [seen as] a nuisance, a source of fear, and an ally”, for although they bring crime to the community, they provide informal social structures that allow for the needs of the neighbourhood to be addressed

In a poverty stricken neighbourhood, it is expected that residents will be too busy with their own survival that they will not be willing to cooperate with each other. This, however, is untrue as many high-crime neighbourhoods are not disorganized and actually have strong networks of social ties, as observed in the Robert Taylor Homes. A study of the structure of the black family in the eighties show that there is a phenomenal growth in the number of black families maintained exclusively by women (Nichols-Casebolt, 1988). But while these numbers are growing, the amount of formal help available to black single mothers is not; it is almost non-existent (Edin & Lein, 1997). As a result, residents in the housing projects informally organize, with the understanding of a shared experience, in an attempt to survive against poverty. During his interviews with community members, Venkatesh (2008) notes that,

“Many households participate in a vast web of exchange in which women borrow, barter, and pool their resources to survive. One woman might offer day care for a large group of women, another might have a car and contribute by driving folks to buy groceries, and other women might take turns cooking for various families”