As for nationality, the gang is apt to be thoroughly unprejudiced and
democratic. To be sure, twelve of my sixty-six gangs were all of one
nationality. But that is largely because the streets or sections of the
city where the boys live are likely to be given up to a single race.
Fifty-four of my gangs were of mixed nationality, while in only one was
any line drawn at breed or color--“No Jews or Negroes allowed.” Far
more than we realize, the boys’ gang is helping out the public school
in the great problem of assimilating the diverse races in the United
States.
Nevertheless, there are some curious differences of nationality in the
membership of gangs. Irish boys are especially gangy, with Americans
and French a good second. Jews, on the other hand, are conspicuous for
their absence. I questioned several Jewish boys, without discovering
a single typical gang; and only two of my sixty-six gangs had Jewish
members, though Jews are decidedly numerous in the regions from which
the boys came. The reader who is interested in race psychology will
find food for thought in the differing instincts of Irishman and Jew.
There is also some social difference in boys’ gangs. Boys from
well-to-do homes are, as one might expect, less gangy than those
brought up amid poorer surroundings. In the case of the more fortunate
boys, the gang is only one of a number of factors in their social
development. But boys from bad, broken, or inefficient homes are forced
to provide their own social life, and the gang is their one instinctive
reaction to their social environment.
Curiously, too, boys from the better class of homes more often form
their social groups _de novo_ to suit their individual social needs;
while boys whose home training is deficient tend more to become members
of gangs already formed. For this reason the permanent and long-lived
gangs are apt to be tough, with fixed and dangerous traditions. Thus,
while among well brought up boys a gang rarely survives the boyhood of
the group which formed it, among delinquents of my acquaintance hardly
more than a quarter were original members of their gangs, or could
tell how their gangs started. The bad gang, therefore, tends to be a
persistent and dangerous institution, taking in new members as the
older ones graduate. But the good gang dies young. This circumstance
probably accounts in no small degree for the bad odor in which all
boys’ gangs are commonly held.
_Organization_
In respect to definiteness of organization, there are marked
differences in gangs. Some are loosely knit and of short duration;
others are select in their membership and rigid in their structure,
so that they last through several generations of boys. Some gangs are
autocratic, some democratic,--this, naturally, depending largely on the
leader.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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