The Gang as an American Enterprise

By Felix M. Padilla

Book Overview

The Diamonds are a Chicago Street gang whose members are second-generation Puerto Rican youths. For Felix Padilla, the young men who join the Diamonds have made a logical choice. The gang is an alternative and dependable route to emotional support, self-respect, material goods, and upward mobility. Although Padilla shares the same ethnic background as the gang members and also grew up in a Chicago barrio, gaining the trust of the Diamonds was not easy. Eventually, however, he was able to get close enough to the members to interview and observe them.

Padilla shows us his decision to join the Diamonds. From early childhood, boys develop positive images of the gang. They realize that the dominant culture promises mobility, but that their paths to that mobility are blocked. By joining a gang they can creatively oppose the dominant culture. Padilla does not paint a romanticized picture of the Diamonds. Some members come to understand that when they sell drugs, they benefit the gang's leaders and suppliers more than themselves. Further, they recognize that the gang is also subject to problems of domination and inequality. Padilla shows that though the Diamonds are sometimes violent, they are not psychopaths. While we need not approve of what they do, he urges us to understand it as a rational response to the doors these young men see closed around them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813518067
• ISBN13: 9780813518060
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Unbiased interworkings of gang life

Felix Padilla's masterpiece of a Chicago Street gang who he refers to as the "Diamonds" is an interesting and educational read. What makes this book a cut above the average "gang information" book is the absence of preachy anti-gang material. Professor Padilla presents gang members as real people who are trying to obtain the "American Dream". His conclusion is that the gang oppresses the individual as much as conventional society does. Padilla's writing style is unpretentious, and enlightening.