If the definition of the word tribe, as described in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary is, “a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest,” and the word urban can be found to mean, “of, relating to, characteristic of, or constituting a city,” then it can be said that street gangs are a form of urban tribes. (1) Our likening of the two terms steams from the hope that by acquainting street gangs to urban tribes, we can help set aside any preconceived notions one may have about the street gang subculture, and thus examine this subculture in a fair and unbiased light. Hence forth, we will refer to street gangs throughout the remaining of this paper, as urban tribes. However, with a topic as large and diverse as urban tribes, we really need to narrow our focus down to a more specific, generalized subtopic, one which not only helps to bind all the individual tribes together, thereby making them part of the larger subculture, but also provides an accurate portrait of the subculture as a whole. The subtopic of socially disorganized communities and their impact on the formation of the urban tribe/street gang subculture hence narrows our focus while still allowing us to examine the most important aspect of this subculture itself, that of it’s formation.

If we are to understand the formation of the urban tribe subculture, then we need to start by furthering our understanding of what it means to be a socially disorganized community. A socially disorganized community is a community in which, welfare dependency, mobility, and single parent households are all key factors. At this point it is important to note that socially disorganized communities often, although not always, are/where the result of ethnic tensions, caused by a long history of segregation, and or immigration. Access to jobs, schools, and decent economic prospects, where traditionally denied to ethic groups in our country, thereby making full integration into American society often unattainable. As a result of not being able to fully integrate into American society, ethic groups where left with very few, low paying economic opportunities. The lack of economic opportunities severally impacted the conventional institutions within ethnic communities, and by conventional institutions we mean, churches, civic groups, and schools causing them to be “under-funded, over crowed and or non-existent.” (3) As a result, ethnic communities lacked the main fibers, i.e., conventional institutions, which held organized societies together. Over time these ethnic communities would become known as socially disorganized communities, as the problems facing the communities continued to grow and have an outward rippling effect. Since there was little chance for economic growth within the communities themselves, few residing in the communities could afford to invest in the communities. Since the communities where poor, very few people from outside of these communities wanted to invest in the communities. Thus the problem began to fester. The majority of the residents who resided within these communities, rented property and wanted out of the communities as quickly as possible. This created a high residential turnover rate. The high residential turnover rate in turn impacted the communities in two ways, first causing the property values, both land and rentals to drop. This created an even bigger residential population turn over rate, in which the people residing in these communities because of the constant moving in and out of their neighbors, simply did know each other. Because neighbors did not know one another, the residential population turn over, left them with an “inability to adequately monitor and control/regulate the behavior of [their] neighborhood’s…”(3) Unable to regulate the communities behaviors, high crime rates started to occur. As one problem feed off another, a rip environment was created for a new subculture to emerge, and so it did, that of the urban tribe.

The urban tribe subculture was born as a result of there being unmet needs within the communities of individual urban tribes. When conventional society failed to address the economic needs of it’s individual members, individuals began to ban together in tribes, to seek out less conventional means to address their economic needs. A transmutation thus occurred in which, the socially acceptable norms established by either the dominant American culture, or the culture of origin, where replaced by the socially acceptable norms of urban tribe. Activities deemed illegal by the dominant culture, such as selling illegal narcotics, quickly became seen as a means of creating economic gain and became socially acceptable norms within the urban tribe subculture. The moral “rights,” and “wrongs,” of the dominant culture, where thus cast aside, and replaced by the individual moral “rights,” and “wrongs,” of each new tribal society. Once the new societal norms where individually establish by the various tribal societies, they where “transmitted through successive generations of [people living in the] same zone in the same way language, roles, and attitudes [where] transmitted." (2)

So as not to confuse this new system of individual tribal norms symbols where used to identify one tribal society from another. These symbols which are transmitted from one generation to the next, are particularly important because they help us to pinpoint the possible location of a particular urban tribe, which thereby allows us to examine the unmet needs that that particular urban tribe may be trying to fulfill as a result of living in a socially disorganized community. Such symbols may be found on an individual in the form of tattoos or branding, or may be present within the community in the form of graffiti. Graffiti serves as a modern artifact in that, the particular symbols used by a urban tribe may be left on buildings, sidewalks, trashcans and other areas where a tribe resides or conducts business. In the future such markings may help to aid scholars in their understanding or urban tribes, much the same way as cave paintings currently help to aid us in our understanding of non-urban tribes.

As with all tribes, urban tribes and non-urban tribes alike, behavior of tribal members is often misclassified or misunderstood. What may be perceived as a form of destructive behavior from members outside of the urban tribe; i.e., rites of passage including being beaten or jumped into a gang, committing armed robbery, a drive by shooting, rape, murder, or in the case of females, being sexed into the gang, may in actuality be perceived as a form of constructive behavior from members within a urban tribe. Such behaviors may further, be liken to that of the behaviors perceived to be constructive by the dominant culture, i.e., a willingness to fight for and die for your country, may be perceived as the same as a willingness to fight for and die for your urban tribe. The sale of illegal narcotics while deemed destructive behavior from outside the subculture, may be deemed constructive behavior from within, since the selling of illegal narcotics provides an opportunity for economic advancement which otherwise may be unavailable. Graffiti used to mark urban tribe territories, may in turn be viewed by urban tribe members as no different than maps or city street signs used to provide vital information and to guide and direct people to various places and locations within a community. From outside a socially disorganized community an urban tribes behavior may seem irrational, but for urban tribal members residing within these communities, the learned behaviors, values and beliefs, which are formed as a result of living in a socially disorganized community, often make sense. In the end, it amounts to this. One cannot truly understand the behaviors of an urban tribe if the problems which allowed the subculture to emerge in the first place, still remain misunderstood.

Acculturation, intergration, segregation, immigration and transmutation, all play and have played an active role in the development of the urban tribe subculture. When a organized system fails to function properly, and the needs of a society go unmet, change, be it for better or worse, takes place and new social systems emerge. The urban tribe subculture, as destructive as it may be perceived to be, was created to fill a void otherwise not addressed by the socially disorganized communities in which the subculture thrieves. The key to stopping urban tribe violence, and ending the cycle which allows this subculture to be transmitted from generation to generation lies in our identifcation and understanding of the broken social, economic, and cultural systems, which allowed the subculture to emerge in the first place. It is not until we fully understand all of the underlying problems, that a solution can be found.

Biblography:

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Thabit, Walter Thabit. "How did East New York become a Ghetto" Social Disorganization Theories Of Crime http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/crim/crimtheory10.htm
Social Disorganization Theory. http://www.uky.edu/~jkerr0/SocialDisorganizationTheory.rtf