When thinking about skinhead gangs in London, it is impossible not to conjure up images of shaved heads and heavy Doc Martin boots accompanying a particularly racist kind of violence with no respect for authority structures of the state. However, did these gangs begin with such a clear idea of their purpose? Were they aware that their daily activities would become a “subculture” along with the Mods and Rockers? In his essay titled “The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Community,” John Clarke argues that skinheadism is about the recovery of a community in working class neighborhoods where this feeling had been lost due to various changes in socio-economic conditions. He says that their feeling of exclusion “produced a return to an intensified ‘Us-Them’ consciousness” (Clarke, 99). Though the realization of this distinction plays a major part in the formation of any subculture, the Us-Them discourse turns out to be much more complicated in the case of skinhead gangs, and the space that these groups occupy in relation to the outside world does not have such clear boundaries. Looking at three different representations of Skinhead culture: the novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess, the non-fiction work The Paint House (1972) by the Collinwood gang, and the film Scum (1979) directed by Alan Clarke, the evolution of this space over time becomes clear. This change happens both in the way the gangs define and view themselves, as well as in the way mainstream society deals with the problem of violence in “Modern Youth” (Burgess, 41).
Ironically, the skinhead style began as a way for these working class youths to feel dignified and was in direct opposition to the tendency of other young people, such as hippies, ...
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...ys, “The people who read it will be these Marxist students and such who will contact us to join them in their fight against the establishment” (110). There is certainly an ambivalence about giving mainstream society literary access to the space the skinheads occupy. This is yet another way that the boundary between Us and Them gets breached. Perhaps the sheer violence, language, and overall controversial nature of these works are in themselves a kind of boundary maintenance, only letting in those who feel some affinity to their world.
Works Cited
Clarke, John. “The Skinheads & The Magical Recovery of Community.” In Resistance through Rituals. Ed. by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. 99-105. London : Hutchinson, 1976.
Doyle, Pat and others. The Paint House: Words from and East End Gang. Middlesex, Eng.: Penguin, 1972.
Scum. Dir. Alan Clarke. G.T.O, 1979.
In the article, “A Letter My Son,” Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes both ethical and pathetic appeal to address his audience in a personable manner. The purpose of this article is to enlighten the audience, and in particular his son, on what it looks like, feels like, and means to be encompassed in his black body through a series of personal anecdotes and self-reflection on what it means to be black. In comparison, Coates goes a step further and analyzes how a black body moves and is perceived in a world that is centered on whiteness. This is established in the first half of the text when the author states that,“white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence,”
There is a deep seated hatred between rival gangs, which makes it difficult for the gang’s members to let go. Gangs became a source of income for some people, which made it difficult for many young African Americans to escape the gangs. Significance: This film shows how the police saw activist groups such as the Black Panthers and the U.S. Organization as a threat, which led to repression despite the Civil Rights Movement. This repression leads to anger and hatred and the need for a sense of belonging amongst the African American community.
Ever since the abolition of slavery in the United States, America has been an ever-evolving nation, but it cannot permanently erase the imprint prejudice has left. The realities of a ‘post-race world’ include the acts of everyday racism – those off-handed remarks, glances, implied judgments –which flourish in a place where explicit acts of discrimination have been outlawed. It has become a wound that leaves a scar on every generation, where all have felt what Rankine had showcased the words in Ligon’s art, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background” (53). Furthermore, her book works in constant concert with itself as seen in the setting of the drugstore as a man cuts in front of the speaker saying, “Oh my god, I didn’t see you./ You must be in a hurry, you offer./ No, no, no, I really didn’t see you” (77). Particularly troublesome to the reader, as the man’s initial alarm, containing an assumed sense of fear, immediately changing tone to overtly insistent over what should be an accidental mistake. It is in these moments that meaning becomes complex and attention is heightened, illuminating everyday prejudice. Thus, her use of the second person instigates curiosity, ultimately reaching its motive of self-reflections, when juxtaposed with the other pieces in
Internal conflict caused by culture is a concept that Edward Hall explores in his book “Beyond Culture”. In this examination of intercultural interactions, Hall argues that people are born into the cultural prison of one’s primary culture. He then goes on to claim that from people can only be free of this prison and experiencing being lost in another (Hall). For Coates, this cultural prison is the permeating fear resulting from the blackness of his body. His internal conflict is therefore created when seeing the world of white, suburban culture. Because this world of pot-roasts and ice cream Sundays seems impossibly distant from the world of fear for his black body, Coates comes to feel the contrast of cultures. He tells his son, “I knew my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not” (21). As a result of the shocking divide, Coates comprehends the burden of his race. Coates therefore feels “a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an biding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape (21). The quality of life between the culture belonging to Coates’s skin in contrast to the culture of suburban America creates for Coates a sense of otherness between himself and the rest of the world. Disillusioned, Coates avidly pursues answers to this divide. Coates thereby embarks on a quest to satiate this internal conflict of cultures, beginning his journey towards
The white negro attempts to escape the conformity of the time through not a pursuit of instant gratification can lead to the ultimate clash with society—violence.
Surprisingly, little has been written about the historical significance of black gangs in Los Angeles (LA). Literature and firsthand interviews with Los Angeles residents seem to point to three significant periods relevant to the development of the contemporary black gangs. The first period, which followed WWII and significant black migrations from the South, is when the first major black clubs formed. After the Watts rebellion of 1965, the second period gave way to the civil rights period of Los Angeles where blacks, including those who where former club members who became politically active for the remainder of the 1960s. By the early 1970s black street gangs began to reemerge. By 1972, the Crips were firmly established and the Bloods were beginning to organize. This period saw the rise of LA’s newest gangs, which continued to grow during the 1970s, and later formed in several other cities throughout the United States by the 1990s. While black gangs do not make up the largest or most active gang population in Los Angeles today, their influence on street gang culture nationally has been profound.
Lawrence, L. (2007). Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. London: Sage Publishers.
Within the course of two decades these three novels deal with racism, diversity of people and similar economic status. The writers raise awareness of the oppression of the African American communities and the long lasting struggles that these folks had to endure to survive.
The phenomena of ‘The Hippy’ came about in the 1960’s stemming from the youth - the teenagers of the baby boom generation. They were generally middle-class white teenagers between the ages of 16-26 who were tired of conforming and the restrictions put on them by society and their parents. Born out of an era of post-war austerity and rationing they were raised with very little b...
8Susan A. Phillips, Wallbangin: Graffiti and Gangs in L. A.. (The University of Chicago Press, 1999).
The emergence of the counterculture of the 1960s set off a new wave of music and created an alternative lifestyle. The association of drugs with the counterculture is a limited assumption as drugs were present in the mainstream culture as well. The predecessor of the 60s counterculture, the Beat movement, was not entirely different and it is evident how the Beat lifestyle fostered an environment where the emergent hippie and acid-head culture could take root. Within the drug culture there were splits in ideology, between the Leary and the Kesey groups and the mainstream culture against the counterculture’s use of drugs.
Since the war in Britain the most recurrent types of moral panic has been associated with the emergence of various form of youth (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle class or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent. To a greater or lesser degree, these cultures have been associated with violence. The Teddy Boys, the Mods and Rockers, the Hells Angels, the skinheads and the hippies have all been phenomena of this kind (Cohen, 2002). Youth appeared as an emergent category in post-war Britain, on one of the most striking and visible manifestations of social changes in the period. Youth...
In this Award winning novel the 1900 display an astonishing amount of racism, and makes us realize that is is still going on till this very day. “I was just shootin a negro in my collard patch” (pg72Lee). This quote shows us that even maybe the gentlest most kind people are very judgemental and racist. That's the problem even today before even getting to know someone we automatically process the way they look and say to ourself he is black so he will steal something or we will say he has tattoos so we have to hold our belongings a little tighter, and without even knowing, we ourself have become something that we have all feared which is not give everyone a fair chance based on what they look like. Today racism is still very much apart of our culture
In every generation there are countercultures, some more prominent and influential than others that go against social norms. Jack Kerouac brought to light the counterculture known as The Beat Generation from under the veil of the conservative surface in the 1950’s, in his book On the Road. This generation was so influential that they were the driving force behind the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60’s and 70’s. Having strong ideas and values about freedom and personal fulfillment, that they perused relentlessly, they created big changes and even inspired generations after them who feel dissatisfied with the pressures to conform to instead push against the norms of society.
Former gang territories became prime locations for block parties and outdoor jams. Prior gang warfare turned into aggressive competitions of turntable jousting by DJs, joined by countless male and female street dancers, often called ‘b-boys’ and ‘b-girls,’ and the colorful artistic presentation of graffiti artists