Exploring Gang Life: Insights from Sudhir Venkatesh

In the book “Gang Leader for A Day”, Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist in graduate school at the University of Chicago, did research in the projects with young men affiliated with gangs. The way he did it was so different because he actually presented himself in some of the most ghetto and dangerous projects. Sudhir Venkatesh first interacted with a gang when he went to a poor community asking questions. Venkatesh assignment was to get some information through gang members by asking them straight up questions, which they took offensive. Venkatesh learned that was not the way to approach gang members because anything bad could happen to him. After the gang members had him on lock down, because they thought he was a Mexican gang member, they told

Not only that, from inferring what is stated, it seemed like he was also smart because he liked reading about history and politics. J.T had a job after college selling office supplies and industrial textiles in downtown Chicago. Keeping in mind of the time frame, 1980s, there was so much racism going on the United Sates. J.T felt discouraged because he would see white people with lesser skills get promoted ahead of him. From then J.T knew his chances of becoming successful were limited. After two years of working and going to college, he left the job and college to go back to his community in which became the leader of the gang. In the United States, there are some people that may feel like they aren’t good enough for college and/or some simply deals with racial issues and end up in a gang or enters the drug

Venkatesh and J.T began the day at 7:30 in a restaurant to discuss everything that needed to be done that day. Before they even started talking about anything, Venkatesh made it clear that he wasn’t killing anyone and/or selling anything. J.T explained to him that couldn’t do everything because then he’ll get in trouble by the gang members who were ahead of him. J.T had two senior officers that helped him throughout the day. The first assignment of the day was to clean up the mess from a previous party, and Venkatesh had to make the decision of which group to send to clean it up. The second assignment was to find a place to hold meetings. As Venkatesh didn’t know anything of the prices and times, he wanted to give only 50 bucks until J.T and the other two officers explained to him that he needed to increase the donation. At the same time, the problem came up with a store manager over paying the gang members to buy things. Venkatesh’s next duty was to solve a misunderstanding between two gang members. The next assignment was about he was selling diluted product, in which got J.T got demoted in Black