Nigel Brown
12/11/2013
Elizabeth Lenn
Eng 102
Gang Affiliation and Violence vs. Socioeconomics
This paper will analyze the relationship of how gang affiliation and violence, specifically in the urban communities, has become prevalent due to socioeconomic reasoning. What causes the need for gang affiliation in urban communities when an avid pursuit of elevating one’s social status should be more prevalent? By maintaining a focus on lower income families why enrolling in gangs is viewed as a necessity rather than choice? Gang affiliation norms have been constructed and now “accepted within urban communities how is this affecting new generations within urban communities? Ultimately how the presence of gangs within urban communities has led to a mass amount of gang violence?
The purpose of this study is to investigate why gang affiliation has become so prevalent in urban communities due to the socioeconomic factors which are imposed on them and how these have led to large amount of violence within urban communities. Social class constitutes many things for people such as how a person lives, the food they eat, amount of income and because of these factors results in the formation of gangs.
In the novel Southland by Nina Revoyr, she actively depicts California’s brutal history presenting evidence of different gangs which existed during the time periods she wrote about and how the families within those neighborhoods survived. In order to understand the conditions gang affiliates are circumstanced to one must first investigate the social class which they come from. Social class constitutes many things for people such as how a person lives, the food they eat, amount of income and because of these factors results in the formation of gangs. The United States department of justice investigated that, “there are approximately 27,900 gangs, with 774,000 members, impacting towns, cities, and communities across the United States within urban communities”. How could so...