Blog Post #2: Gangs & Deviance

While reading “‘Social Junk’ vs ‘Social Dynamite'”, I could not help but to think about gangs. In the United States, gangs arose out of a need, namely a need to protect the interests and rights of those that were marginalized. During that period, those individuals were African-Americans and they were protecting themselves from the government (specifically the police). In the article, the author mentions the Black Panthers and their role. The Black Panther party, a socialist group established in the late 1960s, are indeed the epitome of social dynamite; they served as the precursor for today’s gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods. Although gangs like the Crips and the Bloods are currently considered equivalent to domestic terrorists, they are very much the products social strain. The documentary “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” delves into and dissects this issue. The title itself suggests that gangs were born here and that they are in a sense, America’s fault. As Robert Merton suggests in his strain theory and his modes of adaptation to anomie, that individuals who experience a disconnect between socially prescribed goals and the means to achieving them feel a sense of alienation and often deviate from the norm to compensate for that. This is exactly what happened and continues to happen in the US and is why gangs were indeed born. Gangs today like the Panthers back in the 1960s, are still just protecting their interests.