257week6

Tony Waters

March 2, 1999

1) Assignment for Massey et al.

2) Internal Colonialism: A Theory of Race and the Southwest (Mario Barrera)

Mario Barrera’s Internal Colonial Model

3) Gangs in Immigrant Communities.

4) Gangs in Hamilton City and Orland (Sam Llamas)

5) Review Schedule for papers

Internal Colonialism. An explanation of society based on situations where there is a minority persistently exploited by capitalism. Some sort of de facto segregation and exclusion is part of the equation.

In contrast, traditional studies of colonialism (Spain in Latin America, Britain in India) had working class peoples separated, and unable to form "working class consciousness" as a result. Paradox observed: why don't people who have same interests (e.g. working class whites, Chicanos, and blacks) join together? Why in fact do working class people engage in discrimination when it is exactly the opposite of their interests?

First developed with respect to England and its "internal periphery." This was mainly Wales and Ireland. Uses peripheral areas to maintain supplies of cheap labor for capitalist industry. Michael Hechter in the 1970s. Mario Barrera, a Chicano activist and academic wrote a book Race and Class in the Southwest (1979) to describe how this condition also helped analyze the Chicano condition in the United States.

Point is that capital needs to block ability of workers to demand higher wages. Do so by creating/manipulating racial and ethnic antagonisms. This is not in the interest of the workers, but of owning class (capitalists) who want to keep wages low.

Other examples of internal colonialism

--England and Wales/Scotland/Ireland

--Turks within modern Germany

--Blacks in South Africa (Bantustans)

--Indians in Mexico

Point is that is a ethnic/racial minority which lives in close proximity to capital. Not like India where there was a great ocean. Capitalists need labor, but need to keep divisions within working class. This is what Internal Colonialism theories are all about.

Point is that it is structurally different than mercantile colonialism arrangements where the supply of cheap labor is overseas. Source of cheap labor is next door, i.e. really handy.

Note in these circumstances, there is always both an ethnic element, and a class element. Quite often is a rural people who becomes exploited.

In US, the internal colonies were Chicanos is the Southwest, African-Americans in the rural south, whites in Appalachia, etc. In California, there has been a long series of these, all serving capital. The presence of Latinos has been fairly consistent, with successive waves arriving in the 1800s and 1900s. Successively: Spanish-speaking Californios/Sonorans, Chileans; Chinese, Japanese, Asian Indians, Filipinos, "Okies and Arkies," Braceros, Mexicans, etc.

1) Colonial relationships are not just political, but more importantly economic. Third World peoples everywhere sell primary goods cheaply, and but back manufactures expensive (world systems theory). Classic example is Indian cotton turned into shirts in British factories, and then sold back to India.

2) Many colonies (or neo-colonies) are separated by geography. But others are not; are still third world, even though geographically, are in the capitalist world. But exploitative relationships are the same.

3) Class analysis (in Marx’ sense) predicts an end of status groups (particularly race). What will be left over is class. But in the real world, this does not happen. In fact, race becomes a point of conflict for working peoples from racial minority and

majority…"Workers of the World Unite!" is only a theory, no where a practice.

Capitalist/owner class sets up system where working class majority (in the US whites), fears racial minority. "False Consciousness" with regard to racial minority which is in fact a labor reserve which maintains a permanent unemployment, meaning that labor costs are kept low for working class majority, and even lower for working class minority. In this formulation, the system of structural discrimination is necessary.

Question: what is a labor reserve? How is it relevant to class relations in the US Southwest? US-Mexico relationships in general?

Overhead from Barrerra here

Advantages of this model

--Notes that in the modern world, class relations are often focused by relations between economically dominant group, and an (often) indigenous minority. Such groups are often persistent (unlike immigrant groups), and maintain some sort of distinctive

ascribed trait (i.e. language or skin color) which results in their assignment to a racial group (i.e. racialization process).

Barrera traces the internal colony relationship back to the Mexican-American War of 1946-8. At that time, the United States acquired a dominant relationship over the Spanish-speaking peoples of Texas, California, and particularly New Mexico. Over the next 100 years, everywhere these Spanish-speaking peoples ended u p in a subordinate economic position as American capitalism sucked them into a racialized labor market, including

Railroad construction in the Southwest (1910s)

Urban factory labor in the 1920s and 1930s, and now. Particularly in garment industry, but also in canneries and food processing.

Farm work (1940s to now)

Domestic and restaurant labor in urban areas (last 25 years)

Note: in the reward system that becomes legitimized by the capitalist class, these jobs are "dead-end" and low status.

--Includes the element of the persistence of race, for which there is substantial evidence. This is an advantage over both Marxist and capitalist models of society which assume that status distinctions will not be "seen" by capital, but in fact are.

--Explains why race has been and will be persistent

--Explains in ethnic terms who will be racialized, and why

--Acknowledges central role of capital

--Does not explain the emergence of a substantial Chicano middle class, and substantial rates of inter-marriage with whites in

the last 20 years.

--Does not acknowledge culture and culture change

Break Here.

The Issue: Street gangs have long been associated with immigration. Irish in New York, Stanley (Poles and Italians) in Chicago, pachucos in 1930-40 Los Angeles, Chinese at various times, Jamaicans back east, Vietnamese and Lao today, Mexicans today, etc. The problem: they are not associated with all immigrant groups, though. Some substantial groups that have never had youth gang problems: Japanese, Iranians, Koreans, Nigerians, etc, have never had substantial street-gang problems.

Also, some groups which have gang at one time, do not have gangs at another. Examples: Chinese in early California (tongs and other problems with adults, but no street gangs), Russians, and Mexicans.

Note: there is a distinction between street gangs (primarily of kids which are loosely organized), and criminal drug gangs (adults and tightly organized/disciplined).

Show overheads from Klein here.

Questions: why do some immigrant groups have gangs, and others not?

--Different levels of poverty

--Different levels of discrimination (blocked opportunities)

--Differential labeling by law enforcement

--Some groups bring a "culture" of gangs from the home country, while other do not

--Different demographics (i.e. some groups have large numbers of young males, and others do not

Compare sample of different immigrant groups through time. Choose both groups with high levels of street gangs, and low levels. (I.e. "street gang" activity is the dependent variable)Groups chosen

Mexicans in 1920s Los Angeles (little street gang activity)

Russian Molokans in 1920s Los Angeles (high street gang activity)

Laotians in 1990s (high street gang activity)

Koreans in 1970s-90s (low street gang activity

Mexicans in 1980s and 1990s (high street gang activity)

Point is to find out what groups as different as the Laotians and Molokan Russians have in common. In addition, what they have in common should not be shared with Koreans or Mexicans in the 1920s. Finally, there should be a difference between Mexicans in the 1920s and 1970s-90s.

Once this point is identified, you should be able to apply it to other groups in order to explain why or why not street gangs emerged. Or why they emerged when they did.

--Different levels of poverty

All groups suffered from status loss upon immigration. For Laotians, Mexicans, and Molokan Russians, this status loss meant that they worked in menial jobs, if at all. These three groups also had robust birth rates to compound their financial situations, with the highest birth rates being found among Russians, and the Mexicans who arrived early in

the century. Koreans had relatively low birth rates.

--Different levels of discrimination

Discrimination was most systematic against the Mexicans who immigrated in the 1920s. They were subject to economic exploitation, and eventually expulsion in the 1930s. Both Mexicans and the Asian groups were subject to racial discrimination of various sorts.

--Differential labeling by law enforcement

All three of the groups which had street gangs were known to be so by law enforcement. Mexicans in the early 20^th century were known for labor organizing, and other activities (including marijuana use in the 1930s) which law enforcement responded to, sometimes in an overly enthusiastic fashion. This enforcement was focused on adults, and there was no mention of youth gangs as such until the early 1940s.

--Some groups bring a "culture" of juvenile delinquency, while other do not

youth gangs seem to be an urban American phenomenon, although similar groups are found in some other modern urban societies. No culture considers delinquency normative. Are youth gangs a "normal" form of deviance brought from overseas? Answer seems to be no in the case of these groups, the bulk of whom come from rural areas. Partial exception: Chinese, who have criminal syndicates which use youths as "enforcers." These groups are found in both Asia, and San Francisco/New York. But these groups are also different than what Klein describes, resembling more "drug distribution gangs" rather than "street gangs."

--Different demographics (i.e. some groups have large numbers of young males, and others do not)

This is the issue where things clicked. Waves of gang activity tended to occur 15-20 years after an arriving group had a "baby boom." Happened in the case Laotians (who had the babies in Thai refugee camps and US), Russian Molokans, Mexicans, and even in the case of 1920s Mexicans who had large numbers of children.

(overheads here)

From this analysis, it became apparent that this type of gang activity did not happen at just any point in the migration process, but at points in the process. What were these points? What was the process?

--a population which had a large proportion of young males. By proportion, I mean a big group of young males relative to adults. This implies a "baby boom" of some sort

--In the United States, such "baby booms" among immigrant groups are most commonly found in rural populations which have settled in a city. They bring rural norms for child-bearing with them. They also are likely to bring a number of other problems, including poverty, low levels of formal education, poor English skills, and conservative child-rearing practices

--The children are exposed to other normative conditions via the schools. Their command of English is likely to exceed that of their parents, and as a result they become their window onto the broader social world (including medical care, schools, social welfare system, etc.)

--For some, they do very well, and end up at places like UC Berkeley, and CSU Chico. Others though feel stigmatized. They may have weak English skills, poor grades, poor relations at school, etc. They tend to group with other young males from the

same immigrant group who have similar problems (Figure 1.1)

As a result, "inter-generational conflict" is often at the heart of how immigrant parents and children think of the gang problems.

Children: Father doesn’t understand where we are. Thinks we are still in the old country.

Father: Kids here don’t listen, respect their elders the way they did in the old country. It is because the society/government takes control away from us.

Outsiders (e.g. police officer, social worker) Breakdown in the family

(read examples)

The Social Scientist:

Almost any attitude, any routine of life may precipitate the battle between the old and the new. The equilibrium disturbed, the young generation find, however, few adequate adaptive adjustments [in the norms passed on to them by elders] with which to meet the new conditions of life. Tensions and unrest arise. Life in its very essentials is in an upheaval. The road from the old to the new is uncharted and dangerous at every step …The younger generation [builds] up its own society relatively independent of the influence of its elders...

Child of an Immigrant:

Father still lives in the past and thinks himself very important. But really he does not understand very much here. He makes life very hard for us, and we cannot get any fun with him. He gets terrible angry if we have some fun on our own...

Immigrant Father:

The young ones won't pay attention to our traditional councils anymore, because the...government doesn't permit them to have any authority over our own. We can't enforce our will. [At home] they would have had to listen to their elders [or they would

have been subject to very severe corporal punishment]. Here the government won't let us enforce our decisions, though. So the kids run wild. They are good students in elementary school and junior high school, and even do better than the American kids.

But then in high school everything goes wrong, and suddenly the American kids are doing better than ours. Please explain to the government that if we were permitted to handle our own problems, everything would be much better, and our young people would be good citizens and students.

It’s not that any of them are wrong. Rather, it is that they are all observing the same underlying process from different perspectives. To a certain degree this means that gangs are a "normal" if tragic part of the adaptation of immigrant groups to urban American life. How normal is it? It is as normal as it is to hire immigrant from high birth rate countries to perform factory, farm, and domestic labor.