Blame it on the Post-Modern?

While trying to narrow down my research, I came across a study co-produced by Delbert Joe and Norman Robinson, both specialists of the socio-educational issues impending Vancouver’s current gang culture. Their study includes an in depth analysis of gang culture in Downtown Vancouver’s, Chinatown, which is summarized in their article aptly named, “Chinatown’s Immigrant Class; The New Young Warrior Class”. Their research pinpoints the problem of such gangs to the overflow in immigration during the 1960’s, “when both Canada and the United States adopted less restrictive immigration Laws, under which substantial numbers of poorly educated and disaffected Hong Kong youth began to enter Canada and the United States”.

I then thought to myself, why would immigrants trying to better their lives in Canada, turn to gangs and crime? However, it soon made sense, when I considered Alan Sillitoe’s Smith, the narrator of The Long Distance Runner. Like Smith, these hopeful immigrants turned gang members blame the system--the ‘in-laws’; they too have been mismanaged by ‘them’ and now in turn choose to be cunning in hopes of regaining an identity lost in their fight for acceptance--this fight is soon inverted from acceptance into the system to an on-going war to find an identity outside of it.

Joe and Robinson go on to characterize three socio-cultural antecedents which are identified as important in the development of Chinese Youth Gangs:

(1) the weakening among many Hong Kong immigrants of the traditional Chinese pattern of close parental guidance and supervision;
(2) the resultant emergence of youth peer-groups who challenge parental authority and Chinese values;
(3) the strong attraction of North American success symbols for gang members, and their perceived inability to achieve success through legitimate means because of difficulties in learning English.

With these three points in mind, we can (with confidence) assume that these young Chinese immigrants landed with hopes of betterment and instead, were faced with a broken system, unavailable to all people--especially immigrants, whose obstacles are two-fold: both trying to make it in a foreign place and re-establish a traditional atmosphere. I find (with experience) that the latter is often neglected; thus it is because of the lack of this traditional influence and structure that already apparent friction is further irritated.

It is soon after their arrival that these immigrants lust after identity, which is often mislead; therefore, gangs come to existence. This is the instance where Joe and Robinson pin-point the creation of a new identity: young warriors. Both researchers suggest that martial arts play a key role in many of these gangs, both for self-defense and offense. There is a militaristic theme and the enemy is the system--the government, other Canadians and often, Canadian-born Chinese.

However, I keep the question open: Is it the lack of traditional and conservative structure which breeds gangs and overall gang culture, or can this particular case be viewed as foreign to our overall discussion of where we went wrong…

Hope to hear some insight.