The gang nightmare: VDare.com just posted a piece by Steve Sailer on the growing Hispanic gang problem. Among many items, he describes how California has been exporting gangs to the rest of country. A few months ago I was talking to a professor who had participated in a study of gangs in Denver. Now, Denver would not be the first city to come to mind as a gang capital. Chicago, yes, but when I think of Denver, hip ski bums come to mind. According to the study, FIFTY PERCENT of adolescent male Hispanics belong to a gang. Folks, gangbanging is becoming NORMATIVE behavior for these kids. Estimates put gang members nationwide at close to 1 million, and more than half of that is Latino. Their latest strategy is to spread their crews to Indian reservations. In the past, gangs were basically limited to big cities, but now they've even made it to the reservation--a place most whites can't find with a map. This is a tidal wave, I'm telling you.
In my own classes, Hispanic students clearly feel some kind of weird identification with these gangs. Many seem to be saying: the life is cool, but I don't want to end up dead or in prison (or dead in prison), as if the only reason not to join is the impracticality of it.
I'm sure people passing through this website think that I have some irrational dislike of Latinos, but my criticisms are intellectual. My personal interactions with Hispanics have been 98% positive, but you begin to wonder about policy when your country goes from 100,000 gang members to one million in 20 years, and most of the growth is driven by immigration and Hispanic communities.
Let me say the words again, if you missed it before: FIFTY PERCENT. I'll use Will Ferrell's words from Talledega Nights: "What does that do? Does that blow your mind? That just happened."
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How long before they are no longer a gang but an army? An asymmetrical, decentralized army that may not even know it is one. Will we even notice the change?
ReplyDeletetvoh,
ReplyDeleteI am sure you read the articles about how these drug gangs (private armies, really) use RPG's and automatic weapons in Mexico to take on the cops and the competition. These guys are no gangbanger clowns. I bet plenty of MS 13 types know how to use this equipment too. The real question is how long before a LAPD cop car is blown to bits by a rocket or grenade or if a rival gang snuffs another with something belt-fed. Think of all the dope that crosses the border, then imagine the same amount of heavy artillery.
Right. If gangs survive and have the talent, they evolve toward an organized crime syndicate, but gangs like the Black Guerrilla Family or the Aryan Brotherhood are examples of gangs that move in a political direction. Now, these are two prison gangs who don't really seem to have the stuff to become a serious social threat, but Mexican prison gangs are known for their organizational abilities, and for their influence on the streets. If they turn militant, they could be dangerous. MS-13 might also be a good candidate because many of them have come from El Salvadoran guerrilla families.
ReplyDeleteWith all the growth in Hispanic gangs, we're likely to end up with more organized crime if we're lucky or more political instability if we're not. It's seems to me that leadership is a key question with gangs. Many are just thugs who don't have the ability to organize much, but the time may come when more capable guys are drawn in by the allure of it, and the possibilities.
Multnomah County has one of the highest rates of heroin deaths in he US. A devout Mormon business associate of mine (his family genealogy includes most of the founders of the LDS) has a daughter who ended up on black tar heroin and was caught with $10,000 in her bank account at age 15. Several years ago I talked to one of the sheriff's deputies about the Mexican gangs who are importing this stuff for the girls like her (and are employing them in various capacities) and he said the base of operation is in nearby Amerindian reservations.
ReplyDeleteWhat is rarely appreciated is that "Amerindians" have genetic gradients that are steeper by geography than any other peoples. When you take "Amerindians" from far off places and mix them up on reservations, you have just destroyed the whole purpose of the reservation system. It is worse for the Amerindian diversity to mix things up this way than it would be for European diversity to allow the European Union to facilitate movement of Sicilian gangs into Finland.