Gang Leader For A Day
Gang Leader for a Day
Is it right to see something is wrong and not do anything to help? What if your help is defined by identifying the problem? Is that valid “help”? At what point is using others wrong? This is what I left with after reading the book Gang leader for the day.
Here’s the general synopsis. A Grad student of sociology who was studying at the University of Chicago grew tired of the statistical studies that are involved in his course work of Sociology. So he gets involved in a study which requires him to go to the projects across the street and interview member of the projects to find out how they felt about being “poor”….No, please don’t leave….wait for it…He claims that he had no idea about anything regarding poverty or the projects or urban life in general and it was “fascinating” to him. He grew up in southern California where according to him there was not a lot of “ethnicity”. (I’m getting angry just typing these things….) So he meanders across the street and meets a gang leader who holds him hostage over night in a pee stained hallway and lets him go the next morning. He decides that he wants to know more about gang life, so the next day he goes back. He strongly insinuates to the gang leader that he will be writing a study about a gang leader and the leader, TJ, feeling this is his chance to have a biography written about him, allows him into his world under the protection of his gang and into the inner working of project life and gang hierarchy, (under the assumption that he will have a book written about him). This man begins to eat at TJ’s mothers house every night. He hangs out with the hustlers and the prostitutes. He goes to the project barb-q’s and birthday parties. He helps beat up pimps who are abusing the women there, who are sleeping around with assorted people for money (small sums of money, by the way). He finishes his grad work and goes to Boston to pursue a fellowship at Harvard.
So the book had me engaged from the beginning for many reasons – all negative. I don’t believe it is possible that in this country there are people who do not know about urban life. I mean some of the nuances of living in a “project” may be new, but the idea that yes there are people who are really struggling. Yes there is a different sociological order, and yes gang members do dangerous things. From some stand points may help, but really hurt more than they help has to be 1+1. How is it to be “poor” and live in below standard conditions?! I don’t think we need any study to figure that out. But if you REALLY need an “official” study turn on the news…people on the news tell us about it every night. Then I have issue with this “educated grad student”, trying to convince me the WHOLE book he had NO IDEA of the danger and illegalities of the situations he was on-looking, and sometimes participating in. Since when are we not able to figure out that battery and extortion are illegal?! Or maybe the law just changed….who can keep up with all these new laws. But the thing that makes me the most upset about what happened in this book is how he left. He called himself helping. He went in for good reasons according to him. However, after he got what he wanted he left for bigger better things. He lied to those people and abused them. I feel that underprivileged people are already abused enough. He took from them and they were not in a position to give. However they gave to him, some died over it, and they made his career for him with their own PRIVATE personal information that they shared with him. Later when he was in a position to give to them he did not. Instead he distanced himself from them like he didn’t know them. He in my opinion was a user. Even in the book they called him a Hustler. If he were a businessman I would be ok with him hustlin’, but as a Sociologist, a person who is supposedly supposed to help humanity, I am not. So read this book if you want to see project life from a point of a user. However, I recommend getting it from the library because the idea that another 14.95 would go to this “Hustler” is too much for me to bear right now. I’m mad I spent MY money on it!
Ms. Alexandria