American Gangster: Toward a Specification of White Patriarchy

• In Event: Race, Whiteness and Culture

Abstract

This paper uses research with a Crip street gang to argue that three U.S. institutions (government, slavery, police), all largely headed by white men, operate, or have operated, in similar fashion to street gangs. Many of these institutions’ members are “legal” gangsters, thus allotted privileges that “minority”/“illegal” gangsters are not. The goal of this research is to problematize what a gangster is by illustrating the commonalities between these taken-for-granted institutions and the media-depicted, minority gangster.

Author

• Armond Towns, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill