Robert Garot - Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identity in School and on the Streets

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Who You Claim

ALTERNATIVE CRIMINOLOGY SERIES
General Editor: Jeff Ferrell

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Workplace Drug Testing and the Rise of the Detox Industry
Ken Tunnell

Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of
Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging
Jeff Ferrell

Prison, Inc.: A Convict Exposes Life inside a Private Prison
by K. C. Carceral, edited by Thomas J. Bernard

The Terrorist Identity: Explaining the Terrorist Threat
Michael P. Arena and Bruce A. Arrigo

Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond
Mark S. Hamm

Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Womens Reproduction in America
Jeanne Flavin

Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New Yorks Urban Underground
Gregory J. Snyder

Crimes of Dissent:
Civil Disobedience, Criminal Justice, and the Politics of Conscience
Jarret S. Lovell

The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle
Michelle Brown

Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identity in School and on the Streets
Robert Garot

Robert Garot

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2010 by New York University
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garot, Robert, 1967
Who you claim : performing gang identity in school and
on the streets / Robert Garot.
p. cm. (Alternative criminology series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 9780814732120 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0814732127 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 9780814732137 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0814732135 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Gang membersUnited States. 2. GangsUnited States.
3. YouthUnited StatesAttitudes. I. Title.
HV6439.U5G384 2010
364.10660973dc22 2009035184

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c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PART II
PERFORMING GANG IDENTITY ON THE STREETS

While whatever fault lies in this manuscript is my own, the possibility to write it, in all its stages, occurred only out of a confluence of others goodwill. First and foremost, I thank the young people at Choices Alternative Academy (CAA [pseudonym]), who shared with me both their lives at the school and their life histories, teaching me more about my society and myself than I could put into words. Second, I thank the administrators, teachers, and staff at CAA and the attached nonprofit for graciously providing me access and responding to my naive questions.

For guiding my development as an ethnographer, I am grateful to Bob Emerson, Linda Shaw, Rachel Fretz, Jack Katz, Mel Pollner, and Harold Garfinkel, and I benefited from contact with others such as Jeffrey Alexander, Rogers Brubaker, Saul Friedlander, David Halle, John Heritage, Bill Roy, Emanuel Schegloff, Ivan Szelenyi, Diego Vigil, and Roger Waldinger. Many fellow students shared the journey, such as Terri Anderson, Rosie Ashamalla, Byron Burkholt, the late Evan Childs, Lori Cronyn, Cynthia Cruz, Derrick Gilbert, Pepper Glass, Yvette Guerra, Alexes Harris, Curtis Jackson-Jacobs, Maggi Kusenbach, Eric Magnusen, Saa Meroe, Fred Pritchard, Jennifer Reynolds, Erik Rivera, Dana Rosenfeld, Lakshmi Shrivnas, Tamara Sniezek, Cynthia Strathman, Linda Van Leuven, Darin Weinberg, and Sal Zerilli. I have been fortunate to find a supportive and nurturing environment at John Jay College that includes Rosemary Barberet, Mucahit Bilici, David Brotherton, Ric Curtis, Gayle Garfield, David Green, Andrew Karmen, David Kennedy, Danny Kessler, Lou Kontos, Kyoo Lee, Anthony Lemelle, Ariel Lubin, Susan Opotow, Valli Raja, Teresa Rockett, Barry Spunt, Douglas Thompkins, Lucia Trimbur, Susan Will, and Jock Young. Also, thanks to supportive colleagues such as Leon Anderson, Peter Becker, Tim Berard, Stacy Burns, Rob Collins, Paul Colomy, Sarah Beth Estes, Brigittine French, Joby Gardner, Doug Harper, Tony Jefferson, Donna Kaufman, Stephen Lyng, Martha Mazzarella, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Valentina Pagliai, Luca Palmas, Rafael Reyes-Ruiz, Annegret Staiger, Deana Wilkinson, and Rhys Williams. At NYU Press, Ilene Kalish, her anonymous reviewers, and Elisabeth Magnus, my assiduous copy editor, have been most helpful. The UCLA Leroi Neimann Center and various funds at John Jay provided support for writing.

My wifes family has been wonderfully helpful, sustaining us during certain periods of writing, and my parents, Jim and Diana, have been there every step of the way. Thanks to Valentina, Elena, and Tristan for the insights and distractions. This project is dedicated to three remarkable people who passed away during the course of this project: my sister, Michelle; my advisor, Mel; and my good friend Mr. Mills.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers for permission to reprint sections of previously published materials: Reconsidering Retaliation: Structural Inhibitions, Emotive Dissonance, and the Acceptance of Ambivalence among Inner-City Young Men, Ethnography 10 (1): 6390; Non-violence in the Inner-City: Decent and Street as Strategic Resources, Journal of African American Studies 10 (4): 94111; Where You From!: Gang Identity as Performance, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36 (1): 5084; (with Jack Katz), Provocative Looks: The Enforcement of Dress Codes and the Embodiment of Dress in an Inner-City Alternative School, Ethnography 4 (3): 41548; and Inner-City Teens and Face-Work: Avoiding Violence and Maintaining Honor, in A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication: Essential Readings, edited by Leila Monaghan and Jane Goodman, 294317 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 2007).

I am often asked how I was able to study gang members. Mostly, I have Emily to thank. When I entered her classroom and the rest of the students ignored me, Emily came and asked for help, easing the painful awkwardness of not belonging. Her long black hair flowed over a lacy, off-white long-sleeved blouse with a little tie around the collarbone. Her voice was sweet, even dainty, and I was flattered that perhaps she was flirting with me as we worked out the questions on her grammar worksheet. As I returned to her alternative school over the next four years, I was relieved that she continued to seek me out for help and send friends to talk with me.