Skinheads in the Antelope Valley :: essays papers

bootboys in the Antelope valeWilliam Finnegans essay The Unwanted explains the history andmake-up of the Antelope Valley and then explores the lives of someteenage citizens in order to discover reasons that dickens rival gangs havesuch a significant role in the community and on its pile. Absentparents and lack of education are nevertheless two factors facing teens thatultimately led the Los Angeles Suburb into becoming a society whereSkinheads and Boneheads are a norm and seizeed as a part of everydaylife. C. Wright Mills idea of the sociological perspective, looking foregone the facades, is useful when analyzing the micro individual, andmacro broad, causes of teens becoming skinheads. Each day the Statesseems to become more and more diverse. Some people learn to accept thefact that America is made up of many different heathenish concourses, whileothers believe the only ethnic group should be their own. thither arevarious reasons for discrimination and it is a very cont roversialissue. In Finnegans article he describes two gangs with opposingviews concerning racism and how each group expresses their beliefs.The racist and anti-racist beliefs dont always end at the individual.Death is an all also common end and when an opinion becomes lifethreatening a job arises. According to Finnegan, one of the twomajor(ip) gangs that occupy the streets of Lancaster and the AntelopeValley is, a white-supremacist skinhead gang, the Nazi Low Riders(N.L.R.s) and the other is, their rival gang of anti-racistskinheads, the Sharps (1998, p.88). One major quality the two gangsshare is their lack of education. Most, if non all, of the teensFinnegan interviewed, dropped out of school, up to now though later someused other means of getting a high school diploma or acquiring a highereducation. Also it appears both gangs tend to resolve their issueswith violence. Most people would agree that some violence is ineveryone, but it seems that well educate people often find other meansto conquer their problems or go about solving them. Through historyknowledge has prove to be an unavoidable part of life. As children inthe community began displace out of schools in vast numbers these kidswere forced to, willingly or not, gain knowledge elsewhere (1998). Amacro cause for the growth numbers of students dropping out of schooland joining the gangs, could be that the ideas and value of thosegangs quickly spread through the streets and classrooms. This Leadsthe teenagers to make decisions about wether or not they agree with the