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

6. Violence and Nonviolence

| 119 6 Violence and Nonviolence It takes a lot—it’s a lot harder than they say. If you walk away from a fight nowadays, it’s almost like you’re committing a sin. So it’s really hard to walk away from fights. —Doogan Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. —Gandhi The most powerful challenge another can make is to one’s face—how one sees oneself in relation to community.1 Especially when one’s identity is vulnerable , one may be prone to defend it physically. In an ecology where everyone ’s identity is vulnerable because of the marginalization and alienation discussed in prior chapters, not fighting to defend identity may pose a great risk, as Doogan states above. Indeed, if we feel we have been “deprived of our rightful place in the world,” it is hard for most of us not to consider fighting to regain it.2 Specific skills that are useful for starting a fight involve knowing how to antagonize another person, manipulating him or her emotionally through tangible , believable threats to face.3 These perceived threats create the interactional grounds for the highly charged dynamics of reciprocal humiliation and rage that give rise to fights. Skills for avoiding fighting in such circumstances involve substantial personal discipline in managing one’s emotions and redefining the situation so that it is possible to live with one’s face/identity, even as the moment may have transformed it. The risks are manifold and painfully obvious, threatening the most foundational basis on which one is granted a place in community . For both males and females this basis is respect, and for males such respect is especially entangled with notions of masculinity.4 Questions such as “What are you?” and “What will you be?” always loom on the horizons of a violent confrontation, providing the very stuff of human drama, fascinating to one and all, impossible to turn away from. The alternatives are stark, ranging from being tough, cool, and hard on one hand to being a wimp, pussy, or bitch on the other. Such dynamics seemingly leave little room for middle ground. 120 | Performing Gang Identity on the Streets We might gain a glimpse into the ever contingent, situated dynamics of a fight from my experience one morning at CAA, when a group of students crowded around the window behind the teacher’s desk, and a stack of books was pushed from a shelf to the floor. Suddenly, the two fourteen-year-olds whom I had been tutoring, Oliver and Donald, physically confronted each other. Oliver is Latino and Donald African American. I reached down and picked up the books. Oliver, who was in front of the row of books, politely pushed them together so I had room to replace the stack that had fallen. Suddenly, Oliver and Donald were chest to chest taunting each other, and I was between them. I was confused about what was happening. “Come on,” I said. “What’s goin’ on? I was just working with you guys last week. You guys are friends, let’s not have this,” and by lightly touching their chests I moved them apart. But Donald was resolute and kept coming in, taunting. “Let’s go, let’s go. What, you afraid? Come on, motherfucker, right now!” “Okay, right now,” Oliver said. “No no,” I said. “Come on now.” Oliver looked in turn reluctant, disgusted, and courageous. Donald, on the other hand, was raring to go. He backed up, chest puffed up, arms swinging menacingly, and danced in the space between the teacher’s desk and the rows of students’ desks. “Let’s go, muthafucka. Right here, right now!” Oliver, in what I saw as reluctance but a desire not to lose face, rose half-heartedly to the challenge. “Okay, let’s go!” “Come on, what are you doing, Donald?” I said. I felt as if I should give someone my glasses, for Donald was summoning a sort of energy that seemed bent on destruction and unstoppable. Suddenly Ms. West, the nononsense teacher’s aide, simply put her arms around him from behind and carried him from the room. “Now what the fuck was that all about?” the teacher said, pulling out a discipline slip. “I was trying to put the books back on the shelf,” Oliver said. “And I asked him to move so that I could get the books arranged.” “That is the stupidest reason for a fight...