“We Don’t Just Fight Each Other…”: Misconceptions Exposed in Gang Leader for a Day Anna Liebelt College

Humans are innately social creatures who group themselves together to satisfy their hierarchical need of belongingness. Within these groups, individuals find comfort in surrounding themselves with others who share similar beliefs, values, characteristics, and goals in life. This fundamental aspect of human nature ultimately creates an “Us versus Them” mindset, in which the “in” group will view its fellow members as superior to other groups, differentiating themselves by means of ridiculing and making up false analogies about the other group. To individuals, especially adolescents, who live in poverty and less-than-adequate conditions, having that sense of belonging to a gang whose members struggle with similar hardships may be what ultimately gives them hope to continue on. In his novel, Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh uses an ethnographic approach to give a firsthand, inside out analysis on the internal dynamics of the Black Kings gang. By directly submerging himself into the gang as a graduate student, Venkatesh bridges the gap between the media’s portrayal of gang members and individuals who live in poverty on television and how they actually act, and he illuminates the misconceptions that many external people have...