Wayne S. Wooden
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Randy Blazak
Portland State University
This piece combines excerpts from Wooden and Blazak’s Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency, Second Edition with updated data and new discussions concerning school violence and recent events. The chapter first defines the concept of youth culture and then presents various sociological and criminological theories that postulate why youth become deviant. The theories presented encompass a wide range of perspectives, from gender-based to postmodern. The chapter then takes a detailed look at specific instances of school violence and attempts to explain and understand why this violence continues to occur.
UNDERSTANDING WHY YOUTH BECOME DEVIANT
SUBURBAN SCHOOL SHOOTERCriminological and Sociological Perspectives
Classic American Delinquency Theories
Classic American Delinquency Theories and Suburban Youth Crime
Question SixBritish Subcultural Theories and American Suburban Subcultures
Question SevenGender-Based Theories and Suburban Delinquency
Question Eight
The Reality of School Gun Violence
Web LinkIncreased Fear in Schools
Question Ten
Web LinkTrying to Understand Suburban School Shootings
Where Have All the Parents Gone?
Is Culture the Cause or the Effect?
Question TwelveSchool Shootings and Terrorism
Critical Thinking Questions
About the Authors
For Further Reading
Notes
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 heightened fear in every corner of America. The notion that Americans were safe from the type of violence seen in every other corner of the world was forever shattered. We became held hostage to the fear of anthrax, hijacked planes and "sleeper cells" of terrorists living next door. For some analysts, the attacks were the result of hysterical reactions to American foreign policy. But to many others, it was more evidence of the general decline in civility in the world. News reporters, struggling to put the strikes in contexts, replayed images of the crumbling World Trade Centers along with the 1999 shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School and the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
As we shall see, there are similar parallels between the terrorist hijackers and the teen shooters at Columbine High. But more importantly both were viewed as barometers of the direction of civility at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Layne Newton, who was a student at Columbine during the shootings said, “On September 11, 2001, memories started flooding back from April 20, 1999. The feelings were all too familiar: the feeling of helplessness, the loss of security, and the stomach-cringing fear. Then came questions. Just as Columbine had me examine what transpired, so did these terrorist attacks. The questions themselves are almost identical. Why did this happen? Who hates us this much? Why do they hate us? What did we do to them to make them want to do this? While the attacks may have unified a nation on one level, when it comes to youth, there is still much that divides us and threatens our security.”
The ominous
signs are everywhere: kids bringing guns onto junior high and high school
campuses and shooting each other; teenagers forming sex posses and racking
up body counts of the number of girls they have “scored with,”
or “sacked;” mall rats rampaging through suburban shopping arcades,
“streaming,” as they call it, through the aisles of department
stores and grabbing stacks of clothing before making a quick getaway;
tagger crews “mapping the heavens,” spray painting their three-letter
monikers on overhead freeway signs. The cry for help of punk rockers and
their off-shoots, ignored by families and society that do not take time
to listen. And these are just the good kids!
And what about the others? Racist teenage skinheads plot revenge on unsuspecting fellow students at suburban high schools for no other reason than that they dislike them because of their skin color, nationality, or presumed sexual orientation. White, youthful, stoner gang members wander aimlessly with their suburban “homies,” or homeboys, looking for the next high, surviving on dope and booze. Juvenile Satanists, participating in a fad, find themselves caught up in a cult.
Not all youths, of course, test the limits of authority or break the law. Most teenagers, in fact, are law-abiding citizens. They do well in school, mind their parents, and come from loving, secure, and attentive families. These youngsters, fortunately, grow up to become responsible and contributing citizens. Not enough good things can be said about these teens.
The focus, however, is on the others - those not-so-good kids. These are the teens who feel isolated and misunderstood, get angry and enraged, take risks, and get into trouble. For some, these behaviors are only a stage, a “kids will be kids” kind of thing. But for others, the choices they make in adolescence not only label them as delinquent but set them on a path embracing a way of life that will put them at risk for their entire lives.
Perhaps by better understanding these troubled kids, we can take steps to rectify the situation, to intervene early in their lives, and to assist in pointing out the errors of their ways. If we fail to accomplish this, then the morass that we as members of society seem now to find ourselves in can only deepen.
Society in the new millennium is held hostage by fear, not from foreign terrorists, but from our own citizens. We read with alarm about a 13-year-old girl getting snatched from the security of her own bedroom in the middle of a slumber party and then killed. We hear about a church youth group in prayer suddenly gunned down by a crazed gunman. But perhaps what shocks and alarms us the most is the increasingly violent turn that our youngsters seem to be taking. It involves more than the senseless and unending drive-by shootings of urban ethnic gang warfare. And it is more than the mounting body count of runaway youths strung out and overdosed on drugs. It is the perception that society is no longer in control of its destiny - that this next generation of youths is not just dazed and confused, not just those renegade kids; rather, they are armed and dangerous as well - the more unsettling suburban outlaws.
The term at-risk youth has traditionally described inner-city adolescents who are on the verge of choosing a life in gangs or the drug trade. The school shootings in places such as West Paducah, Kentucky, and Littleton, Colorado, show us that it is not just urban minority youths who are at risk. The recent explosion of school shootings caught most Americans off guard. Time magazine called the Columbine shooters, “the Monsters Next Door,” leaving many to believe that street kids shooting each other is understandable, but upper-class suburban kids doing the same thing is beyond explanation (1). These suburban youths are also at risk of many of the same social skills. Only after repeated bloodbaths had occurred in non-urban schools did this point enter the general public discourse.
The main reason for embarking on our book Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency (from which this piece is an excerpt) was to try to make some sense out of these alarming trends. Most of the youth we examine in our book are male. Although some girls are active in deviant groups, most delinquent subcultures are overwhelmingly made up of boys. For example, one characteristic that the suburban school shooters of the 1990s had in common was their maleness. The challenge then is to understand the connection between masculinity and extreme deviance and violence. To do this we consider feminist theories and explanations that explore the social construction of gender.
QUESTION ONE: Why is juvenile delinquency so often a male endeavor?
In the
1990s research began revealing what those who had survived the 1980s already
knew: The safe cocoon of middle-class youth was eroding. In late 1993
a poll that questioned 758 children between the ages of 10 and 17, along
with their parents, found a generation living in fear. No longer sharing
an optimistic view of the future or sharing the American Dream that their
parents still believed in, this new generation seemed to be “growing
up fast and frightened” (2).
Many of the juveniles expressed concerns about guns, drugs, poverty, and divorce issues that their parents could not have imagined when they were youngsters. The study also noted that the fears transcended locale, for it was no longer just children of the inner cities that were worried. Rural as well as suburban youths feared “coming of age in a rough world.”
When specifically asked to identify their own and their families' primary concerns, the juveniles responded: violent crime against a family member (56 percent); an adult losing a job (53 percent); inability to afford shelter (47 percent); a family member developing a drug problem (38 percent); and the fear that their family would not stay together (38 percent), among other concerns.
Another national study also reported dire findings. In 1990 the commission formed by the National Association of State Boards of Education and the American Medical Association announced the results of their long-term study, noting with great alarm that the United States was raising a generation of adolescents plagued by pregnancies, illegal drug use, suicide, and violence (3). Although the rates appear to be dropping, the numbers are still shocking. More recent data show that 500,000 teen births occur each year, 42 percent of twelfth graders have used illicit drugs (4), one in ten young people has attempted suicide, and 1.5 million violent crimes against juveniles occur annually (5).
QUESTION TWO: What might account for such a high rate of teenagers attempting suicide (one in ten youth)? How do we address this social problem?
The commission's earlier report concluded that if immediate action was not soon undertaken to reverse these trends, American society would soon find itself with a failing economy and social unrest. Furthermore, according to the report, young people were less healthy and less prepared to take their places in society than their parents had been at their age. The report concluded that inattention to these problems has left thousands of youngsters doomed to failure, which for many will be a precursor to an adult life of crime, unemployment, or welfare dependency.
To remedy some of these concerns, the commission recommended that teenagers be guaranteed access to health services and that communities set up adolescent health centers in schools or other convenient places. Schools were also urged to play a larger role in the health and sex education of these youngsters.
The fearful climate in America's schools after Columbine was reinforced by numerous studies in 2000. Twenty-two percent of middle-school students reported being threatened with a beating (6). About a third of students report having their property damaged while at school (7). Hate-related graffiti was seen by 36% of students at school (8).
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WEB LINK: The Center for the Prevention of School Violence has the latest school violence statistics at http://www.ncsu.edu/cpsv/ |
In Youth Crisis: Growing Up in a High-Risk Society, Nanette J. Davis (1999) points out that adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. Each of the institutions of this transition (the family, education, employment, and so on) is in a state of turmoil, causing youth to be in a state of crisis. Davis contends the condition of youth crisis is precipitated by three factors: 1) the high crisis conditions of both local and global institutions, 2) a society that encourages risk-taking behavior, and 3) a low value on social justice. She points out that the 30 percent of the growth of violent crimes between 1988 and 1992 was due to juveniles who live in an era of declining societal responsiveness to their needs. (9)
What is Youth Culture?
Youth culture is a nebulous term. Do the activities of kindergartners count? What about weekend gatherings of yuppies? Usually, when we discuss youth culture, we are referring to a specific subculture or subset of the larger culture that is transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Sarah Thorton differentiates subculture from the terms community and society. A community is a more permanent population tied to a place, and a society is more a macroabstraction. Subcultures, in contrast, are fairly transient small groups of people united by a common interest (10).
The focus on youth culture as a specific social problem became a primary concern of sociologists, and society in general, in the 1950s. As the baby-boom children were liberated from the requirements of agriculture, the factory, and the military by the postwar economic boom, the children of the new suburbs discovered the freedom of a leisure-oriented society. Without a clear transition to adulthood, rebellion became institutionalized as a way of expressing this normlessness. David Matza (1964) suggested that the most common forms of rebelliousness are delinquency, radicalism, and bohemianism (11).
The second half of the twentieth century saw an explosion of youth subcultures as young people explored this new social role, or lack of role. From beatniks to Yippies to punkers to Goths, young people looked to each other for solidarity and a sense of meaning. Michael Brake argues that these subcultures provide five vital functions for young people: 1) They are problem-solving groups, even if those problems are existential in nature, 2) they provide a cultural experience on a manageable level, 3) they create an alternative reality of unique symbols, 4) they give meaning to leisure time, and 5) they give young people a place to work out personal issues (12).
These youth cultures receive attention from parents, authorities, and the news media and often become diffused into the larger culture. The slang of the hip-hoppers, the sneer of bikers, the tie-dyed shirts of Dead Heads, or the Doc Marten boots of skinheads all become part of the pantheon of mainstream American culture, leading youth to search out new forms of rebellion. Places such as the suburbs of Southern California become the repository of the diffusing sub-cultural styles of the media spotlight.
In several instances the youth cultures that played out in suburbia, such as the punk rocker and heavy metaler scene, were ones that came late to the inland communities. Youths elsewhere in the country (such as Los Angeles and New York City) and abroad (such as London) had long embraced those particular styles. But in other aspects, the youth styles of these Southern California suburban neighborhoods have led the way, ushering in new teen fads - such as rave parties and tagger crews.
Alienated youths in their various guises have long fascinated observers. Concerned parents and family members, peers, school officials, police, social workers, journalists, the mass media, and scholars alike have attempted to understand and work with these troubled youngsters in a concerted effort to reintegrate them into society.
Albert K. Cohen, in his classic study (1955) Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, employed categories differentiating the corner boy, the collegiate boy, and the delinquent boy nearly half a century ago (13). Similar categories are used here to differentiate their counterparts of today. However, today the categories include the mall rats, punkers, and metalers (in place of the corner boy); the preppies and conformists (rather than the collegiate boy); and the taggers, skinheads, stoners, and satanists (as examples of the delinquent boy).
QUESTION THREE: Do these three categories from Cohen’s early study of white Italian youth still seem relevant today in differentiating between types of teenage male identities?
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WEB LINK: This British "Youth Subcultures" site links to interesting cultural studies about youth groups. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/PeterLinks/PLYouth.html |
Why
did teenagers from stable families in an upper-middle class neighborhood
go on a murderous shooting spree in their high school - a rampage that
ended in their own suicide? Why do the kids of liberal parents become
Nazi skinheads? Why does a young person who has everything to gain risk
it all to spray paint his or tag on others' property?
Explanations of youth deviance are as diverse as the deviance itself. Before the Enlightenment, willful children were believed to have “the Devil” in them. The Enlightenment gave us a scientific rationale for studying criminal behavior. Nineteenth-century theorists, such as Cesare Lombroso, based their research on the idea that criminality was the product of certain biological traits. Other early theorists, such as William H. Sheldon, believed that certain body types were predisposed to delinquency. The first juvenile court was founded in 1899 and based on the theory that the cause of delinquency could be isolated and cured.
Contemporary explanations are more likely to look at social causes of delinquency. Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld argue that America's high crime rates are a product of the cultural value that pushes people to succeed “at all costs” (14). Marxist criminologists would describe juvenile delinquency as a reflection of alienation in a capitalist society. Conservative criminologists focus on the breakdown of traditional institutions, such as the family, as a cause of crime.
The biological explanations of the first criminologists have also gained new life. Theorists are now exploring possible links between crime and food allergies, hormonal imbalances, learning disabilities, genetics, and intelligence. All of these theorists are concerned with answering the question, why do some people engage in criminal activities whereas others do not? With research to support a specific theory, they claim a policy can be developed to reduce the causes of crime.
Criminological and Sociological Perspectives
Most explanations of crimes, such as the Columbine High School shootings, are ad hoc. They are generated from the street or the armchair by casual observers of society, who are sure that America's juvenile crime “explosion” is the result of baby boom parenting, video games, rap music, violent movies, lack of spirituality or a potato-chip-based diet. Although the correlations they draw may carry some weight in the popular media, they are not usually supported by research.
Criminologists and sociologists are no different in their armchair theorizing, except for the fact that they research their ideas. A century of study has found relationships between delinquency and issues such as a child's connection to non-delinquent institutions, goal orientation, and supervision. Social researchers try to make connections between micro-level (or individual) and macro-level (or societal) patterns. It might be impossible to explain all the school shooters of the 1990s with a single theory - after all, each case is different. But by studying the situations of each crime and the backgrounds of the criminals, certain patterns may emerge.
Because crime is a form of social deviance, a good criminological theory will help to explain non-criminal deviance as well. One can assume that some of the motivation to be a punker or a satanist also applies to those who become shooters, taggers, or violent skinheads. Most social scientists see crime as a part of a continuum of antisocial behavior, some of which is illegal, and some of which is not.
This section provides an overview of criminological theories that use a sociological perspective as their basis. That means that these theories focus on the impact of environment on the decision to commit crime. Unlike biological theories, such as Lombroso's, or psychological theories (the work of Sigmund Freud, for example), sociological theories find external motivation for crime. These theories make the most sense with regard to our topic.
QUESTION FOUR: What might be some other biological and psychological explanations of the causes (or etiology) of delinquency?
Crime rates are lower in suburban areas than in cities, and this must be due to the influence of environment. Then how do we explain the youth who fall through the cracks and choose deviant lifestyles? The explanations reflect four important schools of thought: 1) classic American delinquency theories, 2) British subcultural theories, 3) theories based on concepts of gender, and 4) postmodern theories about youth culture.
Classic American Delinquency Theories
The attempt to explain suburban youth crime takes us back to the early part of the twentieth century, when social researchers were trying to understand rising rates of urban youth crime. It was a time when the United States was becoming a nation of bustling metropolises. Millions of immigrants, from places such as Ireland and Italy, were settling in these growing cities. The combination of urbanization and immigration also gave birth to another new American tradition: gangs.
In Chicago the work of Frederick Thrasher helped to demonstrate the impact of environment on delinquency (15). Thrasher's theory led to the research of fellow Chicagoans Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay (16). Shaw and McKay found that criminogenic neighborhoods produced high rates of delinquency and were characterized by high levels of displacement, ethnic and economic segregation, and social ills. They lacked healthy community networks to help guide children. Shaw and McKays' findings remain valid today, reflected in the observation of a gang-outreach worker who recently said, “The `hood' is a neighborhood without the neighbor” (17). In these socially disorganized “hoods,” youths are free to roam the streets and follow their youthful impulses.
Thrasher studied 1,300 youth groups and concluded that delinquency is frequently the end result of disorganized neighborhoods. Gangs were formed in what he called interstitial neighborhoods - in other words, communities that lacked social resources. These were places where the “fabric” of society had become torn. Families were poor and weak, and deviant and nondeviant values clashed. The gang, according to Thrasher, gave boys a way to interact for fun and excitement and became an alternative lifestyle that, over time, tended toward criminal behavior.
In 1938 another Chicago researcher, Robert Merton, used Émile Durkheim's notion of anomie to explain delinquency (18). Anomie is the sense of normlessness or rootlessness that is produced by shifting moral values. Where Durkheim used anomie to explain suicide rates, Merton used the concept to understand decisions to commit crime. The source of the normlessness came from the gap between goals and means. The goal orientation of American culture does not mean that everyone has the means to achieve those goals. This is especially true for the lower economic classes.
A poor person may want the same material item that a middle-class person wants but may not have a legitimate means to obtain it (such as a well-paying job, a savings account, or a bank loan). Thus the person becomes frustrated. Merton argued that these people will become “innovators” that is, they will use illegitimate means (crime) to achieve their material goal.
Albert K. Cohen, who was a student of Merton's, demonstrated a connection between anomie and the formation of deviant subcultures (19). According to Cohen, lower-class boys cannot live up to the “middle-class measuring rods” of authority figures and therefore develop “status frustration.” This stressful situation pushes the boys into gangs because there they can achieve a measure of autonomy. What Cohen calls “reaction formation” drives these frustrated gang boys to reject conventional values and become negativistic and hedonistic. The gang is a “problem solver” because it allows the lower-class boy to lash out in anger.
Sociologist Walter Miller helped to explain both lower-class and middle-class subcultural delinquency. Among the poor, low levels of adult supervision and the lure of the streets pull youth into single-sex peer groups. For boys, subcultures emerge that are based around certain values, called “focal concerns” (20). These focal concerns include autonomy, fate, excitement, smartness, toughness, and trouble. For these lower-class boys deviance is actually conformity to these subcultural values. The more a boy is involved with his peer group, the more likely following the focal concerns will lead him into delinquency.
QUESTION FIVE: What would be examples of some of the six focal concerns as identified by Walter Miller in his explanation of why lower class youth have difficulty in embracing (or being accepted by) middle class society?
Conformity also explained middle-class delinquency for Miller. Where the poor and rich are pushed into adulthood fairly early, the middle-class has no clear transition out of childhood. This situation, referred to as “youth,” is filled with conflicting authorities, expectations, and messages. What is the role of a 17-year-old in our society? As a response, youths pull away from the adult culture that denies them access and form their own “youth culture.” The focal concerns of this middle-class youth subculture are based on irresponsibility and hedonism. As with the lower-class kids, the more they conform to the subculture, the more likely they are to be deviant (21). Of course, the different focal concerns will lead to different types of delinquency.
Classic American Delinquency Theories and Suburban Youth Crime
These theories were created to explain traditional concepts of crime, primarily those committed by lower-class urban youth. But each offers insight into the explanation of suburban youth crime. The link lies in the connections between similar issues for both urban and suburban kids.
Thrasher's issue of interstitial youth could also apply to suburban kids who are at odds with society. In many ways the suburbs are also disorganized in that they are similarly segregated without strong social networks. The economic demands placed on working families prevents them from putting down many roots. The value of individualism mandates that families keep to themselves - behind their electric garage doors and in front of their television sets - instead of building strong communities. The result is a suburban “hood” in which kids roam the cul-de-sacs and malls in search of excitement.
Merton's use of anomie may also apply here. Although the suburban youth may have more economic means, goal blockage still exists. As Robert Agnew demonstrated in his “general strain theory,” non-economic goal blockage can be just as stress inducing (22). A teen who does not have legitimate means to achieve popularity, for example, may turn to deviant means and “innovate.” There is also the general state of anomie associated with suburban youth in general, in which the expectations of each generation become less and less defined.
Suburban cliques, such as taggers and “Trench Coat Mafias,” also reflect Cohen's notion of subcultures as problem solvers. It is not just lower-class youth who have difficulty living up to the expectations of the middle class. Those who cannot compete in the academic market may retreat to subcultures and become negativistic. The logic of reaction formation is “if I can't have it,” then I don't want it. The destructive behavior of taggers, skinheads, and school shooters may be the frustrated expression of those who feel they have been denied full access to middle-class status and success.
Perhaps most useful are Miller's subcultural deviance theories. Conformity to male youth groups and the broader youth culture produces specific types of delinquency. If suburban youth are told to act like adults but are not given the privileges of adulthood, then they will retreat into the subcultural world with its delinquency-producing focal concerns. A young person pays adult ticket prices at the movies at age 12 but is denied entry into adult “R-rated” films until age 17. Youths who are permitted to vote at 18 are not allowed to drink alcohol until they are 21. With no rite of passage, the refuge for youths who are frustrated by these mixed messages becomes the subculture. For those who end up in trouble-oriented male groups, such as skinheads, conformity leads to violence. For more typically middle-class coed groups, such as mall rats, conformity includes petty theft and drug use.
QUESTION SIX: Do you agree or disagree with the view that for many American youth, joining a clique, a gang, and/or embracing aspects of the youth culture serves as a “rite of passage?”
British Subcultural Theories
Greatly influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, British theorists in the 1970s and 1980s put American criminological theory in a specific social class framework. The research, primarily from Birmingham University's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, investigated the meaning embedded in youth subcultures. Why do so many different youth subcultures appear and then disappear? Why do some, such as punk rock, exhibit such longevity? How does a young person decide which subculture to join?
In 1979 Dick Hebdige asserted that the subcultural style of young people represent a “signifying practice” (23). Written in the middle of England's punk rock explosion, Hebdige saw punk and other subcultures as communicating a specific value set through fashion, music, and argot or slang. This “language” is a reflection of the power struggles of youth. For example, the surreal style of the original punks, which included bondage clothes, trash bags and occasionally swastikas, communicated the sense of economic hopelessness in postwar England. The skinheads, on the other hand, chose a style that reflected the unity of tough working-class values.
Birmingham sociologist Stuart Hall focused on the creative power of youth subcultures. Subcultures, such as the punks, created a form of resistance to structural contradictions in society by creating their own rituals and culture (24). The “spontaneous” nature of subcultures is actually an attempt to not be subordinated by the dominant culture. This helps to explain the link between the deviant styles of youth and minority subcultures, both of which are expected to assimilate into the dominant culture. Each subculture reflects a specific moment in history and reflects that moment in its own lifestyle. For example, the “hustling” lifestyle of many urban black youths reflects a “wage-less” subculture, which occurs in society that does not provide wages to many urban black youths.
Michael Brake would agree with Hebdige and Hall that “subcultures become meaningful statements about youth's existential position” (25). For Brake, youth subcultures were functional in providing space for people to explore the world outside of the home and work. The rebellious nature of youth subcultures creates for teenagers a safe zone in which to explore their identity. This new reference group allows young people to express the leisure values of culture outside of the watchful eyes of adults. Young people's “separateness” from the adult world is emphasized in their subcultural style. Without the requirements of work and the family, young people are free to experiment with the relationships institutionalized in the dominant culture. Their experimentation can include the manipulation of fashion, music, violence, concepts of property, and sexual relationships.
British Subcultural Theories and American Suburban Subcultures
The applications of the “Birmingham School” theories to American subcultures seem clear. A primary difference in the two societies is the class orientation of England and the “classlessness” of the United States. In the latter nearly everyone identifies as “middle class” in contrast to the strong working-class identification present in England. But if one takes the British theorists' notion of subcultural style as a form of communication, one can see that American youth, although perhaps not “class conscious,” reflect their feelings about class in their subcultures and cliques.
The unique styles of suburban youth are also a form of language, Hebdige would contend. The lifestyle of skinheads may reflect a longing for class status in post-industrial America, a nation in which many hard working people routinely lose their jobs. The style of the taggers mimics sensibilities about urban youth culture. As is the tradition, here suburban youth adopt a culture borrowed from black urban America in recognition of a common bond of alienation. Satanists may be involved in an unspoken dialogue about hegemonic religions and the inherent hypocrisy built into Judeo-Christian institutions.
Suburban youth are also involved in forms of resistance - resistance to power structures as well as to the banality of suburban life. These young people are infinitely creative in their ability to invent styles or discover cultural forms that signify that they have not bowed to authority figures. Whether it is celebrating politically incorrect symbols such as guns, swastikas, or Satan or appropriating the already marginalized styles of ghetto youth, many middle-class youth latch on to anything that will set them apart from suburban conformity. As Hall asserted, this will reflect the larger structural relations of power in the society. It should not be surprising then to see how high school cliques' hierarchy reflects society, with the rich kids and the jocks at the top and poor kids and social outcasts at the bottom.
QUESTION SEVEN: List some of the distinctive youth styles in today’s society. Provide examples from fashion, music, the media and other forms of contemporary popular culture.
Ultimately these subcultures are functional. As we mentioned with regard to Miller's theory, middle-class kids experience even more normlessness, which pushes them into subcultures. As Brake argues, these suburban subcultures give young people a forum in which to work out their identity, manage status issues, and experience leisure. The primary activity of these groups thus is not “getting into trouble,” but exploring the existential problems they share by just hanging out.
Gender-Based Theories
The feminist
movement of the 1970s gave us a new way of looking at juvenile delinquency.
The overwhelming maleness of crime had previously been attributed to physical
and hormonal differences and even differences in intelligence. But the
rising rates of female criminality forced mainstream social scientists
to explore the environmental factors that contribute to the gendered nature
of crime. Feminist theorists, by attempting to explain female delinquency,
have also helped us to explain male delinquency.
A starting point is Freda Adler's 1975 book, Sisters in Crime (26). Adler argues that the increase in female arrests has to do with the changing roles of women in society. The traditional gender roles that had guided behavior in the past kept women away from opportunities to commit crime. Their lives in the home as daughters and mothers kept their focus on domestic matters. As women became more active in the workforce and in the men's world in general and as the restraints of gender roles loosened, women's opportunity for crime increased.
The new assertiveness helped to explain female involvement in gangs, robbery, and white-collar crime. Moreover, it gives us clues into male criminality as well. The assertiveness of masculinity has always been paired with the opportunity for crime. Boys' freedom from the constraints of the domestic realm gives them the chance to become exposed to criminal opportunities. If Adler's position (known as liberal feminist theory) is correct, one can expect male and female crime rates to become more similar as women gain equal access into the male world.
Of course, male criminality still outweighs female criminality. Ninety-six percent of those sent to prison are male (27). Radical feminists look deeper for an explanation of female criminality. According to their research, female crime is characteristically different from male crime. For example, female murderers generally kill people who have abused them for long periods of time, whereas men kill for a number of different reasons. Radical feminists point to the role of abuse in sparking female delinquency and deviance. Federle and Chesney-Lind found high rates of sexual abuse and neglect among female offenders as well as a double standard about the criminality of female sexuality (28).
A similar feminist perspective is that of James Messerschmidt. His book, Masculinities and Crime, outlined the way in which patriarchy constructs a version of masculinity that not only exploits women (pushing some into crime) but also makes crime more natural for men (29). American masculinity is built upon values of autonomy and financial provision. When the legitimate means to masculinity (such as a solid job) are taken away, men resort to crime as a way of “doing gender.”
For Messerschmidt, this explains the difference in delinquency rates among poor minority boys and suburban white boys. The suburban boys surrender their masculinity during the school day and may seek to reclaim it after school through minor forms of delinquency. They are aware that, ultimately, the school will give them the where withal to ensure their financial autonomy in adulthood. The poor minority boys face a much wider array of emasculating forces. Not only do schoolteachers restrict autonomy, but the non-school world offers little promise of economic power or social freedom. The authoritarian powers of a racist and classist society rob poor minority boys of legitimate means to assert their masculinity, so they resort to more serious forms of delinquency.
Gender-Based Theories and Suburban Delinquency
Like urban crime, suburban crime is overwhelmingly male. Some types of suburban delinquency are more male than others (such as skinheads), and some are less (such as mall rats). The feminist theories give one an insight into the dynamics of gender in suburban youth crime.
From the liberal feminist perspective, the dominance of male youth crime in the suburbs has been a product of opportunity. Young women were kept at home in a domestic apprenticeship with their mothers, whereas boys were allowed to “sow their oats.” Research has shown that middle-class girls are supervised more than their male counterparts. Their curfews are earlier, and they are expected to be escorted by a male when away from home. Traditionally this has limited girls' opportunity for delinquency, but as gender roles change and parent supervision decreases in the face of working mothers and absent fathers, female delinquency increases.
From the radical feminist theorist perspective, patriarchy is as prevalent in the suburbs as in the cities, and so is the experience of sexual abuse. A 1993 study conducted by Wellesley College found that 90 percent of adolescent girls have been sexually harassed in school (30). Opportunities for abused females in the suburbs to commit crime may be structurally different from those in urban settings, but the root cause is the same.
For boys, Messerschmidt's theory posits various emasculating forces coercing boys to “do gender” through crime. This includes not only the standard authoritarian structure of high school but also declining job prospects, households, feminist groups, gay and lesbian groups, and anti-violence movements. Without legitimate means to perform traditional masculine behaviors, boys turn to crime to satisfy that need.
QUESTION EIGHT: What does “doing gender” mean? How does this term help to explain some of youth’s propensity to engage in delinquency?
Postmodern Theories
In the 1980s and 1990s the field of cultural studies emerged as an interdisciplinary way of viewing culture. Postmodernists broke down the artificial barriers between sociology, psychology, women's studies, history, and other academic areas. The goal of postmodern theorists was to move away from looking at social phenomena through one lens, whether that was Marxist, feminist, conservative, or liberal. Modernists' dreams of human emancipation gave way to postmodern realizations that many social explanations can be true simultaneously; they just depend on the viewer's perspective.
Part of this multiple reading of texts by postmodernists is the realization of the social construction of reality. In a media-saturated environment reality becomes what Baudrillard called “hyper-reality” (31). The representations of culture become representations as loops of media images recycle and the definitions of things become contested. What is rebellion, for example? Is it an honest desire by youth to separate from adult culture? Or is it a pose contrived by manufacturers to sell leather jackets and CDs?
One of the premiere postmodern texts on American youth culture was Donna Gaines's 1992 book, Teenage Wasteland (32). Gaines used ethnographic research to uncover the meaning of a heavy metal subculture in Bergenfield, New Jersey. By looking at “rebellion” through the eyes and words of young people themselves, she found a group who resisted the mind-numbing boredom and economic hopelessness of suburbia that ultimately, for some of her subjects, ended in suicide. Her “border-crossing” technique took researchers out of the comfortable theoretical realm and plunged them into the youths' own stark social construction.
The work of Lawrence Grossberg, especially his 1992 book, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, advocates for youth and their culture (33). Grossberg argues that young people are constantly at odds with institutions of authority over control of their domain. He makes the case that rock music, the historical anthem of youth, is constantly coopted by everything from advertisers selling sneakers to he Republican Party. Similarly, the very concept of “youth” is disputed. Aging baby boomers claim the mantel of youth at one end of the age spectrum, whereas “cool” images of rock and rebellion are marketed to young children through products such as Mutant Ninja Turtles at the other end of that same spectrum (34). Young people's struggle is one to maintain the vitality of their own space.
Tricia Rose places the rebellion of hip-hop in the context of postindustrial America (35). What seems to be, on one level, an art form based on dancing, sexuality, and resistance to racism is actually much more complex. Rap music expresses coded messages about life in jobless America - messages that are designed to confuse mainstream America. For example, Rose argues that the loud booming car stereos of rap fans is a form of aural graffiti that contests the hegemony of white America.
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WEB LINK: POSTMODERN THEORIES OF CRIME by Bruce Arrigo
and T.R. Young is a useful overview of postmodern theories of delinquency. http://www.tryoung.com/archives/pomo-crm.htm |
Postmodern Theories and Suburban Deviance
One of the key themes of theorists such as Gaines, Grossberg, and Rose (as well as other cultural studies researchers, such as Deena Weinstein, Joseph A. Kotarba, and George Lipsitz) is the use of music to understand the meanings within youth subcultures. The application of ethnographic research methods that allow youths to construct their own meanings adds a new insight into the study. The experience of young people in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is intrinsically different from that of previous generations. It is even difficult to apply one's own youth experiences to contemporary youth culture. The attempt to decode music is key to understanding that difference.
Gaines's work has focused on suburban youth for the past decade and has reinforced the postmodern position that specific events in young people's lives - such as suicides and homicides - can be interpreted in a number of different ways by different subjects. Her method of creating multiple voices within a singular subculture can be key to understanding the wide range of behaviors within one social group. Not all renegade kids and suburban outlaws are alike and may even be dealing with competing interpretations of their own.
The danger of making youth culture monolithic is also an insight offered by Grossberg. Youth culture and its definition are inherently political. Where does one draw the borders of suburbia? When does a boy in a clique become a youth in a subculture? The contest over control of youth cultural images will be even more intense because of high levels of commercialism.
Everything distinctively youth ends up for sale at the mall or in a Gap fashion fad.
Finally, Rose's research on hip-hop culture informs ideas about white suburban culture. She writes about the natural affinity of white youth to aspects of black culture, such as rap music. But more important is her approach that looks for multiple levels of meaning in the cultural choices young people make. Why would a twenty-first century teenager subscribe to a music form such as punk, which is twenty-five years old?
The postmodernists ask us to deconstruct the meaning of cultural forms. Something as seemingly insipid as disco or the Spice Girls can hold deep meaning for young people who cling to it as a reflection of their world (36).
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WEB LINK: Crimetheory.com is a great site for the discussion of theories of deviance and classroom exercises. http://www.crimetheory.com/ |
“Classmate, 13, Held in Shootings of Oklahoma Students”
At least four students at a rural Oklahoma middle school were shot Monday
by a 13-year-old male classmate, who was taken into custody, police said.
A fifth student suffered minor injuries described as bruises.
Police, who said they recovered a 9 mm handgun, knew of no motive for
the shootings in Fort Gibson, a town of about 3,500 about 50 miles southeast
of Tulsa. The alleged gunman, who has not been identified by authorities,
faces a detention hearing Monday afternoon.
Superintendent Steve Wilmoth said students were gathered outside before
the 8 a.m. start of classes at Fort Gibson Middle School when the subject,
a seventh grader,” just walked up and opened fire on them.”
Wilmoth said the boy began firing shortly after getting out of a car that
dropped him off at the school. “It's my understanding he fired all
the rounds” in a 9 mm handgun, said Lt. Tim Brown of the Muskogee
County Sheriff's Department (37).
“Boys Hoped to Top Littleton Death Toll, Prosecutor Says”
Four teenagers (in Port Huron, Michigan) plotted to buy and steal weapons
for a massacre at their middle school that would top the death toll at
Columbine High School, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
“This was to be a Colorado-style shooting and bombing.... The goal
was to kill more people than in Columbine,” said St. Clair County
Assistant Prosecutor Michael Wendling, referring to last month's Littleton
school shootings in which two gunman killed 13 people, then themselves.
The boys also planned to rape girls at Holland Woods Middle School, Wendling
said at the arraignment for the two suspects, both 13 years old. He would
not elaborate on the charges outside of court (38).
QUESTION NINE: Do you think the recent school violence is just a momentary occurrence or are such incidents likely to continue in the near future? Have the conditions, which might explain such violence, been satisfactorily addressed at the community as well as societal level?
The Reality of School Gun Violence
It was ironic that April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine school shootings, was also the day the Departments of Justice and Education released their joint report on school safety that showed a significant decline in school violence (39). Furthermore, the December 6, 1999, school shooting in Ft. Gibson, Oklahoma, happened on the day that the two departments (with MTV) released a CD-ROM called Fight for Your Rights: Take a Stand against Violence, aimed at helping youth to develop conflict-resolution skills (40).
Despite federal attempts to demonstrate the successes in reducing youth gun violence, 1999 was a year in which Americans were transfixed on bloodshed in suburban middle and high schools.
In the late 1990s places such as Littleton, Colorado; West Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas, became evidence of the downward spiral of youth violence. With less mass media coverage, schools in nonurban areas such as Conyers, Georgia; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma; Moses Lake, Washington; and Blackville, South Carolina, experienced school gun violence, adding to public fear about school safety. Schoolyard fights were now becoming mass murders. Instead of bringing home homework, students were bringing home bullet wounds. The spate of school shootings was proof that something was horribly wrong with America's youth.
With each dramatic event, complete with commentary from traumatized “good teens,” society struggled to understand the motivation of the gunmen, who were really gunboys. Some were not yet even teenagers. Eleven-year-old Andrew Golden and his 13-year-old friend, Mitchell Johnson, killed four girls and one female teacher, wounding eleven others in Jonesboro on March 12, 1998. Someone or something must be to blame. The list of causes was expansive: absent parents, video games, Satanism, weak gun laws, bullies, the Internet, heavy metal music, antidepressants, and the always persuasive argument, “culture.”
In reality, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, violent crime rates have been steadily declining since 1992. Over 95 percent of children are never involved in a violent crime, according to the joint report by the Departments of Justice and Education (41). Titled the (1998) Annual Report on School Safety, this report - released on the day of the Columbine shootings -gave some balance to the sensationalist coverage in the press.
According to the report, the news was generally good. Gun violence in schools was following the national crime trend and declining. There was no increased risk of gun-death for America's students. In fact, the percentage of high school seniors reporting intentional injuries with a weapon had not changed significantly for twenty years. The previous year the Department of Justice had stated that a child's chance of dying in school violence was less than one in a million and that for every one child killed in a school, 200 were killed in incidents of domestic abuse (42).
The 1998 report was even more encouraging, noting that:
- The overall school crime rate between 1993 and 1996 declined from about 164 school-related crimes for every 1000 students, aged 12-18, to about 128 such crimes in 1996. Crime victimization of students outside of school also declined.
- Most school crime is theft, not violent crime.
- Fewer than 1 percent of the 7,357 school children (aged 5-19) who were murdered in the 1993 and 1994 school years were killed at school. Of the 4,366 kids who committed suicide those years, only 13 killed themselves at school.
- Violent deaths in schools decreased in 1997 and 1998.
- The most likely victims of school violence tended to be upper-grade students or male teachers in larger urban schools (43).
Although the general trend is in the opposite direction of popular perceptions, the more rare multiple victim homicides have increased. There were two in the 1992-1993 school year and six in 1997-1998. An average of thirteen young people are killed every day in gun violence in the United States. On the morning of April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed one teacher, twelve students, and then themselves. They topped the daily average of dead in forty-six minutes. Their actions obscure the 43 percent of schools that the report said had no crime at all in the previous school year.
The report also revealed a decline in the number of high school students who brought weapons (guns, knives, clubs, and other weapons) to school from 1993 to 1997 - from 8 percent to 6 percent. But for guns, the rate was relatively constant. About 3 percent of high school seniors reported bringing a gun to school in the four weeks previous to taking the annual survey. Even with increased sanctions (6,093 students were expelled from school in 1996-1997 for gun possession), 8 percent of students of the 4,291,666 high school seniors in the United States are 343,333 kids with deadly weapons.
The findings of the Report on School Safety were mirrored in other reports. The 2000 Annual Report on School Safety found a steady decline of students who reported carrying guns to school in the last half of the 1990s, down to 12% in 2000 (44). A report released in December 1999 by the Oregon Health Division found that one in eight teenagers carried weapons and estimated that 19,000 students (8 percent of the high school population) had brought a gun to school (45).
The Oregon Report, based on a survey created by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, found some useful data:
- Boys were more than five times as likely to carry a gun to school than girls.
- Students without adult guidance were three times more likely to sneak a gun into school compared to youths who had at least two adults to discuss their problems with.
- Students who engaged in risky behavior, such as smoking and binge drinking, were more likely to bring guns to school.
- Students involved in at least eight fights in the previous year were five times more likely to carry weapons and fifty-eight times more likely to bring a gun to school (46).
Although half of the homes in Oregon contain firearms, school gun-toters fit a specific profile. They tend to be males in routinely violent situations, without parental supervision, who are involved in high levels of risk-taking behavior.
A similar report on guns in Los Angeles schools in 1996 helped to explain the motivations of gun carrying. One in seven Los Angeles high school students reported having carried a gun, and 49 percent said they could easily obtain one. Their reasons were not to inflict bloodshed on campus but rather to protect themselves off campus. Only 14 percent said the weapons were intended to protect themselves on campus, but 39 percent reported the fear of gang-related violence in the neighborhood, and 30 percent claimed the gun gave them protection on the way to and from school (47).
Schoolyard fights are now taken off campus. One student in Los Angeles said, “Students sometimes bring weapons to school to prepare for off-campus battle. You can't run to your house and pick up a gun after school” (48).
The slight decrease in guns in school is not so comforting when one considers that 5 percent of all twelfth-graders reported that they had been injured by a student with a weapon at school. There were 255,000 cases of serious but nonfatal violent school crimes, victimizing 12- to 18-year-olds, in 1996. There are 81,300 public schools in the United States, and 10 percent reported at least one serious violent crime to the police during the 1996-1997 academic year. The fact that teenagers are still more at risk at home does not negate the fact that schools are supposed to be “safe zones” (49).
Nevertheless, the relatively low numbers carry more meaning in the face of gun violence in the United States in general. Between 1985 and 1995 teen homicide increased 153 percent (50). A child is wounded by gunfire every 23 minutes in the United States, and one is killed every 100 minutes (51). There are an estimated 192 million guns in this country (52). Sometimes we must wonder why so few guns make it into our schools.
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WEB LINK: The US. Department of Education's latest statistics on school violence can be found at http://www.ed.gov/stats.html |
Increased Fear in Schools
The decline in school violence does not mean that our youth feel safe and are thinking more about gum than guns. From the 1993 shooting in Grayson, Kentucky (with two dead), to the 1999 Columbine massacre (with fifteen dead and twenty-four wounded) - and into the twenty-first century - random gun violence has helped to increase levels of fear among American school kids. The threat of copy-cat crimes reminded students, teachers, and administrators that a lot of potential Harrises and Klebolds are waiting in the wings.
Soon after the Columbine shootings, for instance:
- A 15-year-old Sacramento, California boy was arrested for making a bomb threat to his high school (53).
- In Wimbery, Texas, five 14-year-old boys were charged with plotting to blow up their junior high school.
- A 15-year-old in Keystone Heights, Florida, was found with pipe bombs and napalm in his bedroom.
- In Houma, Louisiana, a 17-year-old was arrested for felony “ terrorizing” after donning a black trench coat and telling his classmates he had a gun (54).
- In the week following the murders in Colorado, hundreds of schools were closed from Hawaii to Maine because of threats by students. Two bombs were detonated, and three more shootings occurred (55).
On the six-month anniversary of the shooting, in October 1999, a Columbine senior threatened to “finish the job” started by Klebold and Harris. Hundreds of kids stayed home from school until the matter was resolved (56). The copy-cats just added to the fear that school gun violence was no longer an urban problem and that any student could be a victim of anyone at anytime.
A 1993 Louis Harris survey found that 35 percent of kids aged 6 to 12 years feared their lives would be cut short by gun violence (57). That teens are carrying guns to school as a result of fear just adds to the danger. The Report on School Safety found evidence of that increased fear.
Whereas in 1989, 6 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds reported that they feared being harmed or attacked at school, by 1995 that number had increased to 9 percent. In fact, 9 percent of America's school children indicated they avoided one or more places at school out of concern for their own safety (58).
After Columbine, Time /CNN surveyed 409 teenagers, aged 13 to 17, about their fears that something similar could happen at their school. A third of the students reported that something similar to the Littleton shootings was somewhat or very likely to happen at their school. Sixty-one percent believed Columbine gave ideas to troubled kids in their school to do something similar. Perhaps most frightening was the 21 percent of respondents who claimed to know someone their age who had talked of committing a similarly violent act at school. Most did not report this fact to adults. Most of the teens felt that the availability of guns was the most obvious cause of the violence. On a more optimistic note, teenagers in the 1999 poll tended to feel that fewer parents were neglecting their kids and things were generally going well for teens, compared to teens surveyed on the same question in 1993 (59).
The threat of violence negatively affects the social climate of schools. In 1993 the American Teacher survey found that a third of teachers reported that both teachers and students were less eager to go to school. Teachers reported being afraid of disciplining problem students, which added to the negative climate. A fourth of students felt that the threat of violence lessened their educational experience and made them want to change schools or not pay attention in class. Evidence exists that this may affect struggling students even more (60). By 2000, the picture had not changed much. Twenty-seven percent of teachers reported that bad student behavior prevents them from doing their job (61) and 40% of students said that teen behavior interferes with their performance (62). Both teachers and students are at a loss for how to respond to this.
Despite their relative rarity, the school murders were big news. The media portrayed the perpetrators as good (white) boys with no real histories of violence, adding to the paranoia that the next shooter could be anyone. “Goths,” kids in trench-coats, and that boy who did not get a date to the prom might unleash their bad day in a hail of bullets. Shooters such as Luke Woodham, Kip Kinkel, and Seth Trickey had friends, but that did not stop them. Violence could happen anywhere at anytime, at a pep rally, before classes, or during a prayer meeting. Today's class clown could be tomorrow's mass murderer.
Fueled by sensationalist tabloid news accounts, today's media-weened teens are reminded of the shootings every time they walk through a metal detector or see vaguely threatening graffiti on a bathroom wall. Harris and Klebold, photographed on their murderous prowl, were back on the cover of the December 20, 1999, issue of Time and in the headlines when the five home videos they made before their shooting spree were released to the press. Some families of the victims expressed anger with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department for releasing the videos, which caused students, teachers, and family members to relive the trauma (63).
QUESTION TEN: Even before the recent terrorist attacks, many young people expressed a sense of fear? What should we as a society be doing to help alleviate these feelings?
How can students focus on the increasingly competitive demands of education when they are worried about random explosions of gunfire or pipe bombs? What do students learn about their rights to privacy as every backpack is searched in hopes of preventing another Columbine? Again, despite the carnage and sad loss of life because of these events, figures indicate that schools are becoming safer places for our children and that most of that fear is misplaced.
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WEB LINK: Medical experts offer research and advice for parents and students on how to deal with school violence. http://www.kidshealth.org (search for "school violence") |
The Blame Game
Americans
and their media wasted no time in trying to make sense of the seemingly
out-of-left-field trend of school shootings. The covers of the May 3,
1999, issues of Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report
asked, “Why?” Inside, potential scapegoats were delivered to
the eager public: goth kids, films such as Natural Born Killers, The
Basketball Diaries, and The Matrix, the Internet, rockers such
as Marilyn Manson and KMFDM, and video games such as Doom and Duke 'Nukem.
Then the blame widened to encompass permissive baby-boom parents, the
NRA-supported gun culture, and generational alienation. All the claims
were made with little academic substantiation or validity, however.
Commenting on the efficiency of teen killer Michael Carneal in West Paducah, Kentucky, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, saw the hand of violent video games at work. Based on his research while a military scientist in the army, Grossman made the media rounds discussing contemporary video games as “murder simulators” (64).
In the weeks following Columbine, reports rolled in of goth kids in their black clothes being beaten up by jocks because they feared the goths were members of the alleged “Trench Coat Mafia.” Sociologist Randy Blazak did numerous media interviews, explaining that the Trench Coat Mafia was a local clique, not a worldwide Satanic conspiracy, and that “goth” was an overwhelmingly nonviolent, non-Fascist subculture (not to mention the fact that neither Harris nor Klebold claimed to be goths [or even looked like goths] and/or fans of Marilyn Manson [who canceled his Denver concert that month out of respect for the victims]).
Moral Panics
The widespread overreporting of the alleged Trench Coat Mafia followed the pattern of a sociological phenomenon called “moral panic.” British researcher Stanley Cohen discussed the public response to youth violence in his 1972 book, Moral Panics and Folk Devils (65).
Cohen researched the defining aspect of the riots between rival gangs of mods and rockers on the English coast in the early 1960s. Although the riots were relatively small and harmless, their deviance was amplified by the press when they portrayed the seaside towns as orgies of youth violence. The media designated the relatively unknown mods and rockers as folk devils - a convenient source of multiple social problems. This led to an orchestrated moral panic about the threat of deviant youth. Of this, Brake wrote, “This indiscriminate prosecution, local overreaction and media stereotyping suggested a `cabalism', that is, the solidifying of amorphous groups of teenagers into some sort of conspiratorial collectivity, which had no concrete existence” (66).
QUESTION ELEVEN: It might be argued that the school shootings and recent terrorist attacks have created “moral panics?” What are moral panics? Are they justified in light of current events or do they just add to the problem?
The United States has had its share of moral panics over the decades: degenerate rock 'n' roll hoodlums (1950s), subversive hippies (1960s), drug-crazed punk rockers (1970s), hyperviolent, urban gangstas (1980s), and bomb-making militia men (1990s). The attempt to peg Columbine on goths or some type of conspiratorial “mafia” is another attempt to scapegoat. Reports about deviant youth groups are rich material for rating-grabbing, news magazine programs. But they do not address the more structural issues of alienation and disenfranchisement, which are harder to explain in a two-minute TV segment. Ultimately, the creation of folk devils, such as the marginal kids at Columbine or Thurston High, only further alienates and stereotypes those who feel they have no control over their own lives.
Race and Moral Panics
There is a racial component to the school shootings as well. Not that the Columbine shooters were Nazis, for there is no substantial evidence of that. Based on their videotapes, they appeared to be as anti-white as they were anti-minority. The racial element is in the reaction. According to the Annual Report on School Safety, serious violent crimes against students peaked in 1993, which was also the peak year of students carrying weapons to school. The report also reveals that the risk of gun violence has traditionally existed in urban minority schools (67).
The moral panic over school shootings in the late 1990s arose because the shooters were white. The May 3, 1999, issue of Time featured the smiling faces of Klebold and Harris with the caption, “The Monsters Next Door.” The coded message was that, although we expect this type of wanton violence from urban minorities, we certainly do not expect this type of behavior from nice suburban white boys. The hundreds of shootings at inner-city schools barely penetrated the news-magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, let alone made it to the cover.
That the whiteness of the suburban school shooters sold magazines is not unusual. Craig Reinarman mapped out the way in which the social construction of drug scares was linked to race. The moral panics of specific drugs were linked to fears of certain “dangerous classes” infecting mainstream society. Drug prohibition was created as a way to control minority groups. In an earlier time, the prohibition of alcohol curtailed the influx of the Irish immigrants. Marijuana, cocaine, and opium prohibition criminalized the behavior of Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asians, respectively (68). Similarly, LSD was not outlawed until it fell into the hands of radical hippie baby boomers.
The history of drug scares shows us that problems gain validity as significant social ills only when they affect whites (particularly middle-, upper-middle, and upper-class whites). Marijuana was not criminalized until 1937, when the media portrayed whites as picking up the habit from Mexican-Americans (69). Similarly, school gun violence did not reach “crisis levels” until white kids were pulling the trigger (even though gun violence in schools was actually declining). A clever reporter for National Public Radio interviewed black students in Harlem, New York, the day after the Columbine shootings. All the youths were confused about how the perpetrators evaded metal detectors, heavily monitored surveillance cameras, and police to get the guns into the school.
Trying to Understand Suburban School Shootings
The
tendency to generate pop answers should not prevent one from looking for
deeper answers to violent trends. Are suburban school shootings just a
media-generated trend, kicked off by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Mississippi,
in 1997, which will disappear once the media latch onto a new moral panic?
Is it an institutional failure, the product of large class sizes and overworked
yuppie parents? Is it a spiritual crisis in our nation? Is this the result
of endless hours of media violence?
Again, the reality is not so pessimistic. The juvenile crime rate has been dropping steadily since 1994 (even though the actual number of juveniles is increasing). The rates of teen pregnancy and drug use are on the decline, and the 1990s even saw an increase in juvenile volunteerism and church-going behavior. The outlook for youth is generally good, and their optimism in popular polls reflects that. But the few that fall through the cracks defy conventional explanation. As their peers smash through economic, racial, and gender barriers to reach new heights, these other youths' fall from grace seems that much more dramatic.
Three issues have been neglected in the explanation of school violence: 1) biosocial causes of violence, or psychopathic youth; 2) the role of masculinity in violent crime; and 3) the crisis of parenting in the United States.
Psychopathic Youth
It is interesting that the proclaimed “father of criminology,” Cesare Lombroso, has become popular again among criminologists after decades of dismissal. Lombroso's simplistic experiments a hundred years ago tried to link physical anomalies to criminal predispositions. Although most contemporary researchers agree that there is overwhelming evidence that people are not “born criminal,” they will acknowledge that the biological causes of violence are worth addressing.
In crimes that defy sociological explanation - where race, class, gender, education, abuse, and other social factors are not causal - biological explanations become increasingly helpful. Links have now been established between fetal brain alcohol syndrome, brain-stem damage, food allergies, learning disabilities, and nutritional deficiencies and violent behavior (70).
In retrospect, most of the school shooters were clearly disturbed. Luke Woodham claimed he was under the spell of demons while he killed his mother and two classmates and wounded seven others. Kip Kinkel's parents lived in mortal fear of him and his obsession with violence and weapons. Kinkel and Woodham both tortured animals. Klebold and Harris stunned even hardened reporters with their premassacre videos. In one such video Klebold says, “I hope we kill 250 of you,” and that “it” will be, “the most nerve-racking 15 minutes of my life, after the bombs are set and we're waiting to charge through the school. Seconds will be like hours. I can't wait” (71).
Spurred by the shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1998, child clinical psychologist Jonathan Kellerman wrote the book, Savage Spawn. After studying the Jonesboro and Springfield cases, Kellerman concluded that the school shooters were psychopathic. His findings make even more sense in Littleton. The repeated description of both school shooters and urban gang leaders is that they are cold. Psychopaths are not crazy. As evidenced in Harris and Klebold's sick videos, they knew exactly what they were doing and what the ramifications were. Harris expressed acknowledgement of the effect their plan would have on his parents. “They're going to (be) put through hell once we do this.... There's nothing you guys could've done to prevent this” (72).
From Kellerman's research, psychopaths simply love violence and will often resort to it out of boredom. “What turns them on is the kick, the high, the slaking of impulse – pure sensation-power, dominance, subjugation of the rest of us. The fun of crime” (73). Psychopathic tendencies begin appearing at a young age, as early as 3. Violence and cruelty become character traits by 61/2 years. Kip Kinkel had been cruel to animals. Eric Harris was obsessed with violent games.
The answer to the nature-nurture debate, according to Kellerman, is “both.” To place a psychopathic youth into a society that has easy access to guns is asking for tragedy. In several of the shootings, including Jonesboro, Springfield, and Fort Gibson, the boys received the murder weapons from their fathers. Kellerman's solution is to limit access of youth to guns and protect society by removing dangerous psychopaths who are unlikely to be “cured.” High-risk kids must be given highly structured, loving environments and be schooled in morality (74).
Other researchers have also looked at biological explanations. James Garbarino, author of Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, has pointed out that research shows that brain development is connected to early parent involvement. Others have shown that abuse or abandonment can create brain chemistries that end in impulsive behavior and a lack of empathy (75). Antisocial personalities may have genetic roots but more likely stem from constant exposure to pain, violence, and exclusion.
It is important to point out that Harris, Klebold, Carneal, Kinkel, and perhaps other shooters were highly suicidal. They wanted to transfer their psychic pain to others on their way out. Gang researcher Lewis Yablonsky compared the school shooters to youths in psychiatric hospitals. “Youths with suicidal tendencies by definition have limited concern for their own lives and consequently care less about the lives of others” (76).
The Masculinity Connection
The one constant in all the suburban school shootings is that the attackers were all male. Like crime in general, homicide is an overwhelmingly male activity. Ninety percent of those arrested for murder are boys or men (77).
The “Book of the Month” on the Oprah Winfrey Show in April 1999, the month of the shootings in Littleton, was Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myth of Boyhood, by William Pollack. The timing could not have been more significant. Not until the 1990s did social scientists begin to research the connection between masculinity and crime.
Pollack's thesis is that male violence is a result of masculine repression of emotions. From birth males are more emotionally expressive than females, but by age 5 or 6, they begin to squelch that tendency. Pollack offers two reasons. First, shame is used to toughen boys up. Second, the early emotional separation of boys from their mothers stunts their emotional development. For boys, violence becomes their expression of emotion (78).
Violence becomes the result of a boy's being pushed into adulthood too early and without sufficient emotional support. Violence is often seen as proof of manhood for boys, according to Pollack. That violent crime is the second leading killer of young men, after accidents, reflects that masculinity connection. Both reflect risk-taking behavior, where “boys will be boys.”
Pollack explains Michael Carneal's shooting spree in West Paducah that left three dead and five wounded in this light. Carneal was a shy 14-year-old with no violent history, who was often teased. Pollack writes, “I believe that among other things it is shame that makes a boy like this snap. When enough shame collects inside him - when he feels disconnected, unpopular, less than `masculine,' maybe even hated - the boy tries to master his feelings and reconnect with others through violence” (79).
Earlier in the 1990s, criminologist James Messerschmidt explored crime as a way of “doing gender” for boys. As discussed earlier, Messerschmidt linked the maleness of crime to the masculine value structure (80). School shooters Wodham, Carneal Kinkel, Harris, and Klebold all had histories as victims of bullies. In one of their videotapes, Harris lamented being a military kid, always having to move and start over at the bottom of the social ladder. “People constantly make fun of my face, my hair, my shirts,” he said (81). This experience, on top of normal surrendering of autonomy that high school boys face, led to the inevitable counterswing. The boys tapped into the dominant image of masculinity present in popular Arnold Schwartzeneger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis - gun violence. Using Messerschmidt's theory, the dramatic killing sprees were the result of repeated experiences of emasculation that created a situation in which the boys needed to “do gender” to reclaim their manhood. Harvard psychologist James Gilligan concluded, “Nothing stimulates violence as [much as] the experience of being shamed or humiliated” (82).
Neither Pollack nor Messerschmidt sees the forces that would undermine patriarchal power as the root of the problem. It is, instead, the construction of masculinity that prevents emotional expression and promotes violent expression. In a culture in which the nonviolent boy is called a “wimp,” a “fag,” or a “sissy,” the need for boys to become men often offers easy paths to hegemonic masculinity. Michael Carneal and a classmate had been named in the school paper “Rumor Has It” column as “having feelings for each other” (83). Only football stars and violent rebels can hope to survive the adolescent gender-magnifying glass. But with generations of John Wayne role models, “kicking ass,” wins autonomy and the veneer of manliness.
Where Have All the Parents Gone?
The issue of uninvolved parents came to the forefront after Columbine. With the boys’ obsessions with violent video games, threatening web sites, and their garage bomb factory, how could have the parents of Harris and Klebold not known? The statement issued by Dylan Klebold's parents claimed, “We will never understand why this tragedy happened or what we might have done to prevent it.... We never saw hatred in Dylan until the last moments of his life when we watched in helpless horror with the rest of the world” (84).
It is very possible that they never really saw their son. Besides the inclination of teens to be secretive, parents are working longer hours to afford their children a comfortable existence in a consumer-oriented, status-driven culture. The average work week is now sixty hours. Nine-to-five has become eight-to-six with work brought home. The increase in two-income households takes more of the child-management out of the home. Sociologist Barbara Schneider has recently found that the average teenager spends 3.5 hours alone every single day (85).
It is well established that the lack of supervision is directly correlated to delinquency. Juvenile crime is highest between 3 and 6 p.m., that is, after school and before parents get home from work. Effective parental supervision can reduce delinquency. Lisa Broidy found that kids who believe their parents care little about their activities and friends are more likely to engage in crime than those who feel they are being tightly watched (86). Recent research has demonstrated the importance of close parental bonds.
David May's work found three key factors in predicting the likelihood of a child carrying a gun to school. Following from social control theory, kids who were less bonded to their parents and came from single-parent homes were more likely to carry guns. Second, unsupervised youths who spent time with gang members and older kids were also at greater risk. Finally, kids who feared criminal victimization, primarily from disorderly neighborhoods, carried guns (87). Interestingly, May's research also found that the greater the household income, the more likely the students were to bring guns to school.
Patricia Jenkinks's work also used social control theory to explain three levels of school delinquency: crime, misconduct, and nonattendance. High levels of family involvement were related to low delinquency. School involvement was a weak predictor of delinquency, but commitment to school was a strong predictor. The most important factor in this commitment was the education of the mother and the student's math ability (88). Again, students with consistent loving bonds to parents did not act out in school.
We already know the bad news about the children of single parents. They face greater risks of criminality and early violent death (89). Community crime rates and school disruption rates increase when single-parent families move into neighborhoods (90) . Some of the problems in single-parent households may be due to the lack of consistent male role models. But much of it is a simple matter of supervision. Two sets of eyes are better than one. The problem is now that even in two-parent families, increasing workloads and adult activities remove parents from the lives of their teens. Their adolescents become “unbonded” and free to engage in dangerous activities such as bomb making.
Is Culture the Cause or the Effect?
Shortly after the Springfield, Oregon shooting in 1998, a local mayor tried to ban violent video games in his town. It was largely a symbolic act that would probably have only added to the frustration of the town's teenagers. Few things have been studied more than the impact of media violence on criminality, and nothing close to a strong link has ever been established (91). Convincing results were produced in a laboratory setting or were only short-term. Everyone knows it is true, yet no one can prove it.
Yet millions of kids saw the 1999 movie The Matrix (which allegedly had something to do with the Littleton shootings) and did not shoot anyone. Media violence is another form of moral panic, and each generation has an art form to blame. In the 1950s it was comic books, Elvis Presley, and rock `n' roll. In the 1960s it was the Beatles. The 1970s gave us the threat from kung-fu movies, and in the 1980s it was slasher flicks and heavy metal. Finally, in the 1990s it was gangsta rap, Quentin Tarantino movies, and video games. As parents and preachers scrambled to find some electronic demon, they did not stop to look at themselves.
It has been argued by postmodern sociologists, such as Donna Gaines and Tricia Rose (discussed earlier), that cultural forms, such as rap and heavy metal, are more of a reflection of real experiences lived by consumers. Venise Berry writes of rap, “There is an obvious struggle going on in these kids' lives that links them to the conflict-oriented nature of cultural rap. The violent urban environment, a prominent theme in rap music, is also a prominent reality” (92). Similarly, teens flock to violent movies, such as The Matrix, because they live in a violent society and need to process it safely.
Of course, media violence is not just a coping mechanism for young people. It has become its own source of socialization. As the influence of working parents and overburdened teachers fades, the media become the cultural parents. Children are being pacified by The Jerry Springer Show, teens are finding Doom II under the Christmas tree, and toddlers are being dragged to R-rated movies by parents who do not want to pay for a babysitter. The average child sees 8,000 media murders by the time he or she leaves elementary school. Can there be a cumulative effect of all this media-weening? The escalation has scholars worried. Sissela Bok of Harvard and author of the 1998 book Mayhem said, “We have introduced forms and amounts of media violence beyond anything achieved in other countries” (93).
No, there is no evidence of a direct link between media violence and real violence. Japan has a higher percentage of violent video game players and violent cartoon watchers and a lower violent crime rate. Japan also has a more intact family system. The problem in the United States is the mixed messages kids receive about violence and the absent parents who do not straighten out the messages for them. The day after the Columbine shooting, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appeared on the nightly news deploring the act and stating that using violence to solve problems is unacceptable. The next story was about U.S. military forces dropping bombs on Serbians - using violence to solve problems. The air force even sent F-16s over the funerals of the Columbine victims in case the message was missed: Sometimes violence is OK.
The wave of school shootings was done by boys who were either extreme psychopaths or responding to serious emasculation by bullies and others. They fell through the cracks because no one heard them even though they tried desperately to be heard. The thousands of kids who bring guns to school every day carry those guns mainly to protect themselves from the kids who fall through the cracks. Despite the fact that schools are getting safer, those kids know it takes just one disgruntled teenager to put their school on the violence map.
The kids who get picked on now also have a weapon: fear. Goths, punks, geeks, drama clubbers, bandies, and the math club all have a tool against the popular cliques in the threat of gun violence. A fan site for Kip Kinkel went up on the Internet soon after the Springfield shootings. Other students claimed to be members of the Trench Coat Mafia, a term they had never heard of before Columbine. Some, like a 14-year-old in Alberta, Canada, got their fathers' guns and killed their tormentors. Others just put up pictures of Klebold and Harris in their lockers. All over the United States, alienated teens empathized with the shooters (94). It was the ultimate revenge of the nerds.
If “culture” is how we explain random school shootings, then we should be more specific. Easy access to hand guns is part of our culture. Popular kids who bully unpopular kids is a part of our culture. The inability to identify and treat disturbed youth who are addicted to violence is also part of our culture. A definition of masculinity that includes “might makes right” is part of our culture as well. Finally, a consumer ethic that drives parents to work longer and supervise their children less is part of our culture. Cultural problems require cultural solutions.
QUESTION TWELVE: In this section, we raise the question, “Is culture the cause or the effect?” What do you think?
School Shootings and Terrorism
The media's linking of Columbine and the September 11 attacks may have had to do more with escalated levels of fear but there are interesting similarities among the perpetrators. In the video diary left behind by Klebold and Harris, they stated that they had hoped to kill 500 people at Columbine then hijack a plane and crash it into New York City (95). Their suicide mission was to create as much destruction as possible. The goal of terrorists is to elevate levels of anxiety and destabalize "normal" life. The school shooters from Springfield, Oregon to Santee, California have managed to do just that. The civil liberties of students are now balanced against measures to increase their safety.
The discussion here about motivations for school shootings could also be applied to the 9/11 terrorists. Those who research the psychology of terrorists point out how terrorists often see themselves as a righteous David standing up to a corrupt bully Goliath (96). Cases have been made that terrorism is the product of a "psychopathological mind" and that it is a "rational" response to structural imbalances (97).
Within the peaceful Islamic world there are those who can blame their state of chaos in the Middle East on the bullying of the Christian world, from eleventh century Crusades to twenty-first century sanctions against Iraq. Much like the harassed child, their identity is wounded. John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said, "Many Arabs and Muslims feel they had ten centuries of great cultural achievement that ended with European colonialism. Now they feel impotent" (98). Historian Bernard Lewis, author of the 1993 book, Islam and the West, has studied the rise and fall of the once powerful Muslim Empire and the tendency to blame outside forces. His post-September 11 analysis incorporated the role of gender. “Another approach (to the fall of the Islamic Empire) is to view the main culprit as the relegation of women to an inferior position in Muslim society, which deprives half the Islamic world of the talents and energies of half its people and entrusts the other half’s crucial early years of upbringing to illiterate and downtrodden mothers” (99).
In nations like Afghanistan where the life expectancy is only 44, and 75% of the population is under 25 years of age (100) there are many fatherless boys who are looking to reclaim their masculinity. However, for a few, the glory of death in a holy war is reward enough. Like the socio-pathic boys who, unsupervised, turn to gun violence to reclaim their masculinity, the terrorists lash out at the culture that has emasculated them.
The similarities in school gun violence and terrorism can be found in other forms of violence, from hate crimes to gang activity. Looking for those whose self-worth has been undermined and have no proper outlet for their rage is the first step in preventing the type of terror they can unleash.
Critical Thinking Questions
About the Authors:
Wayne S. Wooden (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Criminal Justice and Corrections Program at California State Polytechnic Institute, Pomona. Praised for the excellence of his published books on criminal justice and sociological topics, his work in the area of juvenile delinquency has been featured in such publications as Psychology Today and The New York Times. He is the author of Return to Paradise and co-author of Men Behind Bars, Children and Arson, and Rodeo in America.
Randy Blazak (Ph.D., Emory University) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Portland State University where he heads the Hate Crimes Research Network. His published research includes such areas as youth involvement in hate groups and other forms of delinquency. He appears regularly in the national media discussing youth issues.
For Further Reading:
If you enjoyed reading this chapter and would like to learn more about youth culture, be sure to pick up a copy of the authors’ best selling book, Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency, Second Edition. Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN#0-534-52754-X.
The Table of Contents from the book is listed below:
1 Introduction to the Problem
2 Understanding Why Youth Become Deviant
II RENEGADE KIDS
3 Mall Rats and Life in the Mall
4 Kicking Back at “Raging High”
5 Punks and Anarchy: Changes in the Youth Scene
6 Gutter-Punks and the Lure of the Street
II SUBURBAN OUTLAWS
7 Suburban School Shooters
8 Tagger Crews and Members of the Posse
9 Skinheads: Teenagers and Hate Crimes
10 Stoner Gangs and Satanic Youths
III SOCIETAL RESPONSES AND TRENDS
11 Reactions to Youthful Offenders
12 Generation Why?: Crisis at the Millennium
Final Thoughts
Appendix A: Methodology
Appendix B: Tables
NOTES
1. “The Monsters Next Door,” cover story, Time (3 May 1999).
2. Michele Ingrassia, “Growing Up Fast and Frightened,” Newsweek (22 November 1993), p.52.
3. “Study of Youths' Problems Finds a Generation at Risk,’ The Los Angeles Times (9 June 1990), p. A-3.
4. Nanette Davis, Youth Crisis: Growing Up in the High-Risk Society (New York: Greenwood, 1999).
5. Larry Siegel and Joseph Senna, Juvenile Delinquency: Theory Practice, and Law. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000).
6. The National Study of School Environment and Problem Behavior: The National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools, Gottfredson Associates, Inc. 2000.
7. Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2000, U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
8. 2000 Annual Report on School Safety, U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
9. Davis.
10. Sarah Thorton, “General Introduction,” in The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thorton (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.1-7.
11. David Matza, Delinquency and Drift (New York: Wiley, 1964).
12. Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture (New York: Routledge, 1985).
13. Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York: Free Press, 1955).
14. Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld, Crime and the American Dream (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994).
15. Frederick Thrasher, The Gang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1927).
16. Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay, Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).
17. Halim Rassan, “Youth Gang Outreach,” public address, 1997.
18. Robert Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” American Sociological Review 3 (1938), pp.672-82.
19. Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York: Free Press, 1955).
20. Walter Miller, “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,” Journal of Social Issues 14 (1958), pp.5-19.
21. William Kvaraceus and Walter Miller, “Norm-Violating Behavior in Middle-Class Culture,” in editor, Middle-Class Juvenile Delinquency, ed. Edmund W. Vaz (New York: Harper and Row, 1959).
22. Robert Agnew, “Foundations of General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency,” Criminology 30 (1992), pp.47-87.
23. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979).
24. Stuart Hall, “Culture and the State,” in The State and Popular Culture (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1972).
25. Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture (New York: Routledge, 1985).
26. Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (New York: McGraw Hill, 1975).
27. June Stephenson, Men Are Not Cost-Effective (New York: Harper Collins, 1996).
28. Katherine Hunt Federle and Meda Chesney-Lind, “Special Issues of Juvenile Justice: Gender, Race and Ethnicity,” in Juvenile Justice and Public Policy, ed. Ira Schwarz (New York: Lexington Books, 1992).
29. James W. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime (Lantham, Md.: Rowan and Littlefield, 1993).
30. Center for Research on Women, Secrets in Public: Sexual Harassment in Our Schools (Wellesley College, 1993).
31. Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Foreign Agent Press, 1983).
32. Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead-end Kids (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).
33. Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992).
34. Ibid.
35. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (New York:
Routledge, 1994).
36. Randy Blazak, “Po-Mo Pop: Puff Daddy and the Spice Girls Explain Postmodernism to America” (paper presented at the 1998 annual meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, and 17 April 1998).
37. “Classmate, 13, Held in Shootings of Oklahoma Students,” CNN Online (6 December 1999),
www.cnn.com.
38. “Boys Hoped to Top Littleton Death Toll, Prosecutor Says,” Associated Press (19 May 1999).
39. Department of Justice, Department of Education, 1998 Annual Report on School Safety, 1999.
40. Department of Justice, Department of Education, MTV, Fight For Your Rights: Take A Stand against Violence (CD-ROM), 1999.
41. Barbara Dority, “The Columbine Tragedy, Countering the Hysteria,” The Humanist 59:4 (July 1999), p.7.
42. 1998 DOJ report.
43. Ibid.
44. 2000 Annual Report on School Safety, U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
45. Janie Har, “Survey: 1 in 8 Teen-Agers Totes Weapons,” The Oregonian (8 December 1999), pp. D1-11.
46. Ibid.
47. Lewis Yablonsky, Juvenile Delinquency into the 21st Century (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000).
48. “Guns in Los Angeles Schools: A Report.” Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Unified Schools, 1996.
49. Phillip Kaufman, Xianglei Chen, Susan P. Choy, Kathryn A. Chandler, Christopher D. Chapman, Michal A. Rand, and Cheryl Ringel, Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1998, Department of Education and Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, D.C., 1998).
50. J. Cloud, “Of Arms and the Boy,” Time (6 July 1998), pp.58-62.
51.The State of America's Children Yearbook, 1998, Children's Defense Fund (Washington, D.C., 1998).
52. C. Archambault, “Young Killers,” U. S. News and World Report (1 June 1997), pp.18-21.
53. M.S. Enkoji and Ralph Monta–o, “Student Arrested in Threat,” Sacramento Bee (1 May 1999), p. B-1.
54. Paul Hoversten, “Copycat Behavior Emerges: Kids Mimicking Acts of Violence,” USA Today (27 April 1999), p.4-A.
55.T. Trent Gegax and Matt Bai, “Looking for Answers,” Newsweek (10 May 1999), pp.31-34.
56. Andrew Goldstein, “The Victims: Never Again,” Time (20 December 1999), p.53.
57. Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., “A Survey of Experiences, Perceptions and Apprehensions about Guns among Young People in America” (New York: L.H. Research, Inc., 1993).
58. 1998 Annual Report on School Safety.
59. “Time/CNN Teen Poll,” Time (10 May 1999), p. 30.
60. Delbert S. Elliot, Beatrix Hamburg, and Kirk R. Williams, “Violence in American Schools: An Overview,” in Violence in American Schools, ed. Delbert S. Elliot, Beatrix Hamburg, and Kirk R. Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.8.
61. The National Study of School Environment and Problem Behavior: The National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools, Gottfredson Associates, Inc. 2000.
62. State of Our Nation's Youth, The Horatio Alger Association for Distinguished Americans, 2000.
63. Michael Janofsky, “Rage Fills Videos Made by Columbine Shooters,” The Oregonian (14 December 1999), p. A-2.
64. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing (Boston, MA.: Little, Brown and Co., 1995).
65. Stanley Cohen, Moral Panics and Folk Devils (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972).
66. Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture (London: Routledge, 1985).
67. 1998 Annual Report on School Safety, 1999.
68. Craig Reinarman, “The Social Construction of Drug Scares,” in Constructions of Deviance, ed. Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler (Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth, 1999).
69. Ibid.
70. Larry Siegel, Criminology (Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth, 2000).
71. Nancy Gibbs and Timothy Roche, “The Columbine Tapes,” Time (20 December 1999), pp.40-51.
72. Ibid.
73. Jonathan Kellerman, Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (New York: Random House, 1999), p.20.
74. Ibid., p.52.
75. Sharon Begley, “Why the Young Kill,” Newsweek (3 May 1999), pp.32-35.
76. Lewis Yablonsky, Juvenile Delinquency into the 21st Century (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth: 2000), p.147.
77. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports 1998, 1999, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C.
78. William Pollack, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myth of Boyhood (New York: Random House, 1998), p.11.
79. Ibid., p.356.
80. James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory (Lantham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993).
81. Pollack, p.346.
82. Nancy Gibbs and Timothy Roche.
83. B. Dority, p.4.
84. Lisa Belkin, “Parents Blaming Parents,” New York Times Magazine (31 October 1999), p.67.
85. Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert, “How Well Do You Know Your Kid?” Newsweek (10 May 1999), pp.36-40.
86. Lisa Broidy, “Direct Supervision and Delinquency: Assessing the Adequacy of Structural Proxies,” Journal of Criminal Justice 23 (1995), pp.541-54.
87. David C. May, “Scared Kids, Unattached Kids and Peer Pressure: Why Do Students Carry Firearms to School?” Youth and Society 31:1 (1999), pp.100-27.
88. Patricia H. Jenkins, “School Delinquency and the Social Bond,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34:3 (1997) pp.331-47.
89. R. Kelly Ralley, “ A Shortage of Marriageable Men? A Note on the Role of Cohabitation in Black-White Differences in Marriage Rates,” American Sociological Review 61 (1996), pp.973-83.
90. Daryl Hellman and Susan Beaton, “The Pattern of Violence in Urban Schools: The Influence of School and Community,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 23 (1986), pp.102-27.
91. Kellerman, p.72.
92. Venise Berry, “Redeeming the Rap Music Experience” in Adolescents and Their Music, ed. Jonathan S. Epstein (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), pp.176-77.
93. John Cloud, “What Can the Schools Do?” Time (3 May 1999), p.39.
94. Mark Fritz, “Alienated Teens Empathize with High School Gunmen,” New York Times (28 April 1999), p. A-1.
95. "Diary: Teens had hoped to kill 500", CNN.com, April 26, 1999. http://www.cnn.com/US/9904/26/school.shooting.02/index.html
96. Sederberg, Peter C. 1998. "Explaining Terrorism," in Violence and Terrorism, edited by B.
Schechterman and M. Slann. Guilford, CT: Dushkin.
97. Barkan, Steven E. and Lynne L. Snowden. 2001. Collective Violence. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
98. "Roots of Rage," Time (1 Oct. 2001), pp. 44-46.
99. Lewis, Bernard, “What Went Wrong?” The Atlantic Monthly (January 2002), pp. 43-45.
100. New York Times Almanac. 2000. New York: Penguin.