Set Trippin’: An Intersectional Examination of Gang Members

Gangs and Identity

Gang initiation is much different than what is portrayed on television, such as members being “jumped in” or girls being “sexed in.” Typically, memberships are granted due to familial association, and initiation consists of being asked to perform a criminal activity (Durán 2013; Jones 2009). Many gang members grew up in “gang families,” so being part of the gang is normalized and routine. According to Vigil (2007), families involved in gangs were one of the major push factors for youth joining a gang, while Durán (2013) argues that friendships were the major pull factors for gang membership. Moore’s (1978) seminal piece illuminated the inner workings of the familial culture of Chicano gang members (p. 99). She argues that Chicano gangs form a kin-like obligatory network of gang members and their families. She writes, “When a younger brother of a barrio friend and gang member shows up to prison he becomes the charge of the older pinto (convict),” in other words, the new prisoner becomes the responsibility of the older prisoner, making sure he is safe, offering advice, introducing him to prison culture, and providing him with small necessities (p. 99). I also found that these duties are highly valued among the gang community. There is an unspoken expectation of loyalty, gang members are to care for one another and help each other in times of need.

Yet, there is much debate on who decides what constitutes as a gang? The word “gang” is synonymous with “crime,” and most of our definitions of gangs come from law enforcement, criminologists, and government agencies. For example, CalGang (2018), the statewide gang database in California, defines gang members as having two or more of the following criteria:

By these definitions, anyone living in a neighborhood with a large gang presence and seen associating with documented gang members would be considered a gang member. In fact, in a 2016 California State Audit Report, Howle (2016) criticizes CalGang and found the database to be noncompliant with policy and full of inaccuracies. The Los Angeles Times published an article in August 2016 stating that the audit “found the names of 42 people whose birth dates indicated they were one year of age or younger at the time they were entered into the database, 28 of which were entered for ‘admitting to being gang members’” (Winton 2016). In addition, the database audit reported that the documented gang members were overwhelming male at 93 percent and disproportionally minority, 64.9 percent Latino, and 20.5 percent Black (Winton 2016). The CalGang database is the further evidence of what Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow,” the war on low-income men of color, and the culmination of agencies organized to mass incarcerate Black and Latino men (Alexander 2012).

Nevertheless, we see much resistance of the label of criminality among gang members. For instance, Mike, a Black gang-member-turned activist, is working with the Southeast San Diego community to “reclaim their stories.” He argues

Being a gang member is not illegal. It’s illegal to commit crime. And I think that people should be proud of where they’re from. That’s why I do identify as a gang member, but Imma be the first gang member to graduate from law school. So I feel like, we’ve been told what a gang member is, but we were never able to define for ourselves, what a gang member is.

Furthermore, for youth living in the segregated ghetto, gang membership was not just normalized and entrenched in the culture, but it was a way for young men and women to make money and receive protection (Del Carmen et al. 2009; Goldman, Giles, and Hogg 2014; Moore 1978; Venkatesh 2008). Goldman et al. (2014) analyze gang identity using social identity theory, and they argue that gangs provide individuals with a sense of belonging.

Because of their vulnerable age, youth are especially susceptible to the allure of what gangs have to offer: a peer group of which they can be a part, a clear personal and social identity, increased autonomy from parents or guardians, a “path to manhood” (albeit violent), and the means by which to improve their social status. (P. 817)

Race and Hypersegregation

The rise in street gangs started in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of the deindustrialization process that closed access to blue-collar employment (Venkatesh and Levitt 2000). Disinvestment in low-income communities coupled with the push for the “war on drugs” and “war on gangs” initiatives, and ramped-up policing along with the dismantling of the welfare state provisions was a larger national agenda for the mass incarceration of Black and brown bodies (Alexander 2012; Venkatesh and Levitt 2000). Young men turned to the underground economy to find ways to survive such as fixing cars, selling drugs, pimping, day laborer positions, and providing protection (Venkatesh 2008). Furthermore, criminalization is embedded within the fabric of everyday life in urban ghettos; the prison becomes an extension of the neighborhood (Wacquant 2000). Rios calls this system the youth control complex (Rios 2011). He posits that young men are constantly policed, harassed, and stigmatized. Rios argues that the criminal justice system works with community institutions within urban ghettos to reproduce the school-to-prison pipeline, arguing that men of color are at the center of Foucault’s (1977) panopticon, constantly being monitored and oppressed. Rios maintains that the poor have not been abandoned by the state, but rather, the state has become embedded in their everyday lives through punitive social control (Rios 2011).

Some sociologists, such as Massey and Denton (1993), argue that racial segregation combined with concentrated poverty create the urban poor and an oppositional culture. Massey and Denton (1993) claim, “By concentrating poverty, segregation simultaneously concentrates male joblessness, teenage motherhood, single parenthood, alcoholism, and drug abuse, thus creating an entirely Black social world in which these oppositional states are normative” (p. 170). In contrast to this framework, Rios (2011) argues that youth trapped in the urban ghetto adopt beliefs and practices of resistance as they strive for their dignity which is in response to punitive social control, cruel treatment, stigmas, and lack of resources.

Moreover, concentrated poverty often coincides with gang activity. As you can see from the map (Figure 1), the southern sections of San Diego are the areas where gang territories are highlighted. The area I am focusing on exhibits all five dimensions of hypersegregation: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering (Massey and Denton 1993). The areas in red are notoriously areas of gangs known to be affiliated with Bloods, the blue are affiliates of Crips, the Black areas are Surenos/Hispanic gangs, and the purple are neutral or Southeast Asians groups that have formed their own gangs. Most of the Blood and Crip gangs are Black, yet some are Southeast Asian. Vigil (1988) argues that “group terminology reflects a sense of emotional attachment,” and the gang can be seen as the primary group for which members’ identities are formed (p. 433). He claims that for gang members, the neighborhood or gang name is a “symbol for the group ideal…members who share a similar background identify with one another under the group label and begin to treat one another as close friends because of the identification” (p. 434). Although minorities living in this area struggled financially, they take pride in representing the “Southeast San Diego” identity. Being from “Southeast,” gave you status, regardless if you are gang affiliated or not.

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Figure 1.

Map of San Diego gang territories.

Gender and Gangs

Although there has been a considerable amount of research on gangs and gang membership (Anderson 2000; Durán 2013; Goffman 2014; Goldman et al. 2014; Moore 1978, 1991; Rios 2011; Venkatesh 2008; Vigil 1988, 2002), few studies account for important intersections of race, class, and gender. Women and girls who grow up in concentrated poverty are enmeshed in gang violence and shape their identities from gang culture. Majority of the studies conducted on gang membership are produced from a criminology perspective (Chesney-Lind and Hagedorn 1999). However, this work is problematic because it pathologizes gang membership. Criminologists perceive gang members first and foremost as criminals who are violent and need saving. Second, they perceive gang members as men, not women.

Wing and Willis (1999) urge scholars to utilize critical race feminism to demarginalize the experiences of Black women in gangs. They argue that critical race feminism, stemming from CRT, puts women at the center of analysis (p. 4). They write:

The Black female gang member is triply burdened by her class, race, and gender…. She comes from a poor family, usually headed by a single female. She feels her choices are limited and she strives to overcome economic and gender repression…. She turns to the gang to protect her from violence and to provide her with family-like relationships. Her father is often absent, and she is deprived of the kind of stable family environment every child needs. Due to all of these and other contributing factors, the needs of females within these communities are not being met. The Black female must turn elsewhere to fulfill them. In the gang she hopes to find love, protection, acceptance, belonging, guidance, and support. (P. 12)

Sociologist Nikki Jones (2010) provides an in-depth analysis of adolescent girls and women in the inner city. She argues that girls in the inner city strategically manage their reputations as “good/pretty girls” or “girl fighters” as a means of survival. Girls develop what Jones coins as situated survival strategies (p. 52). For instance, “good girls” use tactics of staying inside and out of trouble by limiting contacts with people in the neighborhood to family only. The “girl fighters” use their reputation to gain notoriety and freedom. The “good girls” feel like staying out of trouble is the best way for survival while the “girl fighters” feel like fighting offers them freedom to walk about the neighborhood without fear (Jones 2010).

Similarly, the ways in which young men seek meaningful identities reflect where they are situated within the hierarchies of race, class, and gender. Harris (2000) argues that Black men are materially and culturally “emasculated” by white supremacy by being denied the privileges of hegemonic masculinity (p. 783). In response to this, Harris argues that Black men have adopted a rebellious form of manhood that places a high value on respect, dignity, and pride because they are aware of the subordinate class position given to them within Anglo-American culture. In Vigil’s (1988) assessment of street identity among Chicano barrios, he argues,

Toughness is also the gang behavior pattern most accessible for those youths who have had particularly distressing early childhoods…. It is an avenue for personal expression that uplifts the ego, enabling them to appear successful in at least one area…. Acting tough affords them pride, with the assurance of being back by the gang if trouble arises. (P. 427)

Moreover, Towns (2007) suggests that street gangs became a way for young men raised by single mothers to seek masculine fatherly love: “Gang members search for love- specifically fatherly or masculine love, so they can learn how to ‘become a man’—within the gang, kids search for father figures in the criminal underground” (p. 47). Traditional ideas of what a “family” is, a white picket fence and the American Dream, can be a sore reminder to poor urban youth of how they are different. Single-parent homes, lack of income, and lack of educational resources plague the urban ghetto. When home life is in despair, young men and women will seek family outside of the home, creating extended families among their gang community (Towns 2007; Vigil 1988). Additionally, segregated neighborhoods are perceived as carceral power. Shabazz (2015) argues that Chicago’s South Side was founded on mechanisms such as architecture, urban planning, and policing to confine and control neighborhoods, creating a prison-like environment (p. 2). Shabazz claims that in extension, carceral power had a significant impact on the formation of Black masculinity. In his analysis, Shabazz argues that the Black migrants of the early 1900s were forced to live in small one-room apartments known as kitchenettes which became an extension of prison life in the very homes they lived. Like Foucault’s theory on discipline, prisons have the ultimate ability to control and punish (Foucault 1977; Shabazz 2015:5). Shabazz highlights the way carceral power pervades poor Black neighborhoods and informs and shapes one’s identity, especially Black masculinity.

Black Extraordinary Adolescent Trauma

Contingent on the theory of the “routinization of extraordinary death,” Charmaz (1980) argues that death becomes “extraordinary” in circumstances such as combat or state executions. I take this a step further to argue that death in the hypersegregated ghetto is distinct and routinized by capitalistic undertakings to “maintain conditions where personalized violence is institutionalized in lower class members’ interpersonal relationships” (Charmaz 1980:210). In other words, death is pressed upon the psyche of Black men and women in the ghetto at young ages, making these scenes of “extraordinary deaths” routine and a part of the normalized experience. Early forms of extraordinary death can be linked to the lynching of enslaved Africans in antebellum America while current examples of Black extraordinary deaths would be death by police brutality (Grant and Thomas 2018).

Trauma and victimization in gang communities is a frequent occurrence (Hunt and Joe-Laidler 2001; Valdez 2007). All the participants revealed a childhood/adolescent memory that involved traumatic violence including death. Shanice, a 35-year-old Black women, whose father was part of a neighborhood Blood gang, explained why her father was incarcerated for murder. She recalls:

I was about 11. I heard a loud crashing and I see my dad coming into my window and he just looked like a crazed maniac. He was dripping sweat. He had an axe in his hand and my first thought was like, “he’s gonna kill me.” But he came and he went right past. Me my brother had shared a room at the time and my little sister was like a like a baby, baby…. So he went past us, went down the hall and I like got up, but I didn’t go after him. I was like just kind of shocked there for a minute and then I heard my mom screaming and I heard her boyfriend and my dad like tussling and stuff. And I got up and I went down the hall and I saw my mom’s boyfriend and my dad like struggling and fighting…. And my mom tried to stop him too and then I guess she like got in the way and he like chopped her arm. She still has a scar right there [points to arm]. And then all of a sudden, her boyfriend stopped and then he just like was trying to get away and my dad was still like swinging the axe and he [the boyfriend] was like struggling down the hall and he went out the front door and my dad kind of pushed him out as he opened the door and closed it. And then, we were all like scared and wanted to leave and he wouldn’t like let us leave and then I think that’s when it sunk in for him like, “Oh shit, like what am I going to do?” He seemed like desperate, so he kept us in there for a while and then the police that came and then they were like standing outside and saying, “open the door and come out with your hands up,” you know, the standard stuff. I was begging him to let us go and my Mom’s arm was like open, like veins and stuff coming out, and I told him like “mom is cut and we have to get her help” and then that’s when I guess it clicked in his head because I was like screaming at him and he finally let us out. And I’m just I remember like when we opened the door, he [the boyfriend] was like right there, like he didn’t even make it like a step out the door. He was just there on the ground dead. So we had to like step over his body to get out.

Moreover, Shanice did not receive therapy or counseling directly after the incident, and she said that she has noticed that it has been affecting her life as an adult and was planning to seek therapy. When asked why, she retorts, “my mom couldn’t afford therapy, we had to worry about paying the bills.” Experiencing this type of extraordinary trauma as a child has such life-altering effects and shapes the way you operate within society. The stigma surrounding seeking mental health support in the Black community results in an undiagnosed and untreated population, many of which suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Research conducted on gang member victimization report that gang members are “exposed to a combination of direct violence (as a victim) and indirect violence (as a witness) suffer higher incidences of current and lifetime PTSD” (Beresford and Wood 2016). Additional research on gang members victimization “show that 16 percent of incarcerated adolescents have been sexually assaulted, molested or raped, 57 percent have witnessed someone being killed, and 72 percent reported being shot and/or shot at” (Beresford and Wood 2016:149). What makes Shanice’s experiences extraordinary is that while this event is seen by the reader as horrific and traumatic, her community experiences similar traumas routinely. They are taught to repress the trauma and move on with their lives. Unable to grieve and heal due to the lack of access to quality health care, they are in a constant state of survival.

Another respondent, a young Black woman, Amanda, shared her experiences with gang-related violence at a young age. Amanda laments that she was just eight years old when she first experienced gang violence. Now, at the age of 28, she no longer considers herself a gang member but recalled that as a gang member, she was a “fighter” and confirmed that her two older brothers introduced her to the gang culture. During her interview, she explained that her first encounter with gang violence was a drive-by (a catch-all for assailants who shoot a firearm from a vehicle):

It was bad. I think I was like eight years old and we were all outside playing and it was broad daylight and we seen the cars coming but we didn’t know what was going on. So my brothers and they friend, they was just like “RUN!” But you know when you hear run, you’re not going to run your eight! And they snatched me and my other brother up and they like dragged us and they just start shooting and then when they started shooting like, they just laid on top of us and it was really tragic and they told us “Don’t tell Mommy or Daddy!” So I finally told like a few years ago that it actually happened. I never said a word until like a few years ago.

Both Amanda and Shanice experiencing extreme violence at such a young age have remained silent about their experiences. Silence among gang members reaches far beyond the idea of snitching. There is a “code of silence” within the gang community (Anderson 2000). The avoidance of speaking about traumatic events within this community speaks volumes about the lack acknowledgment of mental health services for these victims. Speaking about past traumatic events can evoke painful feelings, and this community has a long history of suffering in silence. The structural multiple marginality experienced by Black women in our society is doubled for women gang members and affiliates. In addition to their triple burden, they are criminalized and further stigmatized in our society and lack the resources to help them cope with the extraordinary trauma they have endured.

Like Shanice and Amanda, many of male participants recalled traumatic experiences as an adolescent. For example, Randy, a 25-year-old, active, Black gang member, told me a story about one of his friends getting shot:

I was born with heroin in my system. I was given the shit end of the stick…. I became an official gang member in the ninth grade, in sophomore year my house got shot up and I ended up dropping out of high school. I remember one day a friend from my neighborhood, he didn’t gang bang or anything, we were going downtown, and I ended up getting into it with some Crips. And I’m telling him like he need to go. And he didn’t want to go. He started trying to fight one of them and they pulled out a gun and shot him. That’s probably the worst memory I remember. I felt bad ‘cuz it was my fault. He didn’t even die but he ended up moving to Arizona after that and getting murdered in Arizona. I was 16.

Like Amanda and Shanice, Randy has experienced extraordinary violence, the shooting and eventual death of a friend. But like many in this community, experiences with extreme violence and trauma is normative. For many gang members, Black extraordinary adolescent trauma becomes a part of a shared collective identity. Psychologists argue that individual trauma can become collective trauma by linking shared histories. “Although trauma is primarily understood as an individual human experience, it often generalizes to symptoms in collective social settings” (Rinker and Lawler 2018:151). Gang members and their affiliates not only witnessed violence, but they also shared these violent incidents with others not just by word of mouth but virtually through videos and social media posts (Patton, Eschmann, and Butler 2013; Patton et al. 2014). As members learn of a tragedy, it is shared among the community. As such, the event becomes a shared collective trauma.

In addition, gang members are bonded by shared trauma which sometimes manifests by acting out through violence. “Learned helplessness and fatalism renders the victim or group vulnerable to hypervigilance of threat and intrusive thoughts. Similar to an individual with PTSD, collectivescycle through depression and anger often acting in before acting out. Eventually, impotent fantasies of revenge and need for justice trigger acts of violence against the oppressor” (Rinker and Lawler 2018:152). Thus, Black extraordinary adolescent trauma becomes a part of their individual and group identity. To cope, some gang members respond to social injustices by rationalizing their anger and use this as a means to justify their use of violence.

Black Girl Gang Membership as Familial

Researchers found that gang membership for girls and women is familial (Archer and Grascia 2006; Esbensen et al. 2010; Sutton 2017), with young women reporting that 71 percent had family members who were involved in gangs (Miller 2002). Among the women gang members or affiliates, all of them accessed their gang ties through male family members while engaging in acts of deviance or experiencing victimization, which again becomes routine and normalized. A former gang member, Jessica 27, reported that her entire family was from gangs and that her mother and older relatives are still actively participating within the gang community. Jessica is Black and Puerto Rican but identifies as Black. She reflects:

Growing up I felt like it was like a norm right? You’re supposed to have like gang members in your family. It’s sort of like a protection for your family. It’s a way to identify where our family is from. I always thought that it was it was a good thing. Like if your family didn’t have gang bangers and it’s kind of like your family was weak. Like, why is there no tough people in your family? And I felt that way for a really long time. Like I feel like when I was in high school was the first time where I thought like, it actually wasn’t like a “cool” thing…. I got bussed out and I seen stuff that I didn’t know existed. Like I seen people like my age with really nice cars and like really nice houses and like their families like went on vacations.

While growing up in a gang-oriented family, Jessica’s identity was shaped to reflect the street culture that was challenged once she went stepped into nongang cultures. During the interview, Jessica reflects about her gang membership and how she felt like she was a gang member because it was a part of her family life:

I did it because my family did it, right? But now it’s like that was a choice that I made. But I’m not making that choice now, like in this present moment. I feel as if when I try to talk to my family…even like Michelle (her cousin), because I see her just how I was like at her age. Every other word is “blood,” this and, “bracken,” that. And I’m just like, “oh my gosh, like you sound so tacky!” And I just say it to her because I wish someone would have told me that when I was her age. But now I feel, like I said before it’s a way to identify yourself and these people they don’t know any other way. We have like these roles, right? Like when you have a child, now you have the role as a mother and when you’re a kid, like that you have that role as a kid, right? Disadvantaged communities where they don’t really have access to a whole lot of knowledge, not even material, just knowledge. They don’t really have options of other roles to conform to, so what they do have is the gang role and it gives you everything that you’re looking for. Like it gives you money, it gives you the sense of like belonging, it gives you family if you don’t have none, or if you do have some it’s expanding your family, and it gives you like, you feel like more superior in your community when you’re from a gang…. I feel like because they just lack so much knowledge, that’s like the role that they want to do.

Like Shanice and Amanda, girls are subjected to violence usually through situations involving family members. For Amanda, she used this violence as a reason to join the gang and become a “girl fighter,” so she would no longer be vulnerable to attacks by others in her school and community. She employs her gang member identity for protection. She boasts,

Like I don’t want you to have that impression, but I want you to know that I’m with the shits and don’t try me because if you tell somebody like your a “gang banger,” they’re not gonna fuck with you because they automatically gonna think like, “oh she crazy.” She knows this person. She can get this done to you. It’s like a shield.

Shanice on the other hand, who is now a college graduate and seeking a career in the film industry, took on the “good girl” persona (Jones 2010). Although Shanice did not identify as a gang member, her gang-affiliated identity taught her to challenge gang membership.

Don’t be a follower, that’s what I learned. Being a part of a gang to be “cool” or to be affiliated with other people, seemed cool when I was younger. But it was really just stupid and a lot of people suppress their true selves and their potential trying to fit into this gang…. I do want to do more. Like when I get to a point where I feel like I can help other people I want to do things like mentorship…. I’m a female so my passion is towards helping females, to go back and help them and show them that there’s a whole world outside of your neighborhood than what you see, not that you have to leave your neighborhood, but you can pursue dreams and passions…teach people about school and ways that they can do it…. I didn’t really get that either, I’m first generation in my family going to college and graduating and I had to learn a lot on my own. So, I feel like there should be more support there and teaching them about school and getting their education.

While some girls and women use their gang member identity to navigate the violence in their neighborhoods, others use it as a means to empower their community. Wing and Willis (1999) argue, when Black women are uplifted, they will in turn uplift their communities. Girls who were initially pushed into gang membership through familial ties are now women with children who see gang membership through a different lens. These women challenge the gang culture and want to empower their communities. The huge difference between Shanice and Jessica’s experiences as opposed to Amanda’s experiences is education. After going to college, Shanice and Jessica were able to exchange their gang member identity and adopt a new one as college-educated Black women.

Gang Membership Identity

The dualism of gang members versus gang bangers portrays the idea that there are two types of roles in gangs for men and women. For instance, the sociological concept of “cultural straddlers” can be applied to gang members because they partake in other roles and identities such as father, husband, employee, or student (Carter 2006). When at school or work while speaking to someone with authority, they may code-switch (Carter 2006). I observed several instances of code-switching while conducting interviews. Some gang members used proper English and carefully chose the words they use to describe situations. For example, during an interview with 23-year-old Ty, an active gang member, he explained that he had moved to Texas when he was 16 and had just moved back. When I asked him what made him move to Texas, he replied, “I went to visit my brother.” When he said this, I thought to myself, “Who visit’s their brother for five years?” Later in the interview, he was telling this story of getting stopped by police in Arizona. He was on a road trip with his girlfriend, and he had marijuana in the car. He stated that the police booked and released him days later, and then, he had to find a way back to San Diego so he could eventually find the means to get to Texas. He stated, “The police in Arizona were dumb because they were never supposed to release me, I had a warrant out for my arrest.” Instinctively I called him out, “So when you were in Texas with your brother, you were on the run?” Looking surprised, he shook his head while looking down and said, “yeah.” In this moment, Ty’s gang member identity was not activated. Some gang bangers might have taken my “calling him out” as disrespectful. Yet, although I was asking him about his gang membership, I was not a threat to him, so there was no need for him to switch to that role.

I argue that the gang banger identity is only activated by gang members when threatened by active gang members. Like DuBois’s (1903) concept of double consciousness, gang members are able to feel like their identity is divided into several parts depending on the situation. When interacting with outsiders, gang members are aware of how they might be perceived and try to minimize their gang membership status to other nongang members or “squares.” While gang bangers, on the other hand, do not typically code-switch, nor do they frequent roles or situations where they might have to code-switch. On average, gang bangers have less contact with nongang members. Most of them have dropped out of school and are not formally employed. Many are also very active in their duties and responsibilities to promote and protect the gang.

For Jessica, she expressed similar ways that she code-switched especially during college when she replaced her gang member identity for a “college-educated” identity. She recalls when one of her professors challenged the way she thought about her gang membership identity:

I had this Professor that taught Black Studies that asked me questions about it (gang membership). Like “What does it represent?” Like, “What does it like do for you?” I just think he wanted to know what it did for me and like it got me thinking…. I think he was just planting seeds in my head, but I started to think like that year and years later like “what, what is it?” and I feel like it was really like nothing. Like just a group of people who they want to like stand for something but because they lack a lot they’re standing for the wrong things…. I didn’t really understand, “Why did my family do that?” Like “Why did my mom want to say that she’s from a gang?” And I felt like this throughout those years.

There is another notion of dualism among gang members regarding how they change their identity when they use certain names. For instance, gang members differentiate between their gang names and their government names. Brandon, a 30-year-old gang member, still somewhat participates with the gang culture but holds a full-time position and has a family. He talks about his dual life and reports that at work, he is strictly “Brandon,” and his coworkers have no knowledge of his other life. He and his wife have two daughters, and his wife is a “square.” Someone’s gang name is only used within certain settings, definitely not in schools or places of business. For Brandon, and others like him, the need to balance both his gang membership and his day-to-day life, requires an intricate balance exemplifying the complexity of gang identity.

Code-switching and the use of different names allow gang members to somewhat seamlessly navigate between gang culture and nongang culture. Typically, gang identity for gang members is situational and only “activated” when in contact with other gang members. Whereas for gang bangers, their gang identity is their primary status. They are “active” in the gang culture and continually perform gang duties and expectations. Finally, the masculinity portrayed by young men in gangs, while exhibiting traits of hypermasculinity or toxic masculinity such as reacting with violence when “activated” or provoked, I argue that when members feel safe and unthreatened, they exhibit healthy masculine traits, even empathic in nature. For men and boys, gang membership offers protection, a sense of belonging and family, access to the underground economy, and loyalty (Hunt and Joe-Laidler 2001; Orozco Flores and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013; Vigil 1988). Nonetheless, this is also coupled with hypermasculinity, violence, and deviance (Erlanger 1979; Orozco Flores and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013; Rios 2011).