Asian American Gangbanger
The high school Shen attended would be the dream school of most Asian parents for their children. Walnut High School was a suburban, ethnically diverse school of high achievers and SAT scores. Graduates were regularly accepted into the most prestigious universities. However, these conditions did not prevent trouble from breeding within its halls. Chris was now hanging out mostly with Asians for the first time in his life. The change in behavior was evidently caused by hormones as he started noticing how attractive the Asian girls were. “The Asian girls were good looking but you couldn’t get with them unless you were in the [Asian] groups.” According to Shen, girls were attracted to the powerful guys who were part of gangs. Other guys who weren’t in gangs would claim to be hoping to tap into that aura of power. These teenage boys wanted to “get in just to get in” without understanding the implications of being part of a street gang entailed.
Another reason for hanging out with other Asians was for protection. There was the fear that other ethnic minorities would gang up on the helpless. Even fellow Asians would turn on those without any affiliations or supporting “muscle.” The factors that Shen provide as reasons for joining Asian street gangs are echoed by another former gang member from San Francisco during the 1970s. In an Northwest Asian Weekly interview Bill Lee says, “If you’re accepted and you join them, suddenly you have power in the form of muscle. No one can bully you. You have access to money,…cars, girls and virtually anything you want.” 1 Having protection from bullies would be the main reason leading Chris to join Wah Ching.
Shen used to frequent a cybercafe where other Asians would hangout and play the computer game Counter Strike. He was good friends with the girl who worked at the counter but one day her Vietnamese boyfriend, who was several years older, threatened him to stay away from his girlfriend or there would be trouble. Chris ended up doing just that, but he got a job waving a sign outside on the street corner directly across from the cybercafe. Whenever he worked, he was afraid that a group of Vietnamese would come out of nowhere to harass him. During his sophomore year, a bunch of guys pulled up in a car with weapons causing him to flee and quit the job. It was at this point that he tried to seek out the support of a friend in Wah Ching to deal with this problem. The only thing was that they couldn’t help him unless he was part of the gang so he decided to join.
He was introduced to an older man who was one of the local leaders. He was evaluated and told what he must do to join. Getting into the gang involved an initiation where he had to fight three other guys, which meant he was thoroughly beaten up. After that, the same gang members who beat him up would protect each other with their lives. One day a couple of weeks later, he received a phone call from someone crying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” It was the Vietnamese guy from the cybercafe. The same man who had initiated Chris into the gang turned out to be a wildly violent thug. He and several Wah Ching boys had gone to the cybercafe and pulled a gun to the guy’s head forcing him to call Chris and apologize. At the same time they had pulled a knife to the neck of the girlfriend. Chris had no idea that they were going to do this and would never have wanted this to happen, but it was too late and he started to realize what he had become a part of.
Most of the illegal activity was directed by the leadership comprised of adults in their 40s and 50s. The leaders of his Wah Ching chapter were poor immigrants from China who had become very wealthy through organized crime. They drove expensive sports cars and took care of the boys with girls and food whenever they met. The meetings were mostly conducted in Mandarin because of the leadership, though most of the boys were second generation bilingual Chinese. In his book Chinatown Gangs, Ko-lin Chin describes the relationship between youth gangs and adult crime groups.
The factors that allow well-organized adolescent gangs to emerge are functions of adult organizations. That is, adult groups (1) provide gangs with a place to gather, (2) allow gangs to operate within their territory, and thus legitimize the gang’s existence within the community, (3) provide criminal opportunities for gangs…and (4) support gangs with money and guns. 7
It was the adults directing the gangs that allowed Shen’s gang to exist. They reaped most of the profits from the gang’s illegal activities and laundered the money through legitimate enterprises. The youths served as pawns to protect the leadership. When asked how young they start recruiting Shen replied, “They start as early as middle school. They get younger kids to do the dirty work.” The reason being that the minors would insulate the adults and if caught would get lighter sentences.
The gang members also used the societal perception of Asians as the model minority to their advantage by hiding the fact that they were gang members from police and authorities. According to Wong et al, “Asian Americans were indeed regarded as academically superior by all racial groups including themselves.” 8 From the same study Asians are also perceived as “quiet and unassertive.” Most of the gang members used their youthful appearances and the stereotype to project themselves as harmless students, and to blend into the rest of the Asian American community.
The irony in this is that some of these violent boys were also actually the good straight ‘A’ students they portrayed themselves to be. A lot of them just “want to be a part of something,” Shen said. Christopher Kuk, a Chinese American probation officer in the area notes similar findings, “The kids are looking for excitement—and a sense of belonging.” A possible explanation could be that the perception of being the model minority with the pressure to achieve academically is seen as a familial responsibility by parents “so busy sacrificing for their children that they don’t have time to find out what’s happening.” 4 While for the child it may be seen as an individual effort. There is no social outlet to be part of a community for these kids except through the gang subculture, which provides a surrogate extended family. Once in that Asian gang subculture, they exhibit one of the negative behavioral traits found in collectivist cultures. “Collectivists, particularly if they are centered on the family as their major collective, tend towards actions that benefit the family rather than the broad public good. Those in power act mostly to benefit themselves and their ingroup and often disregard the public good.” 9 Thus the community suffers as the gang members try to help themselves.
While most of the violence remained intergang, the fundraising activities were mostly protection, extortion, and home invasions. The victims were usually other Asian small businesses and families in the suburban community. In one case, Chris developed a feud with another gang member who threatened to invade his home. Wah Ching decided a preemptive strike was in order, and when that rival gang member went on vacation with his family, they rented trucks and completely emptied the guy’s house of all possessions. This was so shameful to the victim that he never said anything about it. Binh P. Le, associate librarian at Pennsylvania State University who has compiled a bibliography on Asian Gangs summarizes the phenomenon. He reports that Asian, and new immigrants especially, don’t put their money in banks but instead keep it at home or invest it in jewelry and gold. “Asian gangs also recognize that they are not likely to get prosecuted for their crimes against other Asians because most Asians are unlikely to call or report crimes to the police.” 10 Le cites distrust of authorties by Asians due to memories of corrupt police in Asia as well as the collective shame of the Asian community when there are individual failures within it.
- Winfrey, Y. (2001, March 16). Former gang member warns parents, kids. Northwest Asian Weekly, 20, 4.
- Chin, K. (1996). Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise, & Ethnicity. New York: Oxford UP.
- Wong, P., et al. (1998). Asian Americans as a Model Minority: Self-Perceptions and Perceptions by Other Racial Groups”. In N. Zane & B. Kim (Eds.), Readings in Asian American Psychology(pp. 96-115). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
- Triandis, H., et al. (1988). Individualism and Collectivism: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Self-Ingroup Relationships. In N. Zane & B. Kim (Eds.), Readings in Asian American Psychology (pp. 525-544). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
- Le, B. Asian Gangs: A Bibliography. Community Policing Consortium. Accessed 7 Dec. 2006 at http://www.communitypolicing.org/publications/iag/asian_gangs/
To Live and Die in (or East of) LA by Daniel Yang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.