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.In addition to changes in local punk scenes, skinhead gangs were also forming inresponse to changes involving the larger socio-political environment.Since the mid-1960s, increasing  non-white immigration had been significantly altering U.S.de-mographics.Initially the skinhead response to these changes bore great resemblanceto the kinds of conflict that ethnic/racial migration spurred in New York and otherlarge urban centers only a few decades earlier.Race was only implicitly important,in much the way that it was to the punks.The majority of (but not all) punks andskinheads were white youth, and although pockets of explicitly racist sentimentsexisted among punks and the early skinheads, racist political activism was not a pri-mary emphasis before the late 1980s.The Organizational Characteristics of Skinhead GangsMost skinheads become involved between the ages of twelve and nineteen, arepredominantly male (60 70 percent), and tend to coalesce around a unique subcul-ture that is autonomous and distinct from adult hate groups such as the Klan.Be-cause skinheads have maintained a presence in the United States since the late 1970s,there are now skinheads in their early forties, however, very little is known aboutthese  O.G. skinheads or more generally about how aging affects a skinhead s iden-tity or life course trajectory.Many skinhead gangs are short-lived and have overlap-ping membership (e.g., sometimes a smaller skinhead clique will be completely com-promised of members from other larger skinhead gangs).Most skinhead gangs areeither organized at the state-level (e.g., West Virginia Skinheads), county and/or city-level (e.g., Orange County Skins, Las Vegas Skins), or even neighborhood and/orschool-based (e.g., Milwaukee Eastside Bullies).One of the few exceptions is theHammerskin Nation (HSN) which is an international skinhead organization that wasoriginally formed in Dallas, Texas, in 1988.Currently the HSN has five regionalchapters in the United States (e.g., Northern Hammers, Midland Hammers, etc.) andoutside the United States an additional ten countries also have official HSN chapters.Through much of the 1980s the skinhead scene was an umbrella without clearlydemarcated boundaries, allowing fluid forms of participation; yet there emergedwithin the scene subgroups with clearer boundaries of membership (skinheads oftenreferred to these as  crews ).Over the years as some skinhead gangs became closelyaligned with white supremacist groups the distinction between racist and anti-racistskinheads has become relatively clear-cut; however, this was not the case initially, asfactions along lines of racial ideology were originally much blurrier.Even todaysome ambiguity continues to persist as skinheads change allegiances between racistand anti-racist.RACIST SKINHEADS IN THE U.S.199One of the skinheads most interesting organizational characteristics is the segmentwho does not belong to any specific group but instead prefer an  Independent status.Independent skins combine the amorphous elements of  youth culture with infor-mal associational ties to specific gang organizations, but allegiance is situational andgenerically directed to the skinhead scene.These loosely affiliated individuals defytraditional notions of organizational boundaries and reflect a fl exible style of par-ticipation that does not require the same degree of loyalty or commitment, yet Inde-pendent Skins maintain relationships with multiple gangs and often help facilitatethe flow of information between gangs.Although Independent Skins potentiallythreaten organizational stability by acting as  free riders, they also enrich organi-zational culture by acting as liaisons between relatively disconnected and sometimesconflictual organizations.Independent Skins also offer a recruitment pool for skinheadgangs attempting to consolidate membership of smaller gangs in order to increase or-ganizational strength and at times the Independent label is used strategically by mem-bers of skinhead gangs to deflect law enforcement efforts to identify their affiliation.Skinhead Gangs and the White Supremacist MovementBy the mid-1980s American skinheads began developing links to various whitesupremacist groups such as the White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, and fac-tions of the Ku Klux Klan.Some of these links were initiated by skinheads whileother links resulted from recruitment efforts among U.S.white supremacist groups,who, like the NF and BNP in England, viewed skinheads as a means to  energizean otherwise aging movement.Network ties to the white supremacy movement pro-vided skinheads with invaluable political socialization, including racist political lit-erature, organizational affiliations, leadership training, and financial resources.Be-fore forging these ties, some skinhead gangs were racist, but not politically active.Asracist skinheads became increasingly aligned with white supremacist groups theystarted attending rallies and marches and appearing on nationally televised talkshows like Geraldo and the Oprah Winfrey Show.Images of shaven-headed, swastika-tattooed, jack booted youth hurling racialepithets at Oprah and breaking Geraldo s nose earned skinheads a  folk devil sta-tus.Skinheads, however, are, arguably, best known for their brutal acts of hate vio-lence while roaming the streets like packs of wolves.Although skinhead violenceduring the early and mid-1980s was sometimes racially motivated, there is little evi-dence to suggest that these early skinhead gangs went beyond the long standing pat-tern of white gangs defense of racial neighborhood boundaries.Much skinhead vio-lence was directed toward other subcultural groups (e.g., other skin gangs, punks,surfers, etc.) that were also willing participants in the action.Skinheads defined theirviolence as a means of protecting themselves from aggressive non-skinhead groups.According to some observers, by the late 1980s skinhead violence was increas-ingly motivated by their neo-Nazi ideology and facilitated by their links to whitesupremacist groups like White Aryan Resistance.Clearly U.S.skinheads have com-mitted a variety of horrific acts of violence, but careful analysis of the quality andquantity of skinhead violence is lacking.Catalogs of skinhead violence suggest thatmuch of their aggression is directed toward minority groups, yet the construction ofthese catalogs are relatively selective and thus it is difficult to compare the propor-tion of skinhead violence directed toward minority groups with skinhead violencedirected toward other targets.Additionally, there has been little effort to systemati-cally analyze long-term patterns and levels of skinhead violence.200 RACIST SKINHEADS IN THE U.S.Recent Trends in the Skinhead SceneDuring the last two and half decades the number of racist skinheads has ebbedand flowed.Recently, some observers report a resurgence of skinhead gangs.Thisresurgence has spurred the Anti-Defamation League to sponsor the Racist SkinheadProject, a national effort to monitor skinhead gangs across the country.Since theiremergence in the United States skinheads have varied greatly from one region toanother.This continues to be the case [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]