Conflict & Violence Among Urban Youth

In diametric words, from his dialog and research with social youth from three dissimilar naked as a jaybird York neighborhoods, Pinderhughes concludes that contemporary violence involves ordinary young people perpetrating racially motivated crimes mainly because of the social construction of their ethnic and racial attitudes and identities. In five chapters Pinderhughes gives us the social scenario and the youth perspectives that he finds contributory to contemporary violence and racially motivated crimes. In chapter one he discusses the cultural structural conditions that create neighborhoods where "youths who institutionalize racial violence receive sanction and support for their activities from their ally groups, families, and neighborhoods" (Pinderhughes, 2000, 23). The attitudes we form about these perpetrators distances us from them, thereby making their style seem aberrant and fanatical. In reality, it is our own culture and attitudes that consecrate to such actions of relatively ordinary young people.

In chapter cardinal the author introduces us to the children from three neighborhoods ? the mostly Italian American youth of the Avenue T Boys in Bensonhurst, the African American youth of Schomberg Plaza, and the mainly Albanian youth of Christopher Columbus high gear School in Pelham Parkway. Questionnaires and personal disclosure makes our experience of these youths gibe case studies. Furthe

Chapter three continues to bear witness the racial attitudes and identities of the youths introduced in chapter two. In the content and substance of the attitudes the youths disclose, Pinderhughes attempts to canvass the structural conditions, ideological messages, and ethnic and racial identity increment of these youths. In doing so, Pinderhughes comes up with a conclusion that may rape those who perceive youthful perpetrators of violence and racially motivated crimes as "evil" or "abnormal" or "fanatic". Comp ared to other diverse groups of teens, the teens in this study are very confusable to other typical teenagers in their concerns from sex and relationships to music and clothes.

However, what is different with the youths who are from communities where ethnic and racial attitudes and identities prevail through socio-cultural institutions and ideologies is their living experiences and worldview because of them. As Pinderhughes (2000, 82) notes, "Where they differ is in their life experiences as members of different ethnic or racial groups, their perceptions of the world around them, their instinct of themselves and how they fit into that world, and their sense of the meaning of their ethnicity or race and of ethnic and racial difference". In this chapter we see Pinderhughes' use of sociological theory such as that of Durkheim's argument that youths who feel they are denied the means of access to the mainstream lifestyle held up to them as success, realise for support from similar-thinking youths. Durkheim's anomie theory argues that when norms break down in society, there is a state of confusion and normlessness that results. We have seen how legion(predicate) of the ethnic youths in Pinderhughes' work feel that opportunities such as education and work are limited for them. Marger (2000, 110) explains such set out theorists who were influenced by Durkheim as viewing society as a "relatively balanced system made up of other than functioning but interrelated parts. Society is held
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