Augusta DellÕOmo: Welcome to Right Rising, a podcast from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. I'm your host Augusta DellÕOmo. Today I'm joined by Dr. Shannon Reid, an Associate Professor in Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She's here with us today to talk with us about white power gangs and youth gangs. Shannon, thanks so much for being here. Shannon Reid: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. AD: So Shannon, I will start with a historical question. As our listeners know, I am a historian and so I felt like we needed to start there first. So could you talk a little bit, setting the stage for us about the history of gangs, not only in research, but also in the media and how that's really impacted our broader general understandings of what gangs are and who gang members are. SR: So if we think about the earliest gangs studies, those happened in the early 1900s, and probably the most famous is Frederick Thrashers, Gangland, which is in 1923, he put out a map. And if you look at the original gang studies, you have a very diverse group of gangs. So he has Italian gangs, Irish gangs, black gangs, Polish gangs, right. And so it was a very sort of diverse population. But the key was that these were groups of youth, who managed to control space, and act independently of sort of the social controls of those neighborhoods. And so when we think about that transformation, and how cities have transformed over time, sort of white flight out of cities and sort of people getting stuck in different neighborhoods, what we see is that the gangs, and a lot of these areas continue despite population overturn, and what the gangs look like might change. So, you know, a really good example is, if we think about New York, or Chicago, and even LA, we will see how even barrios that have been around for a hundred years, are now getting gentrified, and we're seeing some shift in who's living in those neighborhoods. But those are some really entrenched gang areas. And so the areas will sort of move a little bit. But that is that space is very important to these different groups. And so we think about how they've been covered, you know, for the most part, early gang studies, sort of thought of them as youth who would grow out of this stage. So it was a period of time where these youth were involved in delinquency and violence. And then it was expected that most of them would if they weren't caught up in the early criminal justice system, get jobs and kind of move out to, you know, sort of a traditional life course sort of flow, what we see in the research and, you know, more the 70s and 80s, is that as the economy shifted, and stuff like areas like Detroit, or Milwaukee, where auto dealer, like auto manufacturers and stuff left, that there wasn't that transition point anymore. So jobs that used to be there, that most people would transition to, were no longer there. And so then we started to see people in the gang longer than previously. And again, the average time of persons in a gang is a year or two. But as people sort of don't have those transitions anymore, or get caught up in the criminal justice system, that can extend. And then when we saw sort of where the news really comes into play is the the youth violence of, you know, late 80s, early 90s, where what you saw on the news is, especially young black males, and putting the drug violence on gang members, and not that they weren't a part of that. But you know, you sort of had this image of what a gang member was, was a young, black, violent male. And so then when the super predator myth came through, and you know, it's sort of built and built and built, because everyone shows like Cops, all those things sort of fed into this image of what people think a gang member looks like. And that image is, you know, there's movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, which I showed my classes, because I think they're very good depictions of sort of how people visualize this, but those sort of pop culture, images, and that, you know, that an adult and other people seeing it on the news has kind of just led to this continual idea of what we think gang members are. And then of course, with MS13, and something other Hispanic groups, you know, they're sort of in that added to it as well. But then they get the sense that it's, then you get sort of the anti-immigration piece and things like that, that you know, it's yeah, inter, you know that we have cross-national gangs. And again, we sort of push back and say, you know, you could have family in El Salvador, that doesn't make you an international gang. So, you know, it's pieces like that, that we've seen that that sort of continually create this image of who a gang member is. AD: Shannon, that's really helpful, especially thinking about some of the conceptions that are so ingrained, both in mainstream media and also just our collective assumptions about who is in a gang and shifting that focus a little bit when we're thinking about particularly white power gangs. I'm wondering if the conceptions that you see people bringing to the table are films like American History X, or just the visualizations of white power gangs in prisons that you see on television that you see in various shows? And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the real landscape of white power activism, what did these white power gangs really look like? What are some of the hotspots of their activity? What kinds of things do they do? And what are some of the common misconceptions that you've encountered people have about how these groups actually operate? SR: So the white power landscape is really interesting. And I always have to preface my discussion on this as saying, I am talking about the youth. So you'll see a lot of far right research that focuses on, you know, the far right movement as a whole, right, so they'll conglomerated and put together the 14-year-old who is part of Hammerskin Nation and the 70 year old who's part of National Socialists, you know, so what we're trying to say what I'm trying to say is like, Okay, I'm just talking about the youth and if we talk about them, then that is a very particular sort of piece of research standard. AD: Shannon, sorry, to jump in, what is the range that youÕre for youth - what is that range for a researcher? SR: So it's sort of the I know, I say, youth, but it's, it's like the 13 to 24 age range. So it's not young, young, although we've seen units like Atomwaffen Division and some of the Base, you know, there being 14,15 year olds who are fairly active, but it's more that sort of, you know, like, early young adulthood, where your cognitive and social behaviors and skills are not, you know, what we would consider fully formed. So, you know, and I think a movie like American History X does get at this in a way that other movies don't, because a lot of the what we see on TV is I don't know if you ever seen the show Hate Thy Neighbor, which I generally really like, it's on Vice. But a lot of the white power groups are just portrayed as sort of stupid, right, like, and even skinheads like when we talk about skinheads, you know, even your Milo Yiannopoulos and those that, oh, we're not the skinheads of old, we're not like the dumb meathead. So there's always sort of been this brush off of them as being sort of ignorant, they just want to fight like, and, you know, sort of too stupid to concern ourselves with, which is not, you know, it's like, we can't, we can't sort of, say black gang members, and Hispanic gang members are somehow criminally savvy and white gang members are too stupid to care about, right, like, and so I think when we think about what this looks looks like, and where these people are, is, I think that image is that they're kind of in the middle of nowhere, right? When you go to, you know, when you drive outside of Charlotte, you know, 20, 30 minutes, it gets very sort of rural. And that's where these groups are at, right? They're kind of like, they're not a city problem. But we actually talked to youth and look at where we're seeing reports of, you know, activity, they are in cities, and they're right around cities. So it has more to do with population centers, and that you need sort of enough people to maintain gangs. And this is true, when we talk about rural gangs, right. So you need population, you can't have a gang in the true sense of it lasts when people leave, in very rural areas. So the idea that they're sort of like elsewhere, and just idiot kids, and rednecks, or whatever, you know, sort of you want to call them doesn't line up with sort of how we see them and where we see them. So, you know, especially in cities where there is a lot of sort of turnover and population, we sort of have a theory call minority group threat, where as populations change, white youth and white individuals start to feel be fearful. And so they sort of come together. And these groups can form there. But having grown up in the punk scene, that's where I first saw skinheads, both racist and non-racist skinheads. And that's sort of what got me interested in this, but they are at theyÕre in Philly, right? We're in Philly, we're in New York City. We're in Hartford. They're in cities. And so it's, again, not this sort of outside problem. It's a city problem. It's a community problem. And I think I answered like half of what you asked. AD: No no no, it's really helpful to think about, not just the misconceptions about how these groups operate. But where these groups are, I would say that I definitely had that misconception that much of the youth white power gang activism was in sort of smaller rural areas. And I think sometimes those stereotypes really miss the hotbeds of activism and recruitment that happened in in more urban areas as well. And I think that gets back to your original point about our historical conceptions about gangs, gang activity, and what constitutes gang activity. So keeping that thread about gang activity in the way that that intersects, particularly with the criminal justice system, how does the history of white supremacy really impacted how white power or alt-right gangs have been treated? SR: So that's a really important question. And it really gets to sort of the roots of sort of what we refer to as white supremacy and policing, as a term that's been used again, more recently, but it's been around and, you know, I think a lot of what we are seeing is because we have put a lot of, and this is true for gang researchers and other scholars, where we have also been dismissive of these groups. A lot of it around the ideology, and I can talk about why that's shouldn't be a deal breaker. But what you see is that they sort of fall into kind of more of a subculture category. So if you are dressed like a Skin, or wearing Proud Boys clothes, or whatever it is that sort of, you know, white power uniform, depending on where you're at, you know, and you get stopped by the police for vandalism, or, you know, fighting or things like that, it sort of gets written off as a youthful indiscretion, a phase, right. So this idea as if, you know, you're a goth, or punk or hippie, right? Like, you know, and it's like, oh, that's, you know, that's that kids phase, they'll grow out of this, they just think they're cool, or whatever. So it gets dismissed as kind of, you know, a temporary status. Whereas if you're, like a more traditional gang member, even to the point where I've been on, you know, defense attorneys working defense strategies about like, Oh, we saw this kid, he's dressed head to toe and red, he must be a gang member, like no gang member wears that anymore! It's so hot, you know, and I can Google frat, you know, sorority girls dressed as gang that like that, that means nothing. But that label follows you forever, right? So you're getting gang enhancements, you're getting field interview cards taken on you, if you enter the criminal justice system, that label is put on you. So somehow, when you're a minority, or or even right part of a traditional gang, you know, that label is a serious label. Whereas if you're part of more of a white power gang, then that's kind of a youthful indiscretion. And a lot of that, I think, has to do with the fact that there is not a ton of pushback about some of those beliefs within policing, right? So we've seen this with the police officers with Three Percenters flags and standing and protecting Proud Boys and showing up at rallies differentially, depending if it's Black Lives Matter, or if it's, you know, a Skinhead rally. And so, you know, those things follow through. And as we think about, you know, why that is, you know, if, if you're, if you're a criminal justice entity that holds some of those beliefs, then you are not going to intervene the same way that you would against somebody who you feel like is, you know, breaking the social code, in the same way, or that if you genuinely think that, you know, minorities, or immigrants or whatever, are inherently bad, then you're going to treat them that way that all that discretion that you have, is being sort of poured into those decisions about who to arrest who not to arrest, who gets, you know, warning, who just gets sent home, things like that. AD: Shannon that is incredibly helpful, and I think it also get to an idea that we've discussed in other forms in the podcast, which is how, in many cases, the extreme white supremacy or the extreme misogyny that you see on the far right or in these groups, is, you know, it is just an extreme form of things that occur in sort of mainstream interactions, as you pointed out between you know, how the criminal justice system treats black kids and brown kids is very different than it treats white kids and just what is written off as an indiscretion or what is written off is, it's just a phase where it was just boys being boys or just youth just acting out. It is, in many cases, when you were talking about it made me think of this is a really just an extreme encapsulation of dynamics that already exist within the criminal justice system in the United States. And I wanted to go back to a point that you mentioned earlier about your focus on youths. And I'd like you to talk a little bit about if there are differences in how we think about white supremacist gangs, if they're youths versus theyÕre adults. And why is that distinction important? And what kinds of differences do we see in these different types of gangs? SR: You know, for me, the reason I focus on the youth is that they are all Š and I donÕt say this to sound bad, but the most important to intervene with, you know, they still have a lot of life decisions and life, sort of turning points, that if we can intervene earlier, as we do with gang members, that we can keep them out of the criminal justice system. And we can sort of keep them moving forward pro-socially, and so, but they're also the more prone to violence, right. So that's your high crime prone age group with lower self-control. And so they're the ones pushing a lot of the criminality. But they're also the ones who I've seen, you know, are the more easily intervenable and we've seen from skinhead research and other, you know, sort of white gang researches that, you know, they'll flip flop, so you'll have SHARPs who then go racist, to go back kind of depending on what the scene looks like, maybe who's selling better drugs, right. So, you know, economically, socially which one's better. So there isn't, you know, an adherence to ideology that you have to overcome as much with the younger population. And, you know, when I talked to there was a Peckerwood, who was incarcerated in California, in the youth facility, and we asked what they do, you know, he said, all the same things that every other gang member says, which is we hang out, we drink, we pick up girls, and then the only add addition, they add is they do Hitler stuff. And that was it. So then you say, What's Hitler stuff? Right? And they're like, Oh, well, you know, we like tag things, or we, you know, so it's, it's not a sense of like, I adhere to a really understand ideology. But rather, I use the ideology as a way to be seen. So if we think about the costume of white power, if you're young, that is your identity. And if you dress like a gang member, a traditional gang member, you're going to potentially just get laughed at, right? No one takes you seriously, even back in the day, like, you know, everybody had those kids who thought they were black, you know, like, and you got laughed at, there's nothing anti-authority about that, right? You just sort of look like a joke. And, you know, we've seen a number of, especially in Europe, where, you know, they they adopt all these signs and symbols of white power, but it's really for intimidation purposes, right? Like, if I see a kid with a swastika on their jacket, that might make me go, Oh, you know, that's something to think about. Whereas if I see them wearing, you know, a red hat, what is that? That doesn't mean that right, there's no sort of interpersonal, like, concern there. So those signs and symbols get adopted, not because there's a true belief in the ideology, but rather, it's what sets you apart, it creates that in group, out group, that is really important. So you know, we focus on the youth for a lot of that reason, because they are the most crime prone, because, you know, they're generally still in school and therefore accessible for interventions. And I think, you know, we talked about the adults, it's not that the adults don't have the potential for, you know, violence and criminality, and, you know, sort of serious, but A, they tend to only get tracked once they've hit prison. So it's almost it's too late. But you're further along in the criminal justice system, by the time you sort of come under surveillance, but B you have had time to set yourself up right. So it's to me intervening on a 40 year old, who has a family and has, you know, is raising their children with some of this ideology. That's a much different intervention than, you know, say, a 16 year old who is going to punk shows and sort of finds his group and gets into it because it seems interesting or cool and offers, you know, excitement and all those things youth want. I think that's just a different intervention. And so that's why we kind of slice it because I think what we've seen works for younger people is not necessarily going to be what works for an older person. AD: Shannon do you find that what draws these youth into these gangs is the same whether they find it before they're perhaps in the juvenile correction system? Or often do they find these groups after they've already been incarcerated? And as you've said, you know, they're looking for some kind of belonging as they're making their way through this, you know, very isolating system. SR: Yeah, so most of the youth, we've talked to, I've talked to, it's before they get into a correctional system, and a lot of them. You know, like in California, for example, if you come in with a gang membership, which is about 75% of them come in with a gang membership. It's really very high. AD: Wow its really high. SR: Yeah, yeah, it's really high, you automatically get aligned with the prison gang. So and it's a one to one. So, you know, but when we talk to youth, they don't consider themselves like anything other than their street gang. So it might be that they form numbers, because it just not a lot of white kids or not a lot of black kids. And so you kind of if you might be from different sets, from the same neighborhood, different neighborhood, so you'll be joined together based on race. So prison has to be is generally much more race based. But to them, what's important to them is their street gang, because the majority of them are going to go home. So for those who aren't going to go home for those, we're going to transfer to adult prison, then the prison gang scene becomes a little more important. But again, I think that's where we treat white gangs differently, because all of a sudden, we have people in Aryan Brotherhood, and you know, like, I have a, I have trouble believing that somebody gets arrested, gets incarcerated, goes to prison, and suddenly is okay with being part of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas or something like, so. We are good at saying this kid was in here and then they go to prison or jail. And they're, you know, joining a prison gang here. But magically, the white people had no street affiliation show up to prison present and are totally kosher, getting a swastika tattooed on them. So you're like, I we're missing something for this group, because they sit and then they go back out, right? So Aryan Brotherhood or Texas is a really good example, or PENI of their being violence in neighborhoods and against correctional officers. So they're taking it back out with them, potentially. But why are we not figuring out who's bringing it in? There's sort of a sense that for some reason white gang members just happen to joined in prison. Whereas other groups, it's kind of a mix. AD: And Shannon, do some of that come from, you mentioned a little bit about how these groups are actually recorded, and are and how our white power groups actually systematically recorded in correctional systems and is that different than perhaps how other gangs are tracked? SR: So when you come in to a correctional facility, it's actually much more rigorous. So everybody gets the same sort of intake form. And so people self-report. So what happens is, if you self-report that is, like an automatic one to one, so if you say I'm part of x, they say, okay, you're part of x, and I put you in the database. Other ways. And again, these are, you know, I'm not saying these are good ways, they are simply the ways they do it, if you have to kind of hit some other benchmarks. So if you have tattoos, certain tattoos, if you have, you know, a law enforcement agency that is already flagged, you, if you have a confidential informant who says you're a gang member, or if he's, you know, you do something in the facility that's gang involved. But what's tricky for that is that we on the law enforcement side, you see that they are overly willing to, you know, track in their gang databases, black and brown gang members. And so those individuals will already have that first flag, that first check when they enter a facility. So the bar is much lower for them than it is for others. And so and we've seen it in Portland with their gang database issues of a totally being disproportionate to the population, LAPD has come under fire for their gang database of having infants in there and 100 year olds in there. Oh, yeah. You know, and so because they don't audit it, and if there's any auditing, it's internal. So and they often stop people a lot because they want to be able to get gang enhancement. So one person will have 50 field interview cards on them, because they're purposely trying to make you or get you to say, Yes, I'm still in the gang. No, or they're with so and so who's in the gang. And so when they go to court, you say, is this person a member of a gang, the person says no, and then the officer says, hey, look, I interviewed them two weeks ago, and there was so and so. So they're lying. But for white youth, since they're not getting picked up in the gang databases, and again, I'm not saying gang databases are the answer. But that's what we're using - is that it's not until they sort of hit that first interview, in a in a prison setting that somebody is taking what they're saying, seriously. So that's why we sort of see for them. This like, okay, they self-reported, and now we see their tattoos, and now we're keeping track, whereas for other groups, they've already been keeping track, since, you know, early police contact or even schools, right schools, can we have school resource officers, they report gang activity, you know, so we have a much earlier tracking system for other groups that the white gang members seem to sort of fly under the radar for. AD: Shannon, thatÕs incredibly helpful and with the time that we have left, I want to shift to something you mentioned earlier about why it's you study youth gangs, and just this greater ability to intervene at this stage versus the adult gangs. And one of the big concerns that I've seen recently, and I've encountered from people is concerns about children being radicalized and joining these kinds of groups. And I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the kinds of interventions that you've seen, or things that seem to be successful, or just the kind of programs that are being implemented now to try and combat the influx of kids really consuming this kind of far right material, whether it's online or just in their communities? SR: So I'm gonna something thatÕs probably gonna get me in trouble. Because I am not anti-deradicalization. But I think the focus on deradicalization for this age group is an overemphasis on how much the material matters versus how much the peer group matters. So you know, I think what, and I can say for my own son, he's on TikTok and I listened and I'm like, delete, you know, because you'll hear it like. AD: Yeah get rid of TikTok. SR: IÕm like delete, yeah, we're done. I know. So you know, and he's watching a video on, you know, making slime. And then I hear the narrative in the background. And I'm like, Okay, this is not kosher. So, you know, there's a lot of exposure. But unless there is a peer group attachment to it, I think for the vast majority of youth, that is not as important. So you know, it's not that they won't take it and say, hey, that's interesting, and Google it, and then find a forum where they meet people, and those people support it. But it's for young people, like, friends. And that shift from family being the focus to friends, being the focused in your identity creation is key to this age group. So we can combat you know, sort of saying, okay, you know, with diversity training, and other sorts of deradicalization programs like those are great. And those can be very helpful in sort of beating bias, but the group is what matters. So they could shift to SHARPs, right? So it's, you know, do we care about the group dynamics? Or do we care about them saying they do Hitler stuff, and to me, it's less, they say they do Hitler stuff, and more the fact that they are committing violence, and stealing and selling drugs and stuff that's going to get them entrenched in the criminal justice system. And for that to happen, you need to target the group, because we've seen that when you've joined those groups, their criminality is exponentially higher than if they were just surrounded by other delinquent youth. So the group dynamic is so important. And it's, it's hard to disrupt if you're very focused on the individual and what the individual is being exposed to. So, you know, I think that those messages are important, just generally for everybody. But if we think about programs, like, GREAT, which the Gang Resistance Education And Training program, or you think about some of the community programs that are out there, because if we have youth that we know are missing, like that have these risk factors across whether you're black, brown, Asian, white, whatever, gang members have a certain set of risk factors, whether no matter their race, and so we still need to target those risk factors. And those risk factors are less focused on ideology, because we don't go after MS13 and say, you know, what you need is let's focus less on Salvadorian pride and more on you know, I mean, like, we let other ideologies go by, Latin Kings has you know, so our I think our willingness to focus so much on the ideology is again, giving people an out for their behavior. And so if we focus too much on that, I think we missed the forest for the trees and so that's why you know, I think some of the gang programs that are out there that really focus on pro-social peer building and community building are going to have a larger overall impact. AD: Fantastic. Shannon, that is a great note for us to end on. And thank you so much for being on the podcast, I wanted to ask if there's, for our listeners, if they want to read more of your work, if they want to hear more from you. Are you online? Are there ways for them to just connect with the kinds of things that you're writing and talking about? SR: Sure, so I am on Twitter. It's mourningShannon - mourning, like dead mourning. And but I'm also like, ResearchGate, if people are on that we have the book, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White. But yeah, or my, you know, my university email is shannonreid33@uncc.edu. If people want to reach out, I'm always happy to talk to people. My phone's disconnected because of all the scary phone calls I get. AD: No one needs to be calling our phones. But listen, if you want to connect with us, we love social media and email. SR: Social media is great. But yeah, so if people want to reach out, I'm more than happy to chat. And I love hearing what people are working on and doing in this this area. AD: Thanks so much for joining us, Shannon. SR: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. AD: This has been another episode of Right Rising. We'll see you all next time.