Name: Gang Leader for a Day
ISBN: 9781594201509

Gang Leader for a Day

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. This is the full story of how Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment. When first-year grad student Venkatesh walked into one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a survey on urban poverty. He never imagined that he would befriend a gang leader and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under his protection. He got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his position of unprecedented access, he observed the gang as they operated their crack-selling business and rose or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.--Publisher information.

What Hacker News says

dustincoatesMar 2025

Tangentially related, but still worth checking out: the book "Gang Leader for a Day" [0] touches on this topic of how the university interacts (or doesn't) with its poorer neighbors. Highly recommend the read.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Leader_for_a_Day

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jfilSep 2024

You might enjoy the book "Gang Leader for a Day" by Sudhir Venkatesh. He spends time with a street gang and explains its operations.

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dcolkittMar 2021

There was a great book called Gang Leader for a Day, about a UChicago sociologist that spends time inside a Southside drug crew. His research showed that the average low-level street dealer made less than minimum wage. Almost all the profit accrued to the guys high up in the supply chain or gang hierarchy.

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isolliJul 2020

You could benefit from reading this sociologist's account: "Gang Leader for a Day":

<< Sudhir Venkatesh never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT’s protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang’s complex hierarchical structure. >>

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jernfrostJun 2017

But that is exactly what is needed, more enlightenment with real stories like this. People aren't going to realize racism is a real problem if you just scream racist to them. I am white and used to think anti-racists were a bunch of idiots. Only by seeing the prevalence of racism in social media did I start realizing racism was a bigger problem than I had imagined. Reading "Gang leader for a day", was a major eye opener. I think I partly got into that because of the TV series the Wire and the book Freakonomics, which covered the economics and social structure of drug gangs.

But this requires some curiosity and interest in learning which biggest and racists might not have. And frankly it is hard to change people's mind when you are calling them names. People tend not to listen to people they don't like.

We also have to accept that racism goes both ways, it is just that white racism has much more severe consequences for black than the other way around. But I believe it helps maintain white racism to some degree.

I am not American, so I can comment on this as an outsider, and I can very clearly see that many American blacks have a big issue with whites. It is hard to win over whites if they only have bad experiences with blacks and also see no point in educating themselves on the issue.

I am not passing out blame. I am just saying, everybody can contribute to making racism a thing of the past. The ones who have to do the most are whites.

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xasosApr 2015

That's one of many things they do. (Gang Leader for a Day gives great insight into the many role gangs play in their communities [1])

It's also a possible consequence of Nixon's War on Drugs [2]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp...

[2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs

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