ABSTRACT
The plight of Rosedale's elderly gradually faded from public attention. During the spring and summer of 1982, however, the violence returned. The violence took the form of gang murders and wilding attacks. The youth of Rosedale were engaged in wilding violence long before the New York City incident shocked the nation. As with public reactions in New York, the Rosedale summer wildings racially polarized the city. The biographies and life circumstances of the Rosedale wilder are all too typical of a growing number of minority youngsters in American cities. Adolescent crime is as great a deterrent to the stability of interracial neighborhoods as are traditional forms of racism. Criminologists maintain the breakdown between socially approved goals and the means to obtain them push lower-class youths to create delinquent subcultures. The alternative values found within these subcultures reinforce delinquent modes of obtaining status, material rewards, and the resources necessary to maintain a criminal lifestyle.
