ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the Chicano, African American, and Vietnamese communities and the street gangs that have developed within them to see how multiple marginality applies to the Los Angeles street gang experience. In the case of the education system, Mexican students were often subjected to the prejudices of their teachers and programs such as ‘ability tracking’ which placed African American and Mexican students on a substandard course of study. While ethnic minorities share some aspects of marginality within American society, the details of their development within the American context differ, as do their cultures. The chapter describes three basic characteristics of Vietnamese youth gangs: a fixation on acquiring money, pragmatism, and fluidity. While many Vietnamese were prospering in California, many in Vietnam were planning their own migration. In the late 1970s, a second wave of refugees, the ‘boat people', began fleeing Vietnam by the tens of thousands.
