[EvasiveManuever]

What is your objection to what I claim?

They are seen elsewhere where the races are different and in different eras among some groups of all races.

This is not true. Or you'd be able to give us headline after headline. What you're doing is excuse making.

Poor whites in "Apalachia" or the South don't act like this.

[bvw]

You would be wrong.

Recessions, depressions, anti-Catholic bigotry made jobs difficult to find, and the Five Points turned dangerous. Marriages collapsed. Youth gangs were formed, to create a sense of family among fatherless boys or as a means of self-protection against other gangs. A familiar New York story.

Those gang members often moved on to crime, a step that is not surprising either. Crime is not a job, after all, but it is an occupation. Some young Irish women – often abandoned by their men -- peddled their bodies to rich men on Broadway in order to feed their children. Others fell into alcoholism or opium addiction. But as Tyler Anbinder suggests in his study, the constant turnover in population told another story: many of the poor endured, worked hard, and then moved up and out of the Five Points.

Pete Hamil, TRAMPLING CITY'S HISTORY 'Gangs' misses point of Five Points