Michael Bivens
Social Deviance
The Saints and the Roughnecks
11 November 2012
In this week’s readings we examined an article written by William Chambliss, entitled “The Saints and the Roughnecks.” In this article, Chambliss attempts to explain why two groups of kids that both engage in delinquent activity can be viewed so differently within their community.
The kids known as the Saints are fairly wealthy, and maintain good grades in school. They are able to get away with their delinquent activities and are viewed by the community as upstanding young men who will make something of themselves. They are respectful to the police whenever they get caught, and the fact that they have cars enables them to carry out many different types of delinquent acts without even being seen by their community. The Roughnecks, on the other hand, are mostly poor and are the ones viewed as troublemakers and therefore are treated as such. They find it much more difficult to get away with truancy and other offenses at school, as well as breaking the law within the community.
Throughout the article one can see that even though the Saints are probably more delinquent than the Roughnecks, they are not viewed that way. The visibility of the two different groups by the community, social skills and demeanor, community bias, as well as differences in social class and culture of the two groups were key factors in determining how delinquent the Saints and the Roughnecks were considered by the community.
At the end of the reading we see that after high school, seven of the eight Saints went on to complete college, with some actually obtaining advanced degrees. They would even go on to getting jobs in a variety of professional and managerial professions. For the Roughnecks, two of them also graduated college, on football scholarships. After college they achieved well respected positions in their community. However, most of the Roughnecks lived up to the community’s negative expectations for them. In fact, two were in prison when Chambliss checked on them at the ten year mark.
For the two Roughnecks that went to college and became successful in their life, I believe this happened because the perception of being deviant was no longer reinforced once the two boys received their scholarships. Not only was their title of delinquency less enforced by the community, the boys felt less perceived as deviant as well, and this change of perception created more of a lack of commitment to deviance for the two boys and in turn they greatly changed the way they acted. Well, at least in comparison to their fellow Roughnecks. It just goes to show that when we as a society treat “delinquents” as people who will never change from their deviant ways, the “delinquents” will also agree with this deviant label and continue on with their destructive path unless something external were to break the cycle. The deviant label basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For the two particular Roughnecks, the football scholarships provided that external factor they needed to diminish the negative label.
Primary deviance is an act that provokes little reaction from society and does not really affect a person’s self-esteem. Also, a person does not change their behavior due to this act. Secondary deviance is repeated deviant behavior and stems from people’s negative reactions to the original act of primary deviance. The difference here is the people’s reaction to the acts of deviance. Even though both the Saints and the Roughnecks committed deviant acts, the visibility of the Roughnecks acts by the community caused them to acquire secondary deviance as opposed to primary deviance. Also, whereas the Saints acts mostly consisted of drinking and driving, and playing pranks, the Roughnecks engaged in acts of delinquency which caused a reaction from their community, like getting into fights in public, disrespecting police officers, etc. Due to the fact that the Saints were less seen and heard from than the Roughnecks, the Roughnecks had no choice but to commit secondary deviance, and in turn the secondary deviance carried into adulthood for most of the Roughnecks.
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