White Gangbangers

The Warriors are an equal opportunity gang. And so are most of the gangs they tangle with.

Herc: White boys, I love em, I fucking love em. Dumb as a box of rocks. [lists a bunch of ways that the white dealers made mistakes or made it easy for the cops to bust them] And then when you make the deal, there's no runner, no nothing, just the guy himself walking up to you in the parking lot shouting "I brought the drugs, did you bring the money?" If white boys wanna sell drugs in Baltimore, they have to make different laws for it, like even it out for them.
Kima Greggs: Affirmative action?
Herc: Leave no white man behind!

— The Wire

In reaction to the mainstream stereotype (justified or not is beside the point) that most members of "street gangs" are black or non-white Latino, TV shows aimed at children sometimes go to great lengths to depict gangs as consisting mostly of other ethnic groups, or at least as an evil Five-Token Band. They may or may not be Pretty Fly for a White Guy or White Hair, Black Heart.

This trope is to be expected in areas that are mostly white to begin with. It is important to point out that in some places and/or time periods this very much can be accurate. The cores of American cities, where such organized crime tends to take place, are only majority black and latino because of a phenomenon known as "white flight". This was a social phenomenon that occurred unevenly and didn't effect every European ethnic group: notably, it often excluded non-Christians. Many Suburban neighborhood covenants did not merely target black people but also practically everyone who wasn't of British descent and Protestant.

This left significant white minorities in many cities. All young men inhabiting the neglected core of a city are highly likely to turn to organized crime, regardless of race. While in some places the gangs are almost always segregated by race, in other places they aren't at all: this kind of depends on what the relationships look like between the particular European ethnic group and the black residents. Compare Equal-Opportunity Evil.

This trope is different to some degree because breaking the law is not in itself morally wrong, and gangs are not necessarily any more brutal than the police or indeed the businessmen they might prey on (i.e. they are not necessarily "evil" in comparison to any other character in the work). The gang might be cruder, perhaps more violent and up-front in their brutality, but might not actually be worse. Sometimes the gang might actually be the more principled party: if a Friendly Neighborhood Gangster is matched up with a Killer Cop, or a Magnificent Bastard of a corporate executive (in which case the gangsters might be the closest thing in the work to a "good guy").

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Any portrayal of American or European street gangs in manga or anime. Examples include Banana Fish, Fake, and Gunsmith Cats. Any work portraying Asian gangs will sometimes also show them interacting with The Mafia, though rarely with common street thugs.

Comedy

• Dave Chappelle discusses this in one of his specials, saying that the white thug is probably the worst out of all of them, since he had to do something to gain the black members' trust. He also says that the white gang bangers are there to talk to the police when something bad happens.

Comic Books

• Parodied in Marvel Comics' Runaways, when the cast (three white kids, an Asian-American girl, and an African-American guy) tries to go undercover, Nico comments that their disguises make them look like "those politically correct, multi-ethnic gangs that only rob people on bad TV shows."
• In Batman: Gotham City Evolution, the five main criminal syndicates operating in Gotham were identified as the Italians, the blacks, the Columbians, the Chinese, and the Russians. The Cosmopolitan Council from The Dark Knight (see Film below) was probably based on this comic.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy Hotstreak in Static started out as an ordinary thug, but after getting his powers he started his own gang.
• Prevalent in many superhero comics in general, since most superheroes tend to be white, and the writers don't want to come off as racist by having said superheroes beating up evil black and Latino gangsters.
• In Shaman's Tears #6, a gang consisting of two whites and a black attempts to mug Joshua Brand in a Mugging the Monster moment.
• Gender-based version in Preacher: While instructing a counter-terrorism unit, Starr tells them to shoot the women first — if they managed to be accepted as a fellow soldier by her squadmates it's because she's more dangerous than all the others.
• Robin: Tim's informant, only known as Killa Nilla.

Films — Live-Action

• The Spider-Man Trilogy films didn't have a non-white street thug until halfway through the second movie.
• Pest is the only white member of the street gang in Attack the Block.
• The Dark Knight. There's also a Cosmopolitan Council for the organised criminals.
  • It should be noted that the gangs tend to self-segregate when not meeting together. Sal Maroni and the Chechen seem to be pretty tight and close together (even seen having lunch together when Gordon rounds them up after Lau's capture), but Gambol and his black associates tend to keep to themselves. They do all rely on Lau, a Chinese accountant, to handle laundering.
  • It should also be pointed out this is a sign of their desperation, all the gangs are suffering and they have to team up in order to focus on their new enemy: the Batman, but also to an extent, they also have enemies in the form of Harvey Dent and the Joker — Dent for putting their launderers out of business, and the Joker dislikes the mob's interests in money (he kills one of Gambol's guys with a disappearing pencil, later kills Gambol, and also burns Lau and the mob's money).
• Used to humorous effect in the Stephen Seagal vehicle Exit Wounds. He beats up a multiethnic gang consisting of an Asian who knows martial arts, a Latino with a knife, and a black guy holding his gun Gangsta Style.
• Several gangs from The Warriors. The eponymous gang is mixed and gets a white leader early in the film. The director intended for The Warriors to be all Black/Hispanic, but Executive Meddling made most of the members White.
• The Street Thunder gang in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is multiracial, and its most coldblooded member - the one who shoots a little girl in the chest point-blank - is a white guy. The multi-ethnicity is noted since most street gangs in real life often consist of one race.
• RoboCop (1987), which takes place in Detroit 20 Minutes into the Future has only a few black criminals amongst the dozens shown.
• On the other hand, 8 Mile depicts a Detroit where a few poor whites hang around in black gangs. The whites are depicted as almost culturally black, though, so it's hard to determine if this trope is being evoked.
• Nearly much of everyone in Gangs of New York, the main conflict is between the Anglo-Protestant Natives and Irish Catholic Dead Rabbits, with only one Token Black between them.
• In Collateral, Max (Jamie Foxx), a black Los Angeles taxi driver, is robbed by a gang of four white street criminals.
• In Death Sentence, the protagonist (Kevin Bacon) battles a gang of white criminals who murdered his son as an initiation ritual.
• In Ms. 45, a multiracial gang attempts to attack Thana in the park. This ends badly for them.
• In Shortcut to Happiness, Stone is mugged by a multiracial gang that includes at least one very prominent white member.
• In Hard Target, the gang that attempts to rob and rape Nat outside the diner is predominantly white, with a single black member.

Live-Action TV

• The Wire:
  • The show features a smattering of white drug dealers in Baltimore's white neighborhoods, and they are mostly portrayed as posturing phoneys, leading to Herc jokingly suggesting to Kima at one point that white gangbangers need their own version of Affirmative Action. Compared to the difficulties the police have to deal with trying to bust professional, elaborate, and deeply paranoid groups like the Barksdale Organization or Marlo Stanfield's crew, the white dealers are a walk in the park for them.
  • About the only white Baltimore drug dealer who isn't shown as a complete wannabe is Mike McCardle, AKA "White Mike", a higher-level dealer who has contacts with both The Greeks and the corrupt Stevedores Union.
• Criminal Minds had an episode where a serial killer was slaying the members of a street gang in Los Angeles. One would assume they were Latinos because of the setting. They even 'looked' Latino. When the gang's leader was named, though, his name was Glen Hill.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation had a group whose modus operandi revolved around theft of candy and office supplies. There are two token minorities in the group, though.
• When a dead Hispanic girl is found in Detective Falco's apartment in Law & Order, she is found to be a member of a multi-ethnic heist group. Notably, the members include an ex-skinhead, an ex-member of a Thai street gang, and an ex-member (and the son of the founder) of an exclusively black gang. The details on how the diverse group got together are left unclear, but a connection is made to the black member's father's book about rehabilitation and racial unity (which turns out to be a Red Herring).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The criminal element, usually vampires, is rarely black - but then, almost nobody in Sunnydale is black, as Mr. Trick points out.
• CSI: NY had the Tanglewood Boys, white guys from Staten Island.
• Riverdale has the Serpents, who are modeled after biker gangs and are mostly white.
• In the first episode of GLOW (2017) ruth gets swarmed and mugged by a gang of white teenagers on skateboards who identify themselves as "Los Angels Death Squad"

Music Videos

• The videos for Michael Jackson's songs "Beat It" and "Bad". While the black gang members in the former were actually from L.A. gangs, the white ones were professional dancers.
• The Arizona-based white rap group Woodpile were involved with street gangs and later prison gangs in Phoenix, Arizona before becoming rappers. Because of their thuggish demeanor and shaved heads, they're often mistaken for White Power musicians, when in truth, they're basically gangsta rappers.

Pro Wrestling

• For a period of time, the black power stable The Nation of Domination had a pair of white gangbanger hangers-on in PG13 (JC Ice and Wolfie D). Heck, while there were several black 'affiliates' (one of whom, D'Lo Brown, did eventually become/emerge as an actual wrestler), for the first third of the NOD's existence the only black man who actually wrestled for the group was the leader, Faarooq: the other main wrestlers were a white man and a Puerto Rican.
• When Too Cool (Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor, formerly the Ambiguously Gay tag team Too Much) returned after being off TV for a few months, they used this as a gimmick. However, after only about a month they joined up with Rikishi, turned face, and became Pretty Fly For White Guys instead.
• Of course, the runaway success of New World Order proved once and for all that colors, robbery, vandalism, and gangsterism is one of the best ways to get results in professional wrestling, or at least you'd think that way by the number of times the stable has been imitated. Since most of their spiritual successors are in WCW's home country, USA, where most professional wrestling promotions have an overwhelming roster of European ancestry, this resulted in the 1990s to early 2010s having a lot of white gang bangers in wrestling (ECW's parody, blue World order, for example, NWA's fWo for another). That said, the nWo had Vincent and an entire Japanese branch. Many of their imitators had non-white members like Aisha Sunshine and the Latino World Order was mostly non-white.
• In ads for the 2005 Royal Rumble, WWE played on the double meaning of the word "rumble" by riffing on West Side Story (1961), with the Raw Superstars as the Jets and the ones from SmackDown as the Sharks. This was probably because at that time, SmackDown featured almost all the promotion's Latino talent: Eddie Guerrero and his nephew Chavo, Rey Mysterio Jr., and Carlito Caribbean Cool (who actually was Puerto Rican). However, the Raw gang, while mostly white, did include Batista (half-Asian, half-white), so WWE obviously weren't trying to be too literal.
• Raymond Rowe and the street gang that accompanied him to his Absolute Intense Wrestling matches.
• Al Snow was a self-proclaimed example on WWE's Sunday Night Heat. Chuck Palumbo was more of one who let his actions do the talking, though Chuck had more of a "biker" gimmick when he moved back to Smackdown.
• Canada-based Premier Championship Wrestling's tag team champions, "The Original Thug Crew", Darren Dalton and Spyder.
• Kyle O'Reilly apparently ran with gangsters in Delta, British Columbia.
• The No Limit Soldiers was a WCW stable with a hip-hop gangmanger gimmick originally led by Master P (seriously). The stable had two white guys (Chase and "BA" Brad Armstrong) in addition to two Latinos (Konnan and Rey Mysterio Jr.) and two black guys (Swoll and 4x4). Later Konnan and Mysterio split from the soldiers to form the Filthy Animals, a stable of Latino gangbangers, with fellow Latino Eddie Guerrero and white guy Kidman.

Tabletop Games

• Pretty common in Shadowrun since gangs tend to be divided up by metatype rather than race- an ork gang cares that you're an ork, not whether you're a white or a black ork (and if you're an ork you're more likely to be green anyway). Likewise, a go-gang like the Halloweeners tends to care more about whether or not you're good with a motorcycle rather than your skin color. There are some gangs that are organized by race, but they're rarer.

Theatre

• The Jets gang from West Side Story. There's some Values Dissonance at work (the play is set in the late '50s), as the Jets are a gang made of Polish, Italian, and Irish-Americans who, while considered white by that point, were still targeted by Anglo-Americans at the time partly because most of them were Catholics. The Sharks, on the other hand, are Puerto Rican.
  • Amusingly, though, theatrical groups will often cast a Latino as a Jet or a white man as a Shark if they have too many actors from one of those groups. One of the Shark girls, Consuela, is sometimes portrayed by a blonde actress.
  • In The Film Ofthe Play, a couple of the Puerto Rican Jets are played by African-American actors. This makes some sense, as Puerto Rico has an Afro-Caribbean minority.
  • In the script of the play, The Jets' Noo Yawk accents are carefully rendered phonetically, while the Puerto Rican Sharks, most of whom are fairly new to the United States and generally portrayed with accents, are written in standard English (except for the occasional Spanish word.).

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: The Factio Pugni are the primary criminal element plaguing Noctis City and other nearby settlements, and they don't seem particularly choosy about who joins them, being a multiracial gang.
• Cyberpunk 2077: The Scavengers' members are composed of stereotypical Russian Gopniks dressed in tracksuits. Played With as they also include some disturbing holographic smiley face masks.
• Spider-Man (Insomniac): The Maggia, while technically a mafia themselves, they are distinct from mobsters loyal to Hammerhead as they wear the same outfit as common criminals, but without their ski-masks, giving them a gangbanger-esque look.
• Also, some of the gangs from Jet Set Radio. Poison Jam are a good example, and they also worked for an Asian boss for a while. The main characters are a mix of ethnicities, including White, Black, Japanese, and possibly other kinds of Asian (Beat is Korean, at least according to a popular Fanon theory).
• Much of all of the gangs in Saints Row, though membership in these seems to be more a factor of the part of the city one is from than ethnic heritage. Despite the Mooks being diverse, the gangs tended to make up of certain groups:
  • In the first game, there was Los Carnales (drug runners, mostly Hispanic), the West Side Rollerz (car nuts, mostly white), and the Vice Kings (stereotypical gang bangers, African-American).
  • In the second game, there was the Brotherhood (the "dregs", mostly white), the Ronin (Japanese), and the Sons of Samedi (drug runners, mostly Haitian). Of course, this was primarily the ethnicity of the leadership: all three gangs had a lot of white members simply because that was who they could readily recruit in Stilwater.
  • The Third Street Saints were the sole group whose diversity extended to the upper ranks: in the first game, there was Julius (African-American), Gat (Korean), Lin (Chinese), Troy (White), and Dex (Afro-Caribbean). In the second game, there was Gat (again), Pierce (African-American), Carlos (Hispanic), and Shaundi (White), as well as whatever ethnicity was chosen for the player character from a choice of White, Asian, African-American, and Hispanic. Or zombie. In The Third, however, most of your new recruits are white, with the exceptions of Zimos (African-American) and Angel (Hispanic). And of course the last game features Asha (British-Indian), Keith David (African-American), CID (an alien whose consciousness was uploaded to a robotic orb) and Zinjai (alien). Finally, Jezebel (demon) is added in Gat out of Hell. Diversity, bitches.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories has the Sharks/Street Wannabees and Marty's Gang/Trailer Park Mafia, the former comprising of both white and black members while the latter are made up exclusively of white rednecks - one of the groups from the Vance Crime Family are low-end gangsters that run Vic's legal businesses and, much like Marty's Gang, are exclusively white. Vice City is perhaps the only region that feature white gangs (Liberty City's white gangs are The Mafia who are more of an organized crime than street toughs).
  • Grand Theft Auto V
    • One of the gangs present in Los Santos is the aptly named Rednecks, they are commonly found at the Los Santos countryside.
    • If you hang out with Michael's son Jimmy as Franklin, he tries to talk gang lingo at Franklin, who just chuckles at him. And in the mission Hood Safari, Trevor tags along with Franklin and Lamar for a drug buy, and also insinuates that he now considers himself a member of CGF, and if the player ends the mission playing as Trevor with Lamar as company, Trevor keeps asking about membership in the gang.
    • Of the gangs found in Grand Theft Auto Online, the Hippies appear to be all white, and the clown faced Fooligans seem to be primarily white. There are also The Armenian Mob. Meanwhile, the Lost MC is multiracial, which is a departure from how most real life outlaw motorcycle clubs tend to operate.
• The gangs of Paragon City in City of Heroes tend to be racially diverse, except The Family, which is essentially every mob boss and his cronies under one name, and the Tsoo, which is the Yakuza (except ethnically Hmong, not Japanese) with magical tattoos.
• The Kid, a character in Tomb Raider: Anniversary, has his background showing that he ran a small-time gang before being hired by Natla. His dialect in the cut scenes and quick time events are filled with gangbanger vibe. In the original his gimmick was that he was a skateboarder.
• Killing Floor: Kevo the Chav is more of a delinquent than a gangster, but he's still as competent as the other player characters, to his surprise as much as anybody else.

Web Videos

• In The Allen And Craig Show, Episode 12, the cameraman (nameless, referred to as "camera guy") is kidnapped by two white thugsters with their eyes on the camera and "a guy to hold it".

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: While Frylock is obviously black, and Meatwad some odd mix that leans towards his interest in certain cultures and his speech being peppered particularly with aave, Shake is decidedly White, and still makes a rap album and defualts to black celebrities when attempting to impersonate them.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)
  • The Purple Dragons consists of white, black, and asian members, by the second season they upgrade into The Syndicate.
  • One episode reveals that there is another street gang called "Turks", and have white and black members within their ranks.
• In the Family Guy episode "Excellence in Broadcasting" Brian is confronted by a street gang consisting of several youths, each of them a different ethnicity.
  Brian: Oh, no! It's a multi-racial TV gang including white guys!
  Gang Member: Let's beat him up! But not because of his color, because that doesn't matter to us!
• In Batman: The Animated Series, nearly all of the regular criminals and gangsters seen in Gotham are white. Justified by the '50s aesthetics and general Retro Universe nature of the setting, which would be ruined by too prominent representation by ethnic criminals. However, both of the major mob bosses (Arnold Stromwell and Rupert Thorne) have Anglo-Saxon names, which would be a little weird even in a Roaring Twenties/Great Depression-era storyline. The tie-in movie Mask of the Phantasm adds mobsters with Italian and Jewish names like Sal Valestra and Chuckie Sol.
• The Boondocks:
  • Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy are a duo of scheming frat boys who, despite coming from wealthy WASP families, talk and act like stereotypical inner-city street thugs, participating in assassinations, drug trafficking, kidnappings, burglaries, armed robberies, and even terrorism either out of boredom or in servitude to Ed III's Corrupt Corporate Executive grandfather.
  • In the fourth season, Ed Wuncler Jr. splits the difference between his fatcat capitalist father and wannabe-gangsta son by acting like a stereotypical "made man", making him another rare case of an Anglo-Saxon mafioso.

Real Life

• Bloods and Crips are the most well know US street gangs, and while they are predominately black, both have had individual members from various backgrounds, and in Long Beach, California, there are entire sets of Asian Crips.
• White gangs and gangsters, including both white criminals who operate solely for profit as well as ideologically minded neo-Nazi skinheads do exist, though they are fewer than the majority of gang members. However, there is good reason to believe that law enforcement underestimates the participation of white youth in gangs. There are also some plain multi-ethnic gangs.
• Various European groups, whole sole raison d'etre is mere wanton violence and getting into fights. These groups may use sports (English football hooligans), politics (English Defence League), or class identity (skinheads) as their excuse for violence mongering.
• Rival Nationalist and Unionist gangs in Northern Ireland, as well as dissident republicans in the Republic of Ireland. Some are organised more like paramilitary groups, but many are essentially just street-level thugs. In many cases, they were paramilitary groups during The Troubles, and have now devolved to this.
• During the 19th and early 20th century, immigration to the US consisted largely of poor whites such as Poles, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, and Irish (the law didn't allow much non-white immigration). As a result, ghetto gangs were made up of whites. There are still remnants of these gangs in both street and organized crime groups around the country.
• White gangsters often crop up in Latino gangs such as the Mexican Mafia. Joe "Pegleg" Morgan, the non-Mexican co-founder of La eMe, was Croatian-American but grew up in a mostly Mexican neighborhood. White members helped Latino gangs negotiate deals with skinhead gangs who would not do deals with non-whites. Today, white and Latino gangs traditionally ally against the blacks. And technically, Latinos and whites are lumped together in racial studies anyway.
• Infamous leader of the Los Angeles-area Tooner Ville Rifa 13 and condemned murder Timothy McGhee would be another example.
• Many white "Peckerwood" gangs, at least in Southern California, have adopted aspects of Latino gang culture and are typically affiliated or allied with Sureños (a large Latino gang "nation" controlled by the prison-based Mexican Mafia). This mirrors the Aryan Brotherhood's long alliance with the Mexican Mafia.
• The prison-based Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi Lowriders, Public Enemy Number 1, and similar prison gangs tend to be more this in real life than ideological white supremacists, at least in many states. The AB in California had a long-standing relationship with La Eme (the Mexican Mafia) to sell drugs and as allies against the blacks, and NLR accepts light-skinned Latinos as members. (The name "Nazi Lowriders" is something of a clue that the gang adopted elements of Latino gang culture.)
• Russian gopniki are mostly this. And the Russian racial minority with an attitude is actually Caucasian (as in, actual people from Caucasus, who are generally white but with darker complexion than most white people).
• Maryland-based gang Dead Man Inc. started out as a non-white supremacist prison gang for white inmates and became a street gang as members were released.
• Public-service pamphlets issued by police and sheriffs' departments often employ artists who depict whites, blacks, and Latinos in equal measure as both lawmen and lawbreakers, regardless of how inaccurate this may be in a given area. Native Americans get shortchanged because they're viewed as culturally invisible, and Asians don't show up often probably because it's hard to quickly sketch an Asian without making him look like a caricature.
• Of course crime (even gang-related activities) happen in countries with hardly any ethnic minorities as well as places where almost all ethnic minorities would be considered "white" by the US definition. Some gangs, like criminal biker gangs, have hardly any connection to ethnicity whatsoever.
• While not explicitly formed around race, many outlaw motorcycle clubs will have at least unofficial policies that they won't "patch" (accept members) outside of certain racial groups, even if they might party or do business with just about anybody. Of course, given that many large MCs have chapters worldwide, all of which can have different policies based on the local situation, this rule often varies even within a particular club.
• Chicago has had many actual white street gangs throughout its history, most of them operating between The '50s and The '90s, though a few are still in operation today, albeit mostly in the outer suburbs of the city and in the rural Midwest, losing most of their turf in Chicago proper due to a mix of gentrification, heavy police pressure, and white flight making recruitment more difficult in the main parts of the city. Most of these gangs were originally more along the lines of Greaser Delinquents before evolving into this trope.
  • The Almighty Gaylords were founded in 1953 by two veterans of The Korean War named Anthony "Johnny Boy" Anarina and Bobby Shipball, and at one point they were the largest Caucasian gang in Chicago and the third-largest gang overall. Their peak of power was in The '70s and The '80s but in the mid-1990s, they closed down the majority of their sets due to a mix of police crackdowns and older gang members retiring. They are the only major Caucasian gang with sets in the city proper, two small chapters in Sayre Park and Kilbourn Park with a large set in the suburb of Addison, Illinois. They also have a large presence in the rural Midwest, particularly in Des Moines, Iowa and rural Indiana, and have a few chapters in the Appalachian coalfields (most notably in Pikeville, Kentucky). They have been part of the People Nation gang alliance since 1979.
  • The Simon City Royals were the arch-rivals of the Gaylords and are heavily involved in the drug trade. They are part of the Folk Nation gang alliance and are closely allied with the Gangster Disciples, an African-American gang. However, most of the Simon City Royals these days are based in The Deep South, particularly in Mississippi and Louisiana, where they hold a lot of sway in the joint.
  • The Harrison Gents were able to remain in Chicago proper by opening up their ranks to Latinos in the late 1970's and then actively recruiting Latinos in the 1980s and 1990s. They are a Folk Nation gang allied with the Simon City Royals and Gangster Disciples.
  • The Stoned Freaks are notable for originating in the later years of The '60s as a gang of mostly white hippies who banded together to protect themselves from being preyed on by other gangs. They are in the People Nation and are close allies of the Latin Kings and especially the Gaylords. They have one active chapter in the Chicago suburb of Fox Lake, Illinois, and in addition to gang activities, the Stoned Freaks are also a major party crew in the Chicago club scene.
  • The Insane C-Notes are a gang comprised mostly of Italian-Americans and was founded in 1952 as a recruitment farm for The Mafia in Chicago. Originally membership was exclusive to Italians and those of Italian descent, but in the early 1970s, they opened up recruitment to anyone who was white and lived in the areas that the C-Notes claimed as their turf. In 1995, they joined the Folk Nation gang alliance because the power of the gang's Mafia benefactors were waning rapidly. In 2000, the C-Notes opened up recruitment to Latinos and Asian-Americans, making them a case of Equal-Opportunity Evil like the Harrison Gents two decades earlier.
• Subverted in that two of the top drug gangs in Vancouver, B.C.- the Red Scorpions and the rival United Nations- were racially integrated. The name United Nations was chosen to emphasize this. They may sell drugs and kill people, but they're not racist about it.
• Surf gangs, such as the Lunada Bay Boys or Malibu Locals Only, tend to be predominantly white, older, and from a cultural background that doesn't immediately get them classified as stereotypical gangsters. They're still known for using intimidation and violence to protect "their" breaks, and the authorities increasingly treat them like gangs as a result.
• There was a small controversy in Southern California in the late 1990s when a gang of retro-Greaser Delinquents calling itself "the Slick 50s" was deemed a gang during the trial of its members for a street brawl. Supporters of the teens accused the DA of manufacturing the "gang" to achieve heavier sentences. Opponents accused the public of racism by denying the gang's existence simply because the teens were white.
• There was a minor controversy in the Mixed Martial Arts community when it came to light that several notable UFC fighters at the time, including Rob Emerson and Ian "Uncle Creepy" McCall, had been part of a street gang of predominantly white and affluent Orange County teens called the Lords of South County. The gang made headlines when a large group of them Zerg Rushed and pummeled a random motorist at a gas station purely For the Evulz.

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