American identity and culture

American Me

The intergenerational and racial components to familiar crime, as viewed through the American criminal justice system or Not a Wiseguy -- the text of Henry Hill, "American Me" and Clear and Cole's Chapter 19 on "Race and Punishment"

It is often alleged that the criminal justice system has unjustly persecuted individuals whom are members of minority groups, based solely upon their minority status. Advocates of this point-of-view, according to Chapter 19 of T.R. Clear and Cole's textbook American Corrections, cite jury's disproportionate tendency to convict minorities, as well as to impose more lengthy and weighty sentences upon defendants who are minorities. This presumption often suggests that the defendant in question must be innocent, or is only a cog in the wheel of a much larger crime machine. But what transpires when indeed a defendant is guilty and is indeed a member of a gang or crime family? Does race and systemic racial biases still come into play in such instances?

One way to examine, if not answer this question is to compare the text of such books as Wiseguy, which chronicles the American mafia from an insider's point-of-view, with the insider's view of an American crime family located in a Hispanic community.

The comparison of Wiseguy, the written text, and "American Me" the film cannot answer such broad sociological questions in a definitive manner, of course. However, the comparison does suggest that even when the American system of criminal justice attempts to punish members of organized crime families, the justice system is more willing to collaborate with the 'businessmen' of crime of the Italian mafia, such as Henry Hill, as opposed to those involved in non-white organized crime families, whom are viewed simply as gang members, indiscriminately. Furthermore, the texts of these two works suggests that the lives of those whom are discriminated against by their race and ethnicity, such as in "American Me" are less able to survive and suffer the stresses of a criminal life, and emerge from the experience battered and calcified, emotionally, by their criminal encounters.

One of the most horrifying scenes of Olmos' film "American Me" suggests this in vivid detail. The scene depicts how, when one of the central protagonists Santana, wishes to sexually demonstrate his affection for his new girlfriend Julie, portrayed by Evelina Fernandez, he can only do so in imitation of the gang rapes he himself has suffered and witnessed in prison. Although Santana has ruled the streets from his cell and he loves this good and pure-hearted single mother from his community, he is unable to express his affection in any other fashion.

Santana's experiences in prison stand in striking contrast to the book that inspired Martin Scorsese's later film "Wiseguy." In Wiseguy, the former mobster turned informant Henry Hill describes an almost paradise-like situation, where drugs were easily got and sold for profit, concealed in presents from Hill's loyal and loving wife. Hill states that prison affected him hardly at all, unlike Santana. In Hill's reality, individuals of Santana's Hispanic ethnic background and African-Americans are merely patsies of the Italian mob, inside and outside of prison, who serve his personal interests and make profits for the Italian mafia. In Olmos' film, Hispanic gangs are shown to have power in their own realm, but the racism of society not only fosters gang violence, but also results in a more horrifying, soul-destroying reality for the participants in this violence. Although in both works, the protagonists are able to engage in profitable criminal action while in prison, Hill is able to carry on both his life as a family man and a criminal, while Santana cannot.

It is also interesting how both works depict the protagonists growing up in areas where becoming a gangster is the highest aspiration one can reach, and to live as a law abiding citizen is regarded as foolish. However, the escalating street crime of the East Los Angeles barrios does not create even the possibility of living the outer shell of a conventional, American family life as is seen in Wiseguy. Although "American Me" is no less a gang-related, familial saga of crime than the Italian mafia of Wiseguy, as the film depicts three generations of a Hispanic-American gang-oriented family, the film views such crime more as a disease of the family, than a parallel to a more conventional family business, as is portrayed in renditions of the Italian mafia.

Thus, in "American Me," crime is a disease inflicted upon the practitioners as well as upon the dwellers of a law-abiding society. In Wiseguy, for Henry Hill, crime as practiced by the mafia is merely a mirror of the crimes that occur within supposedly legitimate business structure of finance, that he, denied full access to an education, would not have been able to take advantage of, had he not been part of the Italian mafia. In "American Me" when gang violence moves from the street to prison and back again it creates a cycle that turns even those who profit from such crime financially, into addicts, pushers and killers. Hill becomes an addict, but states that his addiction was manageable and was not characteristic of all of the men around him.