Chambliss and Saints and Roughnecks

Reflection: Saints and Roughnecks

In his essay “The Saints and the Roughnecks” William Chambliss examines a curious phenomenon in high school: while delinquent behavior was common among boys of various social classes at Hannibal High School, only the negative behaviors of the lower-class, less academically inclined boys was viewed as delinquent. The clean-cut, high-achieving so-called Saints often cut class early, hung out at pool halls, and, objectively speaking, engaged in more delinquent actions than the so-called Roughnecks who were lower class and did more poorly in school. But the Saints were viewed as fundamentally good boys who were going through a normal phase of life before they became upstanding members of the community, while the Roughnecks were viewed as inherently unredeemable individuals. This was even though the Saints catcalled women and engaged in vandalism of construction sites.

Reading the essay made me very angry. Chambliss, while not defending the discrepancy in attitude to the Saints and Roughnecks, argues that no one was seriously hurt by the Saints’ behavior. But drunk driving is now considered a very serious offense, and there is no way to know that the women the Saints sexually harassed were not psychologically harmed by what they were subjected to. Teachers admitted to give the Saints the benefit of the doubt, and thus all of the boys had relatively high GPAs, despite the fact they were truant and cheated. In other words, it was not that they were hardworking at school and partied and engaged in vandalism when not focused upon achieving. It was more their image and social standing that enabled them to slip under the teachers’ radar, something that the Roughnecks lacked.

This comparison clearly demonstrates, according to social conflict theory, that American society is often polarized between the interests of different social classes. Even when engaged in the same activities, social structures were engineered to penalize the Roughnecks more than the Saints. The Roughnecks, even if they objectively often committed fewer indiscretions than the Saints, were always in trouble with the police, which further contributed to the perception that they were destined for a bad end, in other words, becoming part of a gang or finding themselves in jail. But the social perception of police, teachers, and others in authority served to ensure this became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Because they were of a particular social class, they were more apt to find themselves in trouble. A good example of this seen in contemporary society today is how racial prejudices can result in individuals being unfairly profiled by law enforcement, even when they have not committed a crime. The fact that white-collar rather than blue-collar crimes often result in more jailtime likewise demonstrates from a social conflict theory how institutions can reinforce injustices.

From a symbolic-interaction perspective, the fact that the Saints came from nice families, were affluent, and looked the part of nice boys minimized the harms their actions generated, just like the fact that the Roughnecks were not made them seem like juvenile delinquents. The actions of the two boys were the same, but were filtered through an interpretive lens of class. Interestingly enough, when they boys’ behaviors did diverge, it was that the Roughnecks were often in class more—they were less successful in cutting class and being ignored doing so by teachers and police and had less access to nice cars. They also may have had fewer places to go than the Saints. Again, the fact that they could be seen more frequently by authority figures engaged in delinquency increased the perceptions they were delinquent.