Opinion: What lies beneath the culture of gangs

It is hard for those of us who have other things that govern our self-concept - jobs, possessions, caring relatives, qualifications - to grasp just how formidable and forceful such feelings about 'image' can be. That is why we label as 'disproportionate' those violent reactions among young people for some imagined slight or slightly prolonged stare. Not for the young person concerned: "Don't invade the last thing I have left."

Am I overstating the case? Probably. But there are long traditions for these arguments, many of which are captured brilliantly in Dave Robins and Dave Pountain's book Cool Rules, in which they seek to trace the origins and reasons of 'cool'. One of these, they argue, is slavery. Wanton resistance led to brutal punishment - so many slaves, especially proud young black men, developed ways of moving their bodies (the angle of the head, the swagger walk, the look) that consciously asserted, in a relatively risk-free way, their autonomy and humanity.