Gambling and Ethnicity
Players in the African American Community
African American players are not distinguishable by quality of play from most other players; however, particular cultural, historical, and situational factors may be related to certain gambling behavior in some circumstances. Minority people and persons of lower income who live together in poorer communities have often been targeted by gambling entrepreneurs as being good potential players. Government lotteries have been faulted for directing marketing campaigns at minority communities with advertisements suggesting that gambling is “the way out” of the ghetto. Also, as states such as Illinois purposely located casino facilities in communities needing economic development, they caused casinos to be very near minority people. Such being the case, African Americans and others living close to the casinos had a much higher level of participation in gambling than did other people.
Historically, the African American community, especially in urban settings, has embraced the numbers game. The games, which were first operated by members of the community (and later taken over by white organized crime groups), served many functions for the community. First, the numbers game provided employment for residents. Local people were given jobs as salespersons and numbers runners. They managed groups of runners, and they were also the entrepreneurs, or owners, of the games.
Second, the numbers game was functional in that it provided a mechanism for capital accumulation in the community. Historically (and even today), financial institutions such as banks redlined urban minority communities and refused to make loans to residents or businesses in the designated districts. In turn, the members of the minority community would not patronize the banks – to do so would involve the inconvenience of traveling some distance and meeting with persons who discriminated against them. The numbers entrepreneurs took moneys from their profits and made investments in the local area and also made loans to local businesspeople, a practice that stimulated business activity. They were absentee owners who extracted money from the poor communities—as the later Mafioso game owners did. The entrepreneurs also provided many charity gifts at a time before there was a well-developed welfare system in place.
Third, the numbers game provided a savings function for persons who did not have bank accounts. Each week—or day—they would “invest” a small amount, maybe just a dime or a dollar, on a number. They acted much like a person in the suburbs putting a few dollars away in a Christmas Club account at a branch bank. By playing a number over and over, the resident, or at least many of the residents, could be assured of having an occasional win. That win could represent a time for a major purchase and a celebration. The numbers game also contributed to community solidarity, as residents would share dreams with each other.
General Colin Powell wrote about these functional values of the numbers game in a New York City community. “The secret dream of these tenement dwellers had always been to own their own homes. My father also dreamed about numbers. He bought numbers books at the newsstands to work out winning combinations” (Powell 1995, 301). Every day his father would combine thoughts with Aunt Beryl, and they would buy a number together. One Saturday night, Aunt Beryl dreamed of a number. The next day in church the first hymn had that number in it. “This, surely, was God taking Luther Powell by the hand and leading him to the Promised Land. Pop and Aunt Beryl managed to scrape up $25 to put on the number” (303). They hit the three-digit number. It was worth a payout equaling three-years’ pay. “And that’s how the Powells managed to buy 183–68 Elmira Avenue in the… boroughs of Queens” (303). The numbers represented the Powells’ “way out”. Colin Powell was just entering college, and perhaps a pressure of having to help his family out an extra bit was lifted from his shoulders, enabling him to pursue his education and career goals in a more focused way.
The gambling establishment knows the value of games to poor people and to persons such as General Powell’s father and aunt. Very few African Americans have become leading entrepreneurs on the legitimate side of commercial gambling, however. No casinos in Las Vegas are predominantly owned or controlled by African Americans, and few of the casino executives are minorities. Prior to the 1960s, most of the major casinos on the Strip would not let African Americans play at their tables or stay in their hotel rooms. For a short time, a casino called the Moulin Rouge in the northern part of Las Vegas became the venue for African American players from low rollers to high rollers. It was also the place where leading black entertainers would stay, even though they were performing on the Strip. The barriers of discrimination were broken down in the early 1960s when James Macmillan, a local young dentist from the minority community, became head of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He refused to acquiesce to the policies of “going along to get along”. He threatened a major protest parade that seemed to have all the news elements in it that would make it a national story in a media looking for civil rights protest stories. The casinos agreed to integrate almost overnight. By the time federal legislation on public accommodations was passed in 1964, Las Vegas was fully integrated in that sense.
Employment was something else, and still is. Prior to the 1970s, there was overt employment discrimination in Las Vegas, but a court decree accepted by the industry opened doors for general employment. Nonetheless, much of the employment is still secured through a process called “juice”, or “who you know”. The bulk of entry-level jobs in hotels are now held by Hispanic Americans, who are very adept at using family connections to make sure their friends know about job openings and have the right introductions to those making hiring decisions. African Americans are still not represented in the industry to the extent that their numbers would suggest they should be, given that they make up approximately 10 percent of the population of Las Vegas.
New casino projects in other urban centers such as Detroit and New Orleans carry very specific obligations for hiring target percentages of minorities and women. Groups applying for licenses also are encouraged to enlist local minority members among their ownership ranks. The extent to which the local policies for minority participation are successful remains to be assessed after the casinos enjoy their first years of operation.
Asian Players
Asians and Asian Americans have a reputation of being very active gamblers. They enjoy playing in groups and sharing the excitement of winning or even coming close to having a win. In my travels to Great Britain, I was informed that play from the Asian sector of the population essentially kept the casinos in business. Although this is not the case in most U.S. jurisdictions, the play of the Asian high roller is critical for the profits of many of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Moreover, in urban communities on the West Coast of the United States and Canada, the Asian play is often a majority of the play. People who have studied gambling sense that there are cultural values that make gambling a part of Asian community life. Numerology and a mystique about fate and luck propel people into gaming. There is also a great desire to participate in games of all sorts, so the drift to gambling games is not unusual.
Asians may be susceptible to developing gambling problems. Their subcommunities may encourage some play that might be considered reckless and harmful. One facet of this is that most of the Asian players have strong families, and they are also tied to family businesses, which have cash flows that can be utilized for daily gambling. When the play begins, the player may feel that he or she can risk everything on the game because of having a safety net that other Americans may not have. No matter whether the player loses all or wins, a member of the extended family will always have a place for him or her to stay. Thus homelessness is not the problem that it is for some other compulsive gamblers. Moreover, someone in the family structure will have a job for a player who is broke. Such a tight family structure, which is a positive force in other situations, tends to present barriers for programs of recovery, as there is a notion of “shame” attached to any social problems. To go outside the family for help, especially to persons outside of the ethnic nationality group, may be considered an embarrassment to the entire group.
Asian gamblers are discussed further in “The ‘Best’ Gamblers in the World” in Appendix A.
Latino and Hispanic American Players
There are many separate Latino and Latin American communities throughout the Western Hemisphere. Generalizations can never be totally accurate. Nonetheless, at the risk of making ethnic behavioral associations that certainly will not apply to all peoples, I authored an essay on gambling in Latin America (see “Machismo and the Latin American Casino” in Appendix A). My study was the result of personal visits to casinos in fourteen Caribbean and Latin American jurisdictions. During the visits, I found a casino that held cockfights, another that banned women players unless they had written permission from their husbands (or former husbands), and another that used local loan agents (perhaps “sharks”) because local players would not pay back debts to “foreign” owners. Many of these situations seemed to be a manifestation of the cultural value of machismo in many aspects of the daily life and certainly in the daily life of the gambling operations.
Gambling and Age
There appear to be age correlations with gambling behavior. Gambling activity occurs among all age groups, but it seems to increase with age through the adult years until the sixties, when a decline starts. Nonetheless, at both ends of the age spectrums there are conditions that suggest that excessive gambling may be a major concern for society. We will look in turn at youth gambling and then gambling during the golden years.
Youth Gambling
The childhood years are devoted to much play activity, as it is through such play that basic social values can be learned: competitiveness and striving for goals, camaraderie and team involvement, adherence to rules and notions of fair play, acceptance of defeats and a sense of renewed efforts, gracefulness in enjoying victory. Certainly an emphasis on playing games, an encouragement for playing one or another kind of game can cause children to desire participation in games and contests where the reward – the goal – is money. Gambling has to have a natural draw for persons who are compelled to engage in fantasy play as part of their socialization. And indeed, where children are given the opportunity to gamble, they do so.
A wide range of studies indicates that young people may be very involved in gambling. For instance, one study found that 90 percent of young people in the United States had purchased lottery tickets by the time they were seniors in high school. Another found that 77 percent of high school students had gambled sometime. A survey in Atlantic City found that over 60 percent of high school students had played slot machines in casinos. In most cases, parents were aware of this activity.
The surveys suggested that youthful gambling and gambling problems occurred at times before young people turned to alcohol or drug use. Early gambling was associated with parental gambling and parental problem gambling. In later adolescence, gambling was associated with peer group acceptance. The studies suggested that young people craved acceptance and saw gambling as a means toward that goal. Those who persisted at gaming tended to do it alone, however, in order to escape either a bad home environment or their failure to participate in social activities with their peers. The availability of gambling in the community was related to youth participation, even though in most of the surveys the young people were gambling illegally.
The youthful gamblers will play whatever game is available, but because they must be wary of being excluded from a facility because of age, they gravitate toward hidden-away slot machine areas of casinos. They also participate in sports betting, usually making their wagers with a bookie or with an intermediary who is not concerned with the fact that they are young – only that the costs of the gambling will be paid.
Youthful gamblers exhibited the same rates of pathological gambling as, or even higher rates than, the adults who were surveyed. The survey for the recent National Gambling Impact Study Commission suggested that as many as 6 percent of teenagers had characteristics of pathological gamblers, a percentage several times higher than that for adults. The issue of youth gambling is important because many surveys of pathological gamblers find that they started their gambling activity while they were teenagers, due to an exposure to the activity and in part to parental support of their participation. Henry Lesieur’s book The Chase portrays a critical time in the development of a compulsive gambling career as an early “big win” (Lesieur 1984). Psychologically, young people are less able to handle the emotional rush coming with that “early win” than are adults seasoned in life’s many ups and downs. As a result of the research information gathered, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission urged that youth not be exposed to gambling opportunities.
Senior Gambling
The great expansion of gambling opportunities has also attracted many senior citizens to situations that may not be socially beneficial. Senior gambling has not been extensively studied, but there is an indication that where casinos are available, seniors do play in large numbers. Overall their gambling participation rates are not as high as those of other adults but are growing. A 1975 survey found that 38 percent of the elderly (over sixty-five) had gambled during the previous twelve months (Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling 1976, 59); a 1998 survey found that more than 60 percent had done so. Gambling is a growing recreation among the elderly, as in contrast with the past they now collectively have better health and more resources. Of course they also have more time available for gambling than do other adults. In Las Vegas, the locals-oriented casinos target seniors as players to fill the casinos’ daytime hours and their soft weeknights as well as their down-seasons when tourists are not as plentiful. The casinos feature special buffet meals at low costs, they offer their regular players bargains through “slot clubs”, and they even offer a regular bus service into senior neighborhoods (Sun City–type communities) and senior housing developments.
One study from Las Vegas found that elderly men gambled less than younger men did, but the opposite was the case for elderly women. For the latter, the gambling opportunity was seen mostly as a social event and a chance to escape the boredom of daily life, often in an apartment-type setting. Among men, those who rented apartments gambled much more than did homeowners.
As with youth, the seniors have their games of choice. In the casino, they are ardent video-poker machine players as well as bingo players.
Gambling and Gender
Traditionally, gambling has been a male-dominated activity. The same can be said of sports and other competitive games that even reach into the business world. But gradually, women are participating in gambling activities at higher and higher levels. This reflects the growing importance of women in the workforce and also the fact that more and more women are financially independent. On the downside of the equation is the fact that many women find themselves in abusive situations, and they turn to gambling as an escape mechanism, much as they have also turned to alcohol and drugs. As gambling is more available in communities across the country, it is becoming an addiction of choice for many escape-prone women.
In the recent past women played bingo more than men did, as it was a social event and a very acceptable activity. Most players were excitement oriented rather than escape prone. The casinos that first welcomed women found that they preferred machine play to table play. This is still the case, as the bravado of the tables fits male traits more closely. Women may sense that the action at the tables is too fast or too competitive and that players are too serious about the competitive nature of the games. These psychological barriers persist, but they are falling to a large extent. Nonetheless, today the favorite game for the woman player in the Las Vegas casino is the slot machine, especially the video-poker machine. And of course, as is discussed in the entry on slot machines, this is a device that can get gamblers into trouble rather quickly. Indeed, one person who counsels problem women gamblers in Las Vegas told me that 95 percent of his clients were playing the video poker machines. Nonetheless, problem gambling is still a greater problem among the male gender. The national survey for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that the rate of problem and pathological gamblers among men was double that of women.