Prof. Ranta
May/05/2014
Lab 6
My opinion about the code of silence is that it was in their blood to keep silent. In Southie they felt a sense of security and that was a feeling that you didn’t get in too many
communities those days. For good or bad they always had that sense of neighborhood, they
shared struggle, they shared identity. That's something that most people don't have or appreciate.
Yet it was also a world that inspired fierce loyalty and a rock-solid sense of community. Old
Colony quickly became home for any Irish that moved there, a place where people instinctively
watched each other's backs and stood up for their own. A major contributor to this sense of
shared security was, of course, the overpowering Irishness of the place. However, the gagster
Whitey endured for so long because of Southie's code of silence, which prescribed harsh
penalties for anyone who would dare rat out a Southie neighbor to the police. Indeed, for many
years South Boston reported one of the lowest crime rates in the city--for the simple reason, that
they don't report crimes in Southie.
The code of Silence was very harmful because it made it where all of the people committing violent crimes, such as kill someone never got caught. This is because no one would talk about because they were too scared of getting killed their self. It affected the residents by desensitizing them to all of the drugs and violence around them. Most of the resident of Southie had no way out ,so they were trying to make the best of things. Even if that meant telling their self that none of those things happened in Southie. For, Example when Ma herd scream from down the hall , she looked in the peephole of their neighbors door and slaw Moe with a knife in his hand and his two sons bleeding from their chest. Ma grabbed them and called the EMT’s, but when they got their with the cops no one told the cops that their own Father