Valley Girl Interrupted: Meth, Race, and the Ku Klux Klan

Abstract

The American white supremacist movement is home to an array of many different types of groups inhabited by an equally varied sample of people who are openly racist.  Over the past nine years, my field work in four states in the southern region of the country exposed me to people who were affiliated with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Blood & Honour, and religious sects such as Christian Identity.  This article examines the life history of Stacy, a young woman whose association with several deviant subcultures reveals the complexities of a life marked by poor choices, drug addiction, and virulent racism.  A series of in-depth interviews conducted while she was living in Arkansas document personal details that include revelations about discovering her true identity as an adolescent, her troubled teenage years, her participation in the violent skinhead subculture in California, and ongoing personal struggles with methamphetamines and other drugs.