Skinheads: The hypocrites

Skinhead culture began in the early 1960s in England, arising from Jamaican immigrant culture and British working class culture, and went through many subsequent changes, spawning many subcultures.

One Skinhead FAQ at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/5712/skinhead_faq.html says, "After a hard day's work the original Skinheads tended to dress in their most respectable clothing and congregate at the mostly Jamaican run dancehalls where they mingled with the West Indian community, many of whose members would be their workmates from the docks, and adopted Ska as the musical sound of choice. Other staples of the Skinhead culture are a love of generous quantities of beer and soccer." (Which I believe they would have called football.)

Some of the different skinhead subcultures include

• Boneheads, the derogatory term used by many skinheads to refer to racist and/or neo-Nazi skins;
• Chelseas were originally the girlfriends of skinheads, but then female skinheads reclaimed the term. Also refers to a common skinhead haircut, a fringe which is longer on the sides than on top.
• Independent or Traditional skinheads, who use those labels to indicate that they are a skinhead first and foremost regardless of their politics, or sometimes to indicate that they do not belong to any other skinhead group or subculture.
• SHARPs, SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice, a crew which first began in New York and whose mission is "to educate the public about true skinhead culture, to expose the bonehead impostors for what the really are and to drive the boneheads out of their communities by any means necessary."

  Much more information can be found at the Official Alt.Skinheads Homepage, at http://www.tradskin.org.