They emerged in England nearly 30 years ago, the product of a street punk, working-class youth rebellion.
With the seeds of discrimination planted — it built initially as a backlash against a wave of immigration into England — skinheads crept into the United States in the 1980s and became an integral part of a neo-Nazi insurgence.
But the evolution of skinheads didn’t end there. Groups known as SHARPS — Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice — rejected their former comrades’ bigotry and spun off into separate factions.
Somewhere in this transient subculture of steel-toed combat boots, suspenders, punk rock, slam-dancing and violence, Robert Boltuch may have found his place. Exactly where that place is — and whether the suspect in last week’s slaying of a black woman in Fort Lauderdale is a bigot or a “Sharpskin” — will likely be the subject of debate in the wake of his arrest.
Boltuch has been charged in the shooting death of Jody-Gaye Bailey, 20, who was riding down Oakland Park Boulevard with her white boyfriend when she was shot in the temple. Boltuch has not been charged with a hate crime.
But according to police, Boltuch announced to companions before the shooting: “I’m going to kill me a n—–.” Investigators also say he has the word “skin” tattooed on the inside of his lower lip, and they suspect he has connections to a skinhead group that may follow racist beliefs.
According to his attorney and his boss at a Pompano Pier restaurant, though, Boltuch is affiliated solely with non-racist skinhead groups.
His attorney, Robert E. Gluck, insists his client is not a racist, and says one of Boltuch’s tattoos stands for “Color-Blind Crew.” Gluck says is a nonracist skinhead group; organizations that monitor hate crimes and extremists say they have never heard of it.
Boltuch’s boss, Everett Henderson, who helped lead police to the suspect, also said Boltuch showed co-workers a tattoo of his SHARP logo.
If Boltuch committed the crime and is a member of a non-racist skinhead group, it would surprise some experts who track the nation’s extremists.
“The whole skinhead lifestyle is that the use of violence is the means to an ends,” said Laurie Wood, head of research for the Intelligence Project, the investigative arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “But I don’t remember a SHARP] charged with what appears to be a racially motivated crime. Many of them have very deeply held beliefs about non-racism. That would be surprising.”
Others aren’t so sure it would be and say any allegiance Boltuch might have to a SHARP group is not evidence that he didn’t commit the crime.
“We’ve seen in the past examples of people passing from the racist to the nonracist skinheads,” said Art Teitelbaum, southern area director of the Anti-Defamation League and chairman of a state hate crimes task force. “The line between the two groups is quite permeable. It’s certainly not exculpatory in relation to whether or not he was the perpetrator of the crime.”
Skinheads often come from broken homes and have few ties to their community, Teitelbaum said.
As a result, many joined the groups more to adopt an immediate social world than to adopt any extremist views. For a large number of skinheads, it is a world that merely revolves around fashion and punk music, not social stances.
For others, it is about pride in a working-class upbringing. From there, it’s a small step to believe that minorities and immigrants “steal” blue-collar jobs. And extremist “patriot” groups who seek to divide the nation into black and white societies see racist skinhead groups as ripe ground for recruitment, Teitelbaum said.
“Ideologies and affiliations change much quicker than tattoos,” Teitelbaum said. “It is an unreliable factor to suggest that we know much about an individual because he claims to be involved in the skinhead movement, or that he claims to be a Sharpskin.”
