I know what you mean, but it's not only a possible excuse, it's also one of the factual causes. When your whole world tells you that education and a job aren't an option, that crime is your destiny, it's extremely hard to choose a different path.
This book opened my eyes on the issue. The author isn't blind to the moral side of things but set out to describe a bad neighborhood in detail. It's a great but depressing read.
This is really old now but one of the devastating side stories is about the author's neighbour, who goes from being a sweet little girl to being a pregnant, crack-addicted teenager in the space of about three years and is prostituted out by her family. The author also sold his house and put the money in an untouchable trust for a year and lived as a homeless person for the year. Unsurprisingly he's divorced
You seem to be creating a black and white (sorry) distinction between "ghetto" black people and yourself, "the whitest guy you'll ever meet." I have friends who are clearly not ghetto but at the same time, would never be called Oreos.
Do you really think that blackness is so narrowly defined by "ghetto" behavior? Also, you should read this book.
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, by Philipe Bourgeois, is an ethnography of street-level drug dealers written by an anthropologist. It's very readable for an academic analysis.
Makes Me Wanna Holler, by Nathan McCall, is an autobiography written by a gang-member-turned-journalist. It offers an unapologetic look at his experiences.
Public Enemies, by Bryan Burroughs, doesn't focus on the personal experiences and perspectives of gang members in the same ways. But it offers an interesting account of some of the big-name gangs and gang members of the 1930s and the FBI response.
If you're interested, I could suggest a few good sociology books for you to read. It's not always as dry as you might think.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Search-Respect-Structural-Analysis-Sciences/dp/0521017114
https://www.amazon.co.uk/McDonaldization-Society-George-Ritzer/dp/1483358941
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managed-Heart-Commercialization-Human-Feeling/dp/0520272943
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Class-Socialism-Lindsey-German/dp/0906224543
Interesting question. Off the top of my head, I would say that makes you not so much 'a feminist' as 'a person whose viewpoint has been influenced by feminism'. Personally, I don't think you can really call yourself a feminist if you don't believe in patriarchy, as in the idea that women are historically oppressed as a class, but that is a big discussion and not one I intend to get into here.
By the way, you say you 'really don't believe in a contemporary patriarchy' - what about the likes of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? Is patriarchy not expressed through the machismo of certain Latin American culture and households? If it was considered relatively normal for Latino men to beat their wives and have control over the household finances, (that's a big 'if', I know), would that not be considered a form of patriarchy? You might like to take a look at In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, which could be said to portray a patriarchal society, in terms of the social norms and household arrangements of the subjects. Obviously, it depends a bit on what you mean by 'patriarchal', but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to refer to these families in that way.