I generally agree with the points that speakeasy and Gio just made. In harsher environments, harder men are more valuable, and that is true the world over.
Here is why I think Black America is the most extreme of all of those situations, however: they choose this lifestyle, while others do not.
Life is hard in much of Latin America and the Caribbean. American sociologists go on and on about how disadvantaged Black Americans are, and perhaps they have a point when you compare them relative to other Americans. However, the fact of the matter is that black Americans are an order of magnitude wealthier than Latin Americans, Caribbeans, Africans and most Eastern Europeans.
On a per capita basis, they are just much, much richer than your average Colombian, Jamaican, or Brazilian. They enjoy far higher standards of living, access to far more comforts and social welfare(aid that poorer, more corrupt governments cannot provide as reliably if at all) and generally just benefit immensely from living in the world's lone superpower. As a Jamaican myself, I can tell you that the average inner-city "hoodrat" here in the US has a much easier time than your run of the mill Jamaican. That is just the sad fact of the matter-poverty on THAT level is just not seen much in the US.
Of all of these people, Black americans have by far the least incentive to glorify impoverished street life. They have access to far more pathways out of it than others do, and yet nobody aspires to that hard-luck lifestyle more than modern Black america.
Thugs get tons of play in Jamaica and they make a lot of babies, but as someone who has lived there I can tell you that it is far, FAR easier to be a "nice guy"(speak proper english, work hard in school, etc) there than it is in Black america as far as acceptance goes. My entire family there is like me, and they have no issues there. They find attractive young women and get plenty of respect. People there don't consider a peer who actually aspires to be something a "sellout". Envy is real and confrontation happens(it is a 3rd world country-death is just part of everyday life for many), but they're not going to question your racial or national identity because you tried to make something of yourself.
But in Black america? Play the "nice guy" role and you will:
-Be labelled an oreo/uncle tom/sellout
-Suddenly be "Not black enough"
-Have no chance with black women.
-Endure a high risk of assault in school.
Black americans with higher grades have fewer friends. No,
seriously, its
been studied.
In Black america, you'll see blacks who have absolutely
nothing to do with real streetlife or the hood going out of their damn way to look like they're thugs. Half of modern hip-hop is filled with artists like that. Then you have the thoroughly middle class black kid (two educated, professional parents, owns a home, minivan, etc) running around trying to mimic drug dealers or worse, actually moving to deal drugs.
In these other parts of the world, people are responding to difficult lives. Tough guys get play in Brazilian favelas because murder is not rare. To survive as a Jamaican in Tivoli Gardens or any part of inner-city Kingston requires a TRULY hard resolve. You can get shot just sitting in school-these wannabe tough black Americans have no idea what goes on out there.
In black America, its just empty glorification. They don't have it nearly as hard as these Jamaican, Brazilian, and Albanian gangsters but they really want to look like they do. So you see black girls with ivy League degrees becoming thug-chasing groupies and private school educated boys running around with gang tats, dreads and all of this "swag", pretending to be tough. You see them going out of their way to ostracize and reject their peers who don't join them in this posturing for "being too white" because the whole damn culture is so insecure about its image.
That ostracization doesn't happen in Jamaica, Russia, Brazil and other places because there, people are not
pretending to be tough and expecting you to go along with the act. They're simply hardened by a life that is
actually difficult(corrupt governments, police death squads, no rule of law, no welfare, no federal aid, no civil rights, etc), which allows them to actually have a little more respect for people who make something of themselves, get educated, and get away from it. Black Americans don't know that hardship to the same extent, so they can't respect that achievement. Instead, the females claim those men to be "too soft" and everyone else insists they're "too white, uncle toms".
Yeah, women in tough environments admire tough men. But in Black America, unlike all of the other places you listed, much of that "toughness" is
artificial. It is manufactured by the media and the culture and then mimicked by people who have no business doing so.
As for the extent of the worship, consider this: "Thugs" and those who try to mimic them are symbolic of modern black american culture, some of the first images that come to mind when people think of that population (ex. Lil Wayne, 50 Cent). About how many other modern cultures can you really say this? In how many other cultures are thug poseurs(tatted up, posturing and talking about murder, chains, grills, etc) and wannabe tough guys among the most visible ambassadors?
There is not a culture on earth that promotes that ghetto-worship more, that makes a greater effort to put that behavior to the forefront even if there's no real need to do so and works harder to pressure even its affluent members to join the charade.