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June 10, 2003

Ignoring gangs won't make them go away

I'm not from New York originally, and I don't live in the city anyway, so I don't know much about the street gangs out here. I probably don't know much about the street gangs in Illinois, either, even though that's where I'm from. On the other hand, I knew more than enough small-time gang members and part-time drug peddlers growing up in the eighties and nineties to know that gangs are no joke. Back home in "B-Town" it was the Latin Kings, the Vice Lords, and the Gangster Disciples, putting in work 24/7. In Los Angeles, it's the Bloods and the Crips, but from what I hear it's the same story everywhere. Crips killing Crips, not just Bloods killing Crips. In Chicago, it's Folks killing Folks, not just People killing Folks. The Spanish Cobras and Black Gangster Disciples started the Folk alliance in prison, while the Vice Lords and Latin Kings started the People. Yet, the gangs are so fragmented these days by constant police crack-downs on senior leadership that alliances and truces don't mean very much at all. Violence and chaos rule the streets and the down turn in the economy is just adding fuel to the fire. Murder rates are on the rise in cities across the nation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a hands-off approach to drugs or gang violence. I'm just saying gangs are still a big problem, and one we are not even close to solving, even if some people think that gangs are relics of the past:

The promotion of 50 Cent from bootleg king to god of the streets was PR genius. His handlers have played the angle magnificently. The attempts on his life come up repeatedly in interviews, and 50 is happy to provide embellishment. Even critics have bought into the mystique—review after review of 50's Get Rich or Die Tryin' cites his battle scars as evidence of his true-to-life depiction of the streets. On the cover of Rolling Stone, he posed with his back to the camera, exposing one of his wounds. Who knew nine bullet holes could be such a boon?

Now the banners are unfurling: "2003: the year hip-hop returned to the streets." You can thank 50 for that. Get Rich has been hyped as the most realistic representation of the ghetto since the heyday of Biggie. To its credit, the album turns down the bling factor considerably. 50 could care less about what whip you're pushing or the cut of your Armani. All that concerns him is your (preferably violent) downfall. Add in 50's work history in the narcotics trade and his random swipes at supposed wanksta Ja Rule and you have the makings of the most legitimate gangsta rapper since Jay-Z.

But not much more. At its core the hubbub around Get Rich and the return of gangsta rap is crack-era nostalgia taken to the extreme. Imagine—articulate young black men pining for the heyday of black-on-black crime. Like all nostalgia, neo-gangsta is stuck in history rather than rooted in current reality. The sobering fact is that the streets as 50 presents them, brimming with shoot-outs and crack fiends, do not exist. Of course, drugs are still a plague on America's house, and America's gun violence is a black mark on the developed world. But millennial black America is hardly the Wild West scene it was during gangsta rap's prime. Gangsta could once fairly claim to reflect a brutal present. Now it mythicizes a past that would fade away much faster without it.

The rest of the article is much fairer than the opening paragraphs suggest, and I suspect the editor played a role in that, but I still think Ta-Nehisi Coates needs to pick up a copy of the New York Times:

"It's bad," said Andy Rooks, the man who had pointed toward the shrine. "People don't want to come out. Those who aren't working, they might run to the store before 9 in the morning, then go back home and lock up."

"'Cause they know these boys will shoot you," said Mr. Rooks's friend, J. C. Pye.

"If you come out here tonight," said Mr. Rooks, "you won't see nobody." He mentioned that there was a library a few blocks down the street that had a small park behind it. "The children used to play in that park all the time," he said. "Not anymore."

The gunmen of Los Angeles, many of them gang members from South and East L.A., have turned their city into the murder capital of America. Los Angeles, which has a population of 3.7 million, led the nation in homicides last year, with 653. New York, with a population of eight million, had just 584 murders....

"The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone," said the Rev. Leonard Jackson, the president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches. "To say that there's a climate of fear is understating it."

During an interview in his office at the First A.M.E. Church of Los Angeles, he noted, "In certain areas you find mothers placing their youngsters in the bathtub to sleep, or having them sleep on the floor, for safety."

Or a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago's five police areas now have "gang strategy teams" meeting weekly to share intelligence and trade names of informants.

The plan unveiled at a police graduation ceremony marks City Hall's latest response to a surging murder rate. As of Thursday, there had been 244 homicides in Chicago this year, 23 ahead of a 2002 pace that saw the city with the highest murder rate of any big city in the nation.

"Gangs and drugs, when you look at it--that's about 50 percent of it. . . . We think we can cut it down," Mayor Daley said.

Or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Teenagers say they learn the codes quickly because wearing apparel that offends a gang member can provoke a beating.

Many kids dress according to what gang controls the neighborhood they will be walking through. The rules: Avoid wearing the colors of a rival gang, and never wear the dominant gang's apparel.

"You don't want to get caught wearing the wrong stuff," says a girl in East Orange, just outside of Newark. "They'll slash your face."

Keeping up with the dress code is difficult for investigators, who say it seems that every professional and college sports team has in some way been adopted by one gang or another. And stores have an abundance of merchandise to feed the trend.

Or visit the library and check out a copy of Always Running by Luis Rodriguez:

Gangs are not alien powers. They begin as unstructured groupings, our children, who desire the same as any young person. Respect. A sense of belonging. Protection. The same thing that the YMCA, Little League or the Boy Scouts want. It wasn't any more than what I wanted as a child.

Gangs flourish when there's a lack of social recreation, decent education or employment. Today, many young people will never know what is it to work. They can only satisfy their needs through collective strength - against the police, who hold the power of life and death, against poverty, against idleness, against their impotence in society.

Without definitive solutions, it's easy to throw blame. For instance, politicians have recently targeted the so-called lack of family values. But "family" is a farce among the propertyless and disenfranchised. Too many families are wrenched apart, as even children are forced to supplement meager incomes. Family can only really exist among those who can afford one. In an increasing number of homeless, poor, and working poor families, the things that people must do to survive undermines most family structures....

What's that? 6.1% unemployment? Two or three times higher in minority communities? Oh sure, gangs are a thing of the past. Almost a cliche. Right.

Posted by Mike at June 10, 2003 03:11 AM

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Posted by: lil juviy at September 8, 2003 02:09 PM

Posted by: Mike at September 8, 2003 10:50 PM

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