‘Crips and Bloods: Made in America’, directed by Stacy Peralta, is a documentary that delves into the development and longevity of two of the most prominent gangs in the United States, the Crips and the Bloods. The documentary is a visual representation of the oppression and racism Black communities, particularly in the Los Angeles area, faced. It examines several external institutions in our society and how those institutions helped create the long-lasting internal hatred that exists in these communities. Several sociological concepts and terms can help us to further analyze and understand why these gangs had such impact in these communities. The Crip’s organization, short for Community Resources for Independent People, was founded in response …show more content…
In the documentary, Kumasi talks about a moment where a police officer asks him numerous questions that he knows the officer would only ask to a person of color. He states, “What do you think that does to me psychologically? What message am I being fed, every day? Every day, he is feeding me a spoonful of hatred!” This moment of inferiority and dehumanization caused by the officer towards Kumasi, and many men of color, is a clear representation of the damage that has been caused in these communities. In return from all the prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes, these men are led to question their positions in their society and can even go on to feeling hatred towards both themselves and members in their communities. Kumasi asks “Am I gonna attack myself, am I gonnna attack my brotha, am I gonna attack my own image in the mirror, or am I gonna to attach the cause of my anger and my frustration?” This statement touches upon both the reflection of self and how symbolic interactionism affects Kumasi’s understanding of his own self. Symbolic interactionism states that all social interactions are symbolic. This interaction between Kumasi and the police officer make it clear that there is a sense of disrespect between the two through the language that is being
Crips had begun terrorizing their own neighborhoods and no longer protected themselves from society, instead they became gangbangers and protected themselves from
Andrew Diamond examines several Chicago gangs and multiple other movements in Chicago during the end of the 1950s through the 1960s. Diamond follows Dr. Martian Luther King Junior’s ambition to desegregate Chicago, the most segregated city in the United States. King focused his attention first to the West Side’s most notorious black street gangs. This source shows how racial solidarity within the city and youth gangs became a vital source of inspiration for the civil rights movement that was developing during this period. This article suits those who are studying the impact that gangs have on urban community, influences and inspiration for black West Side Chicagoans, historians, and other academic professionals.
How well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.
The Power Behind “Just Walk on By” In Brent Staples article “Just Walk on By”, Staples shares his thoughts on the way marginalized groups interact. He uses his own experiences as a young African American man to shed light on how people can have implied biases that affect the way they treat other people. Staples does this to demonstrate how society develops preconceived notions in the minds of individuals about marginalized groups, primarily African American men, which are often a flawed representation of the people within these groups. The rhetoric he uses is key to developing an understanding persona and an emotional appeal that exposes the implied biases of people without alienating or offending the audience, to whom-- among others-- he attributes these biases.
In reading Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, by Beverly Tatum, I have found myself identifying with the six steps which Helm’s believes to model the development of white racial identity, and realize I have yet to complete these steps. While I have not experienced exactly what Tatum says is included in each step, my experiences do closely mirror the steps which I have gone through. Most of my childhood can be described as white. I grew up in a small white town, went to a small white school, and have a small white family; for a while, I even lived in a small white house.
A gang is an interstitial group, originally formed spontaneously, and then integrated through conflict. Crips are a famous street gang founded in Los Angeles California in 1969. They are known to be one of the most violent and unlawful gangs within Los Angeles. Crips main activities included theft and assault. The founders of the Crips gang are Raymond Washington and Stanley Tookie Williams III.
Instead the police often challenge black people for walking or driving. This leaves the communities frightened of police rather than feeling supported. In society today, the fear and violence in which the author lived when growing up in Baltimore still continue on. The growing media coverage of police brutality and racial injustice in the United States can be described as “An Event”. Because of all these issues taking place, many in society are becoming psychologically impacted never forgetting the events they have experienced.
In the United States, every year there are around 2,000 gang-related homicides and in the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton, it explores the issues of gang violence, and teenagers in gangs. Around 40% of all members in gangs are teenagers, who are getting involved in some dangerous things very early in life. In the novel The Outsiders, the “Greasers” which is a gang of all teenagers, fight other gangs and commit serious crimes such as murder. We as a society need to pinpoint why teenagers join gangs and stop them beforehand. We also need to help people get out of gangs if they are already in one.
His neighbors portray him as someone who is not to be trusted and his color indicates prone to violence. At the workplace, Michael is reluctant to share his personal encounters of racial profiling, he felt inferior about himself especially sharing his personal experience with white coworkers. Michael is experiencing Stereotype Vulnerability it made him feels vulnerable and suffer low self-esteem. Furthermore, institutional racism has been the norms, customs and practices of social institutions towards black
By the preliminary year of 1990s, the crack period that engulfed New York City in the 1980s was on the path to failure and delinquency percentages were correspondingly decreasing. But Randol Contreras noticed something special on the roads in South Bronx community where he grew up. Randol observed how his drug-distributing friends were no longer making money from retailing crack, but were revolving to mugging other dealers for a progressively deteriorating segment of the drug domain. Randol Contreras wrote the book, The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream. Randol shadowed a unit of Dominican males from streets of New York who were born at the end of the Crack Era.
Racism is still alive and well. Over the past week, we had the opportunity to view and hear two different scenarios about racism. This paper is going to focus on the comparison and contrasts of the video True Colors with the guest speaker, Adriel A. Hilton, Ph.D., information and experience regarding racism. The comparisons between these two situations regard education and sophistication, white privilege, and public harassment and treatment, while the contrasts focuses on the time period, different scenarios, and the information provided by Peggy McIntosh.
During his time studying these boys, he found that most cases of conflict were resolved without the use of weapon(s), but rather with “harsh conversation”. This observation highly contradicts the typical view of gang members who are commonly stereotyped by their local community and justice system in Oakland. Rios describes how the boys “Conversations often involved references to guns as analogies for resolving conflict and demonstrating manhood”. The fact that most conflicts are dealt with in non-violent ways, highlights the negative role
The array of neighborhoods in the center southern California holds nest to the notorious Crips and the Bloods. The documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America starts with the generation before the blue and red covered the streets. Thorsten Sellin’s pioneering on conflict theory best describes the development of the gangs. There were two waves of cultural conflict that led up to the Bloods and Crips. The primary culture conflict derived in the 1950s, segregation defined norms that strictly separated blacks and whites.
Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.
At first I was extremely excited to read this autobiography and learn about the gang culture. Having lived in Southern California my entire life, I have heard a great deal about the Crips and the Bloods and their