African American Gang Culture Analysis

After many mixtapes and nearing the edge of household name status, Maryland rapper Logic drops his first album. In this album is a song titled Gang Related. This song tells the story of what environment and household he grew up in. His brother is in a gang and sells cocaine to his father in front of him. Logic's mother is in an out of mental institutions, all the while logic is growing up and trying not to get shot when he walks outside. With drugs and gangs all around him, it is quite amazing that he got out and become a famous rapper. Gang Related also has a core message of stopping the violence, which leads to a question, is this song about his story or a message about ending the violence?

When individuals decided to get involve in those type of activities many of them do it for specific reasons. For example, people join gang for acceptance, protection, and some are forced into it, because of their family are gang affiliated. Gangs partake endlessly in finding different method for individuals to more effectively get the things they want, particularly power. Therefore, people that are easily influenced tends to gravitate toward gang activities for recognition in the community. According to Goldman, Giles, & Hogg (2014), “Gang members’ actions impact other gang members as well as the wider community; everyone is at risk of being a victim of gang violence” (p. 825). Gang violence goes further than racial issue, but it more intensely touches African American and Latino communities.

Gang involvement and its associated violent crime have become a rapidly growing problem for the United States. Generally, gangs consist of young people of the same ethnic, racial, and economic background. Usually of a low socio-economic status, these gangs engage in illegal money making activities and intimidate their neighborhoods and rival gangs with violent crimes and victimization. Gang members exemplify a high value for group loyalty and sacrifice.

What influences youth to join and leave gangs in America? This essay strives to seek and inquire an answer or explanation to this question. I will try to approach the answer to this question by analyzing the biggest factors of it such as the influence of social institutions, psychological behaviour, media and many more to determine the push and pull factors of a gang. Understanding that the dynamics of gang membership can be separated into formation & joining which will allow theories & methods of gang-related research to be refined.

The two ethnic group I’ve chosen to discuss here are the Norteno and Sureno Hispanics, along with the Bloods and Crips of the African American cultures. Although the groups have several ethnic differences the political aspect of the sets they claim have several similarities. In terms of street gangs, Hispanic, and African American gangs dominate the world of gangs, in size, violence, drug distribution, and representation throughout the country and even internationally.

The last argument that relates to gang involvement is poverty. Poverty is an important factor to child rearing methods. Poverty in absolute terms of low income describes a range of key human attributes associated with poverty. This includes poor general health due to exposure to greater personal and environmental health risk. Poverty can also relate to education since they have no access to education and are often illiterate due to that. Youth in poverty must devote all of their resources to meeting basic needs for survival. For this fact, living in poverty compromises one’s ability to a decent life and any hopes of reaching self-actualization. To illustrate, youth who are raised in poverty would see others who are the same age with materialistic

Gang signals are a visual or verbal way gang members identify their connections. Graffiti, gestures, colors and tattoos are indicators of gang affiliation. Gang members have their own language, including phrases, gestures, tattoos, markers and graffiti. These tend to overlap. ... It is vital to recognize the signs of gang involvement.

Additionally, what kind of people are in gangs? Well first off, there are Latinos, which make up forty-nine percent of gang members '; African Americans, thirty-four percent; White, ten percent; Asian, six percent; and the other one percent is just the other category (“Facts About Gangs” 109). Also in 1996, according to the National Youth Gang Survey, the members of gangs were fifty percent under eighteen years old and fifty

There are many overlapping themes and ideas present within the research report and the textbook. One main idea that was present in both documents, was the cultural aspect of gang integration. In both the textbook and in the research report, culture is intrinsically linked to gang involvement, as often times the culture that an individual practices will impact their standing within a gang. Furthermore, culture binds people together, which also happens when an individual joins a gang of like-minded and culturally similar others. Another area that was discussed in both documents, was how gang activity is related to school. In the textbook, school and other educational and institutional systems either excluded youth, or were simply not attended

America was not founded by black people. Instead, Americans brought black people to America to use and sell them as slaves. Slaves were not respected, they were not equal, and they had no choice but to do as they were told. This happened for years and then finally laws were set up to abolish slavery. That did not necessarily make everything right. They were still a numerous amount of prejudice people that would not abide to these laws and would still treat them as if they had no rights. This situation has not been fixed to this day. The difference from years ago to now, there is not much light on it. There are still prejudice people today that do not treat blacks as white people. There are a number of movements that are trying to shed light

Gang affiliation is a major problem today. No parent would like to see their children in harms way or in a bad situation. Gang affiliation may make someone feel as if they are fitting in and etc. but it only causes more negative outcomes. It all begins with one mistake which then goes to how some people are for gang affiliation, leading to consequences because of that incident but there are many ways this can be prevented.

A mixture of different ethnic groups based on social disorganization theory can be a factor for gang involvement. As stated above immigrant children have a harder adjustment to the education in Canada, simply because they don’t understand English and don’t speak English at home. In high school there are often a mixture of different ethnic groups, and usually the same group of people attract each other. Hence, when immigrants who are new to the country and are doing poorly in school, have a higher chance of joining a gang.

Over the decade an emergence of the “youth gang culture” has seen its fair share of publicised scrutiny. With the increase in violent youth gangs becoming more of a reality the UK governments have had a distinctive and problematic issue with the youth of today’s society that choose to not confirm with the social norms. So what key factors attract people to this idea of being a Gang member?

This article provides literature to explain why certain boys join gangs using the Erikson life phases: industry versus inferiority stage and earlier. For this study, the researcher interviewed people who were associated with gang member or who was an actual gang member. The respondent are five experienced gang members in Los Angeles, an ex-gang member who is the intervention worker for the program, two Black high school teachers whom are natives in Los Angeles. One of the teacher stayed away from the gang, while the other teacher during his youth. The research program chose the teachers because of their status in the community now, and an active gang member who use an under covered name. From the study, researchers have enough information collected

In addition to his research, he mentioned that about 10% of youth in most low-income neighborhood join gang groups. On the other hand, Lubber (2007) suggests that gang subculture offers both structure and socialization in the absence of family or community. Their subculture fills the void of the family structure with a formal code of values and conduct, which includes rules and consequences derived from the gang ideology. He suggested that one reason youth join gangs and commit crime is for the brotherhood. When they have lack of communication or bad home environment, they look towards the gang because it shows them love and protection as if they were family. Moreover, Lubber stated that another reason why people join gang and commit crime