Ambiguity In Born To Run

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?

Barking to the Choir is a powerful novel that articulates about the life of several gang members in Los Angeles County and their redemption. Father Gregory Boyle, the author of this book and the founder of Homeboy Industries, entered Los Angeles when gang violence was at its peak. Although Father Boyle has gone out of his way to give hope to communities where gang culture is prevalent, has given guidance and mentorship to youth and adults that society has deemed as unworthy, as a Sociologist we have to critique his reflexivity and his acceptance to communities of color.

Prior to being assigned the reading of the memoir “Always Running”, by Luis Rodriguez, I had never given much thought on juveniles involved in gang life. Rodriguez achieved success as an award-winning poet; sure the streets would no longer haunt him - until his own son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the vivid memoir, “Always Running.” “Always Running” is the compilation of events Luis experienced during his youth in San Gabriel. The theme of the book is to always strive for the best things in life and to always take a stand for what you believe. Lured by the seemingly invincible gang culture of East L.A., he witnessed countless shootings and beatings, as well as senseless acts of street crime against his friends and family members. As a Latino in a poor neighborhood, Luis struggled through criticism, stereotypes, and mistreatment. With the help of his mentor, Chente, Luis saw a way out through education and the power of word to successfully break free from years of violence and desperation.

Throughout the song, Tupac gives an inside look on the social problems affecting African-Americans and suggests possible solutions. In the first stanza of the song, Tupac first talks about how certain social issues are linked together; he makes a correlation between his skin color and being poor. Tupac says “I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.” Then he explains how poverty causes crime by saying “My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.” And finally, he demonstrates the relationship between police brutality and race by saying “Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.”

To help understand Tupac’s poem, you must grasp yourself around the image of a very young boy, who has no father, grew up in the rougher parts of New York, and was barely supported by his mother.

In his novel Tattoos on the Heart, author Father Gregory Boyle S.J. shares his experiences as a pastor in the gang capital of the United States, Los Angeles, in an attempt to persuade his readers to look at gang members with a more humane perspective. To help his readers relate to the gang members, Fr. Boyle recounts personal anecdotes about the many gang members he works with and their journeys towards changing their lives. Through his use of colloquial language and informal diction and his narration of personal stories, Fr. Boyle creates an intimate tone accomplishes his purpose of discrediting the stereotypes associated with gangs and depicting a human face worthy of respect and sympathy. Though Boyle published this novel in 2010, his insight and wisdom on the state of gang violence still hold true today, and he continues to inspire his readers to recognize the tragedies many gang members face in their everyday lives.

In “Tattoos on the Heart,” by Gregory Boyle, Boyle experiences how to deal with gangs. The novel, a compelling story about gang violence and one man’s response towards giving those buried within it, tells a story of gang members working for a chance of redemption and solace. Can others be seen as fathers or even as a role models when gang life is such a large force in their lives? Through the story gangbangers that try to change themselves for the pursuit of a better future and a desire to succeed and escape gang life, Boyle tells an emotional, human story about life in the Los Angeles barrios. Boyle characteristics represent him as a father for three gang bangers: Joey Cesar, and Scrappy. While

In the 1991 drama “Boyz in the Hood”, Written and Directed by John Singleton. He successfully attempts to portray what life was like and in some areas in America still is for African Americans living in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. It displays a portrait of the harsh realities that plagues the black community and by displaying uninviting living conditions that is South Central L.A, Singleton aims to share to the world the self-destructive deviant behavior that is to this day, destroying the African American community. Some of the self-destructive deviant behaviors include gang life, selling drugs, and gun violence. Various issues are displayed in this movie involving the black community including deviance, poverty, gentrification, the importance of a father in a young man’s life and black on black crime. Singleton displays a tale of three friends growing up in the “hood”, plagued by drugs and violence and layers textures over rough and compelling visuals of black culture that shows us what it means to come to maturity, or die trying, as a black male. In this essay, I will be giving a thorough analysis of the film, as well as covering certain points from the movie from a sociological perspective to explain why singleton chose to write this film.

The refrain goes like this, “When I look into your eyes / There’s just devils and dust”. Eyes are often used in poetry and in popular culture as a path to see what somebody really feels and how that person is really like in the inside. If in a person’s eyes “there’s just devils and dust” it shows that that person is troubled, haunted, and desolated. The visual image of “devils and dust” illustrates a godforsaken place, which is what that person’s soul has become. Following that the speaker tells his friend, Bobby, how they are a “long, long way from home”. These verses can have two meanings: they can refer to a soldier in a war (thus the relation with the Iraq War) or they could mean that we have strayed so far away from our values, from what we were founded upon, that this is no longer home, it is now a strange place. Many people argue, and with some justification, that the United States in the past years is becoming less and less like the country it was founded to be. The verse, “I feel a dirty wind blowing” once more takes us to the Iraq War since it evokes the image of a desert. It also relates, together with the “finger on the trigger”, to the Wild West, which seems to be where Springsteen has gotten most of the imagery for his CD (as it can be seen in songs with titles such as “Black Cowboys” and “The Hitter”). The Wild West used to be a treacherous place, which relates with the

The movie Boyz N the Hood is an illustration of how a group of early adolescents’ lives was affected negatively due to the environment they lived in. These adolescents lived in an environment where drugs, gangs, and shootings were the center of their community. Living in a predominantly African American community these adolescents were faced with many misfortunes. Ricky one of the adolescent characters I have decided to evaluate for this particular paper was faced with adversity.

Independently, Shakur’s lyrics suggest the inequalities he has experienced throughout his life and of his race in general. In the first verse, Shakur expresses his upbringing without a father and the struggles with the racial tension in his neighborhood. He implies that he has been pushed into a world of violence and crime because of his low socioeconomic status. He states that peace can only be attained if the African Americans are offered a place in the society. The second verse focuses upon the broader oppression of the black body where he addresses the police violence and inequalities of the system. His lyric analyzes the violence in the streets and the fear of police officers that are willing to shoot him because he appears threatening. Finally, the third verse expresses that he is still waiting on things to change, yet the answer is not present. The greater meaning to his

Boyz in the Hood is a statement of how urban youth have been passed a legacy of tragic indifference, and the writer has shown that it is an almost inescapable fate for those born into racism and poverty to repeat the patterns they wish to escape. The movie’s characters are clear representations of how the system fails young black youth in the United States, and the difference one mentor can make for these kids. During segregation young black children became targets for white brutality. This movie reflects what the European mentality and what it has done to the African American culture.

The short story “Flood” by Daniel Alarcon, focuses on a town that is “flooded” with gang conflicts and the gangs are the ones who run the townspeople fate, despite what they do to escape the conflicts. In the short story a child is the narrator and although, children are portrayed as innocent; throughout “Flood” the children represent the contrary of that idea and the reader is able to recognize the “young gangster” in them. The setting of the story is significant because it is how the characters identify themselves and who they are as individuals. Whether the characters recognize themselves as gang members or innocent civilians, part of their everyday lives if overruled by the gangs, due to their ongoing conflict and disagreements over

When the Joyner starts to rap, he first sets the tone of the song. “Woke up at 7, my day seemed more than I prayed for, Got dressed to head out and ride to school on my skateboard” while the line seems to be very basic to others, Joyner tells the listener this to give a sense of innocents to the character throughout the story. Right after Joyner shows innocents of the high school kid, he follows the two lines with “New kid in class I sat alone takin' notes while the hoodlums were makin' jokes at the clothes that my momma paid for”. By now Joyner has also told us what type of neighborhood and kids that the innocent kid is dealing with in his school. Using the term “hoodlums” tells

King of Rock n Roll, Elvis Presley, had a song in 1969 that took a drastic turn in theme from many of his other tunes relating to love, dancing and rock n roll. This song tells a tragic story which has very realistic connotations to the social problems of crime and poverty that were not only applicable to 1960s society but to our 21st century society. In this paper I will examine that song, titled “In the Ghetto”, highlight how the themes of the song relate to social disorganization, and further examine how the main character’s neighborhood takes the characteristics of a socially disorganized ecological environment perfectly.