Tha Screets 4Life Essay Research Paper Tha

Tha Screets 4-Life Essay, Research Paper

Tha day before today I was gang banging around tha hood in tha Screet. Chillin at tha crib making snaps wit them old heads. Unless you where affiliated with a gang in some way you would not have a clue of what that meant. Gangs have been around for hundreds of years. The pirates in the early ages where some of the first real gangs. There are many types of gangs. A gang can also be a team, group, crew or a posse. They re just social groups of people in a local area, which are mostly the same, age and are in acts of violence. At lease, that s what everybody in our society seams to think. Thought the years there has become a difference between the original gangs and the gangs of the younger generation, that changed society s perception of gangs, which resulted in many stereotypes. The early gangs helped each other, while the gangs today are looking to be loved or notice by others, and then everybody in society have options about every thing that they do.

Back in the day, before all the guns and drugs, gangs where simple. All their was, were knifes, leather, and your hood and peeps. Back then, gangs were spontaneous and unplanned (Roth 698). There was no set leader, no set ways about doing things. If there was a fight going on and one of their members was in it the others would jump in too. Most original gangsters (OG) had an attachment to their hood or territory (Roth 698). They stood up for their set. If other people that they don t know come around started something. The gang would most likely get involved. In the 70 s is when the real gangs started, like the Bloods and the Crips (Sounder 33). The Bloods where a gang that started in LA and all they wore was red to represent the gang. Of course the Crips wore the color blue to represent that gang. This was the first sign to 5-0 that something was going on in the different neighborhoods. The use of graffiti was used to communicate with others, that show warnings, deeds, challenges and remorse of dead ones (Nawojczyk 3). With the lack of communication between all the gangs and the misunderstanding of society, they showed what they where felling with a can of spray paint. Respect is needed in the act of the members of a gang and the gang itself (1). If you don t have respect from you members then the whole gang falls apart. Because there is no power or upper hand that you hold in the group. Many of the older gangs needed these things to protect their neighborhood and come together as friends and help one another. Most of the OG s that did have to serve time, they learned the hard way of doing things in the world (sounder 33). After the bad days of there live they learned that are more things out there than gangs. You see many OG s that have settled down with a girlfriend of some kind and have kids and a job. It shows that there is a way out of bad things, which start off simple.

Gangs today have many young gangsters that look for involvement. Young kids join gangs in order to have a family (Roth 699). Kids today don t all have a mother and a father, house, car, and siblings. And even if they do, they lack the time and energy that is needed in a real family. So they look else where to find the attention of a family like environment. A 14-year-old gets a tattoo with the symbol of the gang that he was going to join, and his mother or father did not say anything (Atkin VI). All that young man wanted was to be notice. Maybe get a beating or get in some type of trouble but he didn t. Them the low-income, Inner City, poverty stricken kids with not that many jobs, or not thing to do the kids go to gangs for action (Clark 757). Much of the youth with no money look at gangs as a way to have a way to get easy money. Which they are normally found in the city where there is not a lot of money in the community. The youth gangs today are looking to achieve acceptance by their peeps (Roth 698). Most kids in the city had friends that were in a gang and pressured them into joining. The gang members also have nicknames for one another and an entire-language of slang where they are the only ones that understand (699). The real difference from the society is to show how different and unique they are. Their mothers gave them all common names that somebody in the world might have. But with a gang nickname, you are sure that it is a unique in different ways. Either how it is spelled or pronounces. The language of a gang differs, from gang to gang. Some have a whole language of slang, or just gang signs that only the members of the gang can understand. Which gives them a part of being set aside from society. Most gangs also have a leader and/or second-in-command (699). These leaders and semi-leaders are like the father or keeper of the group. The kings or presidents, are what they are called. They plan out the activities of the group while the vice president or the prince follows though with the plan. So with the fact of a leader that acts like a father it more like a family and that is the basic thing that kids today are looking for.

Stereotypes are every where, and everyone has their own opinion about gangs. The media forms society and they way that we thing about gangs. The first movies of gangs, like The Godfather, New Jack City, Rebel without a Cause, West Side Story, or Boyz n the Hood (Clark 765). Even if you don t look at movies then you read a story about one of these stories. All of t