Crips and Bloods: Made in America

This documentary I watched talked about the lead up to the 1960's "race riots" in LA where blacks were fighting each other. Prior to this, L.A. accepted their consciousness when everybody was joining or instigating groups that were fighting the power other than fighting other gangs. LA was attractive to the African Americans because it stood for more of what they believed of the "American Dream". Although, LA didn't have the same laws that the south upheld with color divided bathrooms, schools, and restaurants, etc. LA did have a strong influence on segregated housing that kept blacks in certain areas of the city. The wealthiest blacks and the poorest blacks lived side by side because of the restricted housing. During this time people were working towards bettering their communities and looking for equality within. Soon after industrialization and and factories jobs increased but soon after  everyone lost those jobs due to technology coming into place.  Hundreds of jobs were taken away in automobile factories and many more. Soon the children would be doing worse than their parents. Within years the most influential black leaders had either been locked up or killed, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Medgar Evers, and many more.

After this was all over a new element rose called the "crips" and the violence began to begin again in a new form. The Crips were the generation that was disconnected from the black movement of change. The Crips formed in the late 1960s in Fremont High School, LA.  The founding member was Raymond Washington. Rival gangs formed an alliance called "Bloods".  Blue stood for Crips and Red for Bloods. These gangs took their own hardship in their lives out on each other, "kill or be killed". Bloods and Crips took over the streets of South LA creating their territories. Certain grocery stores, parks, alley ways, and schools were all considered their "turf". Many members hadn't left a 10 block radius their whole life. A member of one of the gangs said, "never allow yourself to show feelings or emotions, except for brutal force" or else you will be scene as weak. The own members admit that respect is actually fear. If you respect one you really just fear them.  Kids join these gangs in search for a family and protection, they find a gang to avoid being a victim. These children began carrying guns from the ages of 10-13 and sometimes having several guns. They no longer fought each other physically it was only gunfights. The first time using a gun "your jittery and nervous" but then you become numb. The gangs are constantly playing tag and trying to one up the other. The whole game is based off of retaliation which is a vicious cycle. A gang member says that he struggles with his moral issues a lot because he knows "this is not the way God or society intended it to be but I have to put the moral state of mind behind me and become and animal".

I found the documentary extremely interesting to see how what we learned about in class with the civil rights movements and LA riots and how it came into place with the two largest gangs, Bloods and Crips. This documentary shows how this lifestyle is bound onto the younger generation because of the unstable homes that already are involved in drugs. These children didn't have the support and were misguided due to their unstable living circumstances. A study was done at UCLA that stated, "children in South LA are exhibiting greater levels of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) than children of a similar age in Baghdad, the war torn capital of Iraq." It is the next generation that needs to be saved from the vicious cycle.

America still isn't free, people in this specific area don't have the right to walk down any street they choose.