filed under "things I don't get"

[mickeym]

I have Gangland on the television while I'm attempting to write working on my spn_j2_xmas story, and every so often I'll glance up and catch something that makes me think, WHUT?.

This particular episode is about the Nashville gang, Brown Pride. One of the guys they're interviewing goes by the street name "Spook". He's 18. He's been in the gang since the 4th grade. He talks about how he was "carrying heat" by the time he was ten (TEN! O_O), and his and his homeboys' version of fun is to just go out and jump people for the hell of it. That's their version of a videogame.

He's just so incredibly blase about the idea of hurting someone else, of doing violence. It's such a casual attitude, and where the HELL does that come from? What makes these kids think this is something that's okay, good, ideal?

Stuff like this makes me crazy. Also makes me wish there was an island somewhere, where all the gangbangers could be rounded up and dropped off onto. Let 'em fight each other and leave the rest of the world safer for the rest of us. *sigh*

Comments

[surevesta.livejournal.com]

It's their culture. The grew up in an environment with their peers (and/or family) that brought them into the gang scene. From there he learned from older kids and adults in the game how to act and interact.

Some people do buck 'norms', but many more go with what they see and experience as being right. He may know, distantly, that it is wrong... but with everyone around him telling him this is what you do and then showing him that that IS what they do... that is what he learned to do.

[tabularassa.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when you grow up surrounded by violence, with no love, and no positive role models. It breaks my heart that there are actually people in this world who think nothing of hurting others because that's all people have shown them. It's a vicious cycle, just like any other type of abuse. Makes me disgusted at the world we live in even more.

[zortified.livejournal.com]

I saw a documentary on Brown Pride and it was the stupidest documentary ever. It was like they had ten minutes of footage and had to stretch it out to an hour. They kept going on about how "bp" was the gang sign and OMG you can make it out in this oh-so-complicated graffiti (it was blatant) and they were all "OH MY GOD" bp stands for brown pride and they flash this gang sign at each other which was their fingers making a b and a p and OH MY GOD that's bp the gang name!

It was like gangs for kindergardeners. "If you take the first letter of each word of the gang's name, you can write it down on walls! And that's called a 'tag'."

It was insanely stupid, like they were trying to scare old white folks who've never encountered gangs except on tee vee.