Crips

A member of the United States House of Representatives, David Reichert, said it best when he said, “gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas” (“Dave Reichert Quotes”). Gang membership and gang-related crimes have been around since as early as 1783 on the United States’ East coast; however, youth affiliation with gangs was…

The CIA has over 60 years history of smuggling drug into certain American neighbors and cities. The CIA was created from the National Security Act of 1947. The CIA has been involved in heroin trafficking from the Turkey-Marseille’s connection to the Asian Connection in the early 1950’s to the 1970’s. But the CIA was mostly noted for their involvement in the cocaine epidemic in 1980’s. Before I write about the cocaine epidemic of the 1980’s. We should look at the involvement of the CIA in…

Having a large population of people of color, Los Angeles has been a site of racial tensions between Latinos and Blacks. In the mid-2000’s, there was a conflict between two street gangs. Florencia 13, which is a Latino gang, and East Crips, which is a black gang, had a street war over having control of the drug trade in Florence and Firestone, this later became seen as a racial war between both gangs (Quinones, 2007). Marking and respecting territory have been societal factors that tend to fuel…

Not only has she been picked apart for her words but she has also been picked apart and slandered for doing a celebratory dance at the England Club 2012 Olympics. In “Citizen” Rankine stated that, “The American media reported “and there was Serena… Crip-walking all over the most lily- white place in the world … You couldn’t help but shake your head….. What Serena did was akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church…. What she did was immature and classless.” The fact that it was…

One of the most notorious and unapologetic groups in n rap of the 1980s, N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitude), helped to redefine rap as something that could be intelligent, transformative, and socially aware. You can hear the influences of satire, funk, and realism in their lyrics as well as the impact of artists like Public Enemy, Prince, and RUN DMC. One of their most iconic songs, ‘Fuck Tha’ Police’ was listed on Rolling Stone 's: Greatest Songs of All Time, but it goes much deeper than that. I…

a. Culture/pg. 34: The language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material objects that characterize a group and are passed from one generation to the next. Culture is a broad term describing the way people live. Each area in the world occupies a different culture. Each culture therefore has its own norms and expectations. In the United States we have the culture described as being a melting pot. One agreement across all cultures that occupy and exist in the United States is the…

Organized crime has had an enormous impact on drug and human trafficking, loansharking and other criminal activities. Crime groups are extremely hard to dismantle because of the way they run their crimes. Unlike street gangs, organized crime groups are extremely intelligent in the crimes they wish to partake in and they put time and effort into committing criminal activities. With an abundant amount of information on organized crime groups, this paper aims to concentrate on one particular group…

One controversial issue that has been around for centuries is racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is the unfair treatment or bias against someone or a group of people on the basis of their race. Around the 1870s, Jim Crow laws came into effect. These laws emphasized the racial segregation in state and local laws after the Reconstruction period in the United States. Jim Crow laws affected the United States in the biggest way possible by encouraging one race to hate the other and bringing…

that illustrated the peaceful and typical side of their lives. Mike Ross claims “The Pharcyde were trying to dodge bullets, not shoot them.” What about the kid who didn’t slang dope and pop gats? What about the young man from Crenshaw who wasn’t a Crip or a Blood? The Pharcyde’s music spoke to these individuals in these communities and all throughout the country, because these “other” who did not engage in the gangster lifestyle were actually the…