Gang Violence: Productive Or Destructive?

Productive or Destructive As far as we know, there are more than a half-a-million criminally active street gang members in the U.S. today. There are many different gangs; some are street gangs, prison gangs, motorcycle gangs, and so forth. But, right now, I am pointing specifically at street gangs. Street gangs have changed my life growing up from a child to adult. “Gang violence” and “social disorder” seems to go hand-in-hand or is synonymous in the United States. They have spread across the country, creating fear and challenging police and others’ to prevent or suppress their activities. I am from Detroit, and today’s urban youth feel like they have to claim a hood or gang. In the inner city, there are literally gangs on every street, including
side streets. According to the 2011 National Gang Survey, there are an estimate of more than 20,000 gangs and 700,000 gang members throughout the United States. Street gangs are responsible for over 56% of the crime in this country. To a much larger degree, firearms cause over 90% of all gang-related homicides. It is factual that roughly 30,000 people in the United States are killed by gunfire each year.” With so many poverty stricken areas in urban areas all over the country, you’ll begin to notice that urban youth are prevalent among street gang members.
You’ll also notice that gang violence can be used as a mean of making money and that not every gang member is poor. For instance, let’s take a look at some of the biggest gangs in the United States, there are the police officers, the U.S. military, and other, “professional organizations,” who are considered self-productive instead of self-destructive. Productivity seems to be the only difference between what is considered a “gang” and what is considered an “organization.” With many of the social injustices going on in today’s society, especially the ones that are coming from those who supposedly “protect and serve,” isn’t it fair to say that police officers are gangs, right? With the uprising of awareness of police brutality and unjust traffic stops, is it fair to defend the rebuttal of “Police Lives Matter?” As an advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), I understand that we cannot bully the police into submission, which isn’t an intention, but it is heavily believed by the WASPS that it is a goal of ours. We are not against police officers, we are against police brutality. Given that the police serve a useful purpose and are greatly needed to curtail the senseless crimes, “bad apples” definitely ruins the entire tree. While recognizing that there are a more than a few bad apples, I don’t think that I can morally justify crucifying the entire police
force.
A big problem today is that the generations have changed for the worst instead of “changing for the better.” We have more problems today than we have solutions. Destruction, Havoc, and Devastation, it’s self-inflicted. We’ve seen the effects of slavery, they led to trust and disbelief within the black race. But since slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, why are we still in disbelief and why do we have so much hatred in our hearts for each other today? We are sucking the very life out of each other thinking that it is the white man keeping us down. Whether it's true or not, I am sick of people saying that there is nothing that we can do because we are minorities, we have less than the white people. But that’s only because we are constantly killing ourselves, breaking up our race. We need to rebuild by controlling our own actions. There are plenty of things black people can do to defeat the stereotype. Let's make the “White man keeping the Black Man down” statement false. Don't let yourself be kept down. Lets get ahead by getting an education and experience. Recently, i’ve had the time to read a letter called, “How To Keep A Black Man Down” from a guy named Willie Lynch. To summarize it all up, he is saying that you must put the black males against each other and break the bonds of them. This letter was written many years ago but it worked and still is working to this very day. Diseases and murders are two of the biggest reasons why the black male can’t get ahead, not the white male and the government.
We’ve had leaders die for our race, because they wanted to give us knowledge of what was happening, i.e. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; but how many of us can say that we’re walking in their vision? How many of us can say that we understand what they stood for? It’s time to start taking accountability for your actions. When our ancestors marched through the streets during the Civil Rights movement, they didn’t give up, they didn’t quit. They kept moving forward to make a way for us. I am thankful for that, because I am here today and I am living equality and integration. During the 1960’s most of them didn’t even have an education but they knew right from wrong. They knew what was going on and they wanted to be a part of the solution and not the problem.
With the uproar of today’s culture, there are rappers/poets like Lupe Fiasco and Chance The Rapper, who tell stories within their music about how they have grown from gang violence and explains that there are lies that are being told just to just to send you spiraling downward. They also talk about how they didn’t listen to them, because growing up in the hood he know how to distinguish the truth from a lie. Lupe Fiasco’s father taught him “not to listen to lies,”. Then he explains that, “just because something looks good, doesn’t mean that it is good for you.” From my annotation, in this one verse, Lupe Fiasco covered the fact that there that gang violence is probably the most harmful way of expressing yourself; gangbanging and violence does not make you a man. Misguided masculinity is what’s happening with our urban cultures today.