Political Science 505
Boyz in the Hood
The film Boyz in the Hood is a 1991 film directed by John Singleton. It is about three young men named Tre, Ricky and his brother Doughboy who grow up in South Central Los Angeles, a dangerous area in Los Angeles, California. While Ricky and Doughboy grow up in a single mother household, Tre lives with his mother at the beginning of the movie. But after Tre gets in trouble for behavioral problems at school, he is sent to live with his father, a strong-willed man with a tough as nails approach, who teaches Tre about responsibility and being a man. One element the movie examines is the importance of family relationships. While Tre has a relationship with his father and mother, …show more content…
While Ricky is well behaved and polite, she has no control over her son Doughboy. Since there is no father figure present, Doughboy spent a lot of time on the streets, basically being raised by the streets. Because of the lack of stability within his household, Doughboy didn’t learn the life lessons of manhood, and he paid for it too. He ended up joining the notorious Crips street gang, went to prison for stealing, and becoming a drug dealer. He also ended up getting murdered at the end of the movie (this is stated in the film’s epilogue, not visibly shown). Dan Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” states, “As a direct result of this high rate of divorce, separation, and desertion, a very large percent of Negro families are headed by females. If he had a good relationship with his father, he might not have ended up going down the violent and destructive path. When children growing up in these types of conditions don’t have a father figure in their lives, they spend a lot of time with their friends and they surround themselves with violent people, they will become violent themselves. They end up getting involved with street gangs and they get themselves into very dangerous predicaments, often ending up with disastrous results. Doughboy is a representation of what happens to a majority of black males living in a fatherless home. His fate is the fate of many black males growing up in these areas without a