The Bloods And Crips: What Makes Up A Group

Groups. What are they? What makes up a group? What can be considered as a group and who can be part of them? These are all good questions. I hope to answer all of them for you throughout my essay. Groups is defined a “people who think of themselves as belonging together and who interact with one another, are the essence of life in society”(Henslin). The Bloods and Crips are two of the most notorious groups (gangs) none to mankind. After reading about Kody Scott’s situation in becoming part of the Bloods I feel that this is part of his in-group and the Crips would be considered part of his out-group. Let’s use another example here. Take a look at the US Military. This can be considered as a group right? Yes, it can. You ask or are asked to
join. I guess one could consider boot camp as part of their initiation. In the military your in-group would be everyone that you serve with including those of other branches and squads. Your out-group would be considered the enemy or anyone that poses threat to you or your country. Kody’s primary group would be his friends within the Bloods that he hung out with the most. The same thing would go for someone in the military, those that are in your own platoon, squad or company depending the branch you are in would be your primary group. Secondary groups would be the people that are in the same “gang” or “branch”, but you are not as close to them as you are to those that you are with every day. Another good example of this would be myself. When I was in the Navy, I was assigned to a company as we called it and this group of guys I was very close with. We knew the other companies and would protect them just as we would our own, but we had a special bond within our group. This would be the same with Kody. Those that he hung with day in and day out he would do anything and everything it took to protect and impress them as those that he did not he would still protect them, but would possibly not do quite as much. Reference groups in this case for Kody would be those of the past.
Groups like the Hells Angels, Billy the Kid’s gang, the mobsters and even those that were Bloods in the past and may have either been killed or died. The same pretty much goes for the men and women in the military we as soldiers reference the men and women that served before us. We look back on what they did and learn from them. We see how society treated some of them when they come home from war or even while they were in war. This same thing goes for the individuals in the Bloods and Crips. Society treated them all like they were trash all though many of them did not have much of a choice due to their upbringing or maybe even their parents running off and leaving them to fend for their
selves. The text book asked the question. Could you shoot someone in cold blood if asked to do so? In Kody’s situation he did have a choice, he could have chosen to not pull the trigger, but there could have been consequences in doing so. The other Bloods could have beat him again or even worse they could have shot him for not doing what they ask. In the military it is almost the same scenario. When asked to shoot someone this is an order from your superior and you must follow it. Just as with Kody there are consequences for not following an order. You can be punished for not following an order, you could be killed by your enemy because they are shooting at you just like you are asked to do to them. I know you are probably asking the question, why Kody didn’t just leave the group (gang). Well it is not that simple. Many groups/gangs like the Bloods have what they call blood in, blood out. This means that you suffer a loss of blood when you join just as Kody did when they beat him, but you also suffer a blood loss on the way out and this is usually by death. In the military, yes you could choose to leave, but once found you will be brought up on charges of desertion and during war time the sentence could be the death penalty. So now you see that a street gang is not too different from that of the military. I am not saying that the military goes out and kills innocent people like the Bloods or Crips would do. What I am saying is that you follow orders in a gang just as you would if you are part of the military. There are many different types of groups and many different things that these groups do.
Not all groups are considered as a “gang”. There can be groups within your work place. Pipefitters can be one group and carpenters can be another. Now let’s look at the college. You can have your scholar group, you can have your fraternity groups, your artistic groups, and the list can go on and on. So when looking at different groups one must not automatically judge them and make acquisitions about them. Anyone can join any group at almost any time, all it takes is asking the right person or getting to know the right person. However, there are groups out there that have secret members and not just any one can join. These groups add new members by recruiting them through members that they already have, so therefore there members are handpicked by their own
kind. Going back to my time in the military I guess I could say that I was a victim of conformity. There were about 12 men in my company many that joined the same time I did, but others that had been in the military for years. Some of these men out ranked me and some did not. I knew that the one who did not out rank me could not tell me what to do, but they still had influence over me. Because they had been in longer than me and seen more action than me I typically did whatever they did and whatever they said. Not only did this happen on the battle field, but also happened when we were able to take liberty. These men knew things I did not so I just followed in their lead and did as they did. Was some of these things wrong? Yes they were. Did I know that they were wrong at the time I did them? No I did not. As new recruits into any type of group you are going to fall victim of some type of conformity and if you say you have not then you have never truly been part of a group. In closing I will say this. No matter what group. No matter what gang. You will always have some type of initiation. You will always have someone that is over you telling you what to do and what not to do. Just keep in mind that you do have a choice and the choice is made at the time you are asked to join are you make the decision to try and join. You can make the choice at this time to not be part of that group or gang. So choose wisely.