Why do men die over red and over blue? I can tell you right now it’s not because somewhere deep down inside these boys believe it’s worth it. They fight for what they perceive to be their family and that family just makes it a point to wear the colors on their crest. The Crips in L.A. will blow your head off your shoulders, if they feel like you have in some way violated their neighborhood, which carries a meaning of, “stay out” to all trespassers. The Bloods have spread all over the country and they will bleed for one another, but you’ve got to bleed just to get in a gang so prevalent and spastic as this. Gangs don’t trust a whole lot of people but many of them would spend a lifetime behind the concrete walls of a cell before they would violate their code of honor. Everyone in the ‘hood’ believes that snitches have their place lying in a ditch, so really it’s like the only choice for these gang members boils down to life or death. Will you let the circumstances eat you alive for the rest of your life and will you continue to watch your mama suffer or will you choose to do whatever it takes, by any means necessary? Their lifestyle is stiffly rebellion against the prewritten standards of a society, that chooses to place some men at the top and leave others drowning in the gutters. They rebel against the law that says thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal and they write their own books and their own laws. Laws like though shall not snitch, and don’t ever talk to the police. Not for no reason but because somewhere along the rocky road, in Americas stained history, men grew up with signs that read “Whites Only” and standing behind every brother like Martin Luther King Jr., was a man teeming with hatred for someone who hated him for no reason. They wrote rules like these because they figured out that they would always be black and they remained in slums because some of them started to believe the hype that they were second-class citizens. Some of them lived at a time when white police officers blasted black men down in the open streets with high powered water hoses and are even now still quite suspect of the authority put in place to protect. Gang members, I believe evolved from the bloodline that refuses to be taken for a fool, they are derived from the gene pool of slaves that chose to run and risk death than live under the thumb of an oppressor, so there remains this definite separation of peoples. Not just a separation between white people and black people but between Negroes and Niggas. The Negro told himself that one day we would rise above all this racial discrimination and hatred and grow to maybe even like one another. The Nigga told himself, “ The hell with society, if they don’t want us then we don’t want them. If they refuse try, then we’ll rob them suckers blind. They told themselves it’s us VS. Them.” Then their came crack cocaine, and that changed everything. Crack, was viewed by gang members, as a way to get rich quick and inside the poor population the dope thrived. Junkies were known to sell their souls for another blast and sons stole from their mothers to satisfy their addictions. From the east coast to the west coast crack spread across the nation. Young black brothers fed their families (both gang and biological) with the money made off of crack, and set in motion a stereotype that some black men have still yet to crawl from under. The mind state is simple, why work a nine to five everyday, only to bring home a couple hundred dollars a week, when you can lounge in the comfort and the protection of your projects and rake in a thousand dollars a day. It goes back to the attitude of rebellion, why would someone who hates the way the system has oppressed them for generations adhere to an economic status quo. It’s hard for a man to turn away from money when he has never had anything before and knows all to well the pleasures money can bring. Forget that the Bible says that money is the root of all-evil, what about the evil of watching your people be mistreated day in and day out. What about the evil of poverty?