On July 26th, Dartmouth's Alpha Delta fraternity sent out an email "Blood and Crips Party", a theme involving two infamous South-Central Los Angeles street gangs. That night more than 200 fellow students came to the themed fraternity house which soon turned into a "ghetto party" with "racialized language, speech and dress" (2). Although this party started with no meaning of harm, it took a quick turn for the worse when stereotyping came to the plate.
With much discussion on campus regarding whether or not this party, its hosts, or other aspects of the episode deserve to be labeled as racist, Scholar, Lawrence Blum, would argue that multiple occurrences of this episode should be deemed racist.
To begin, many students claimed that the brothers
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At Dartmouth, the students do not show antipathy through any given statement or report. While their behavior was "insensitive and thoughtless" there were no signs of hatred towards the Bloods and the Crips, or those who identify with that …show more content…
This is inferiorizing because it involves social racism. According to Blum the theme would "compromise racists attitudes and stereotypes widely shared within a given population" (9). It is evident that through the "racialized language, speech, and dress" that stereotyping was involved. A stereotype is "a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing" (). When a brother of the fraternity speaks and acts as a member of the Bloods and Crips, it would seem from any outsider that he was condescendingly misrepresenting the given population; he would be representing them as if they were below himself through this
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is the ideologies rooted in the African American community. The ideal facts cannot be denied here. The idea of being black and poor is not a simple answer of, very bad, somewhat bad, neither, somewhat good or very good. Being black and poor is a lifestyle. Being black and poor is a community. This book will give you understanding how structural racism among blacks is installed throughout history. The system is created to make sure the subject matter, blacks, in this case are subjected to fail. The crack epidemic in a Chicago neighborhood was only the beginning.
Finally what followed was a short question and answer section. Professor Ira Berlin was so excited about getting food at the following reception that he had to be reminded about the questioning section. How much compassion does that show I wondered? I observed that most of the questions Professor Berlin received were from African-American’s though their presence in the lecture was towards the bottom of the spectrum. The majority of questions that were being asked inferred the level of political correctness in the way in which Berlin addressed certain racial issues. It seemed as though the questions were rather insignificant and that the questioners knew the answers they’d receive before they asked them. After all, wasn’t everyone in that room that attended voluntarily there for the same general cause?
William J. Chambliss, a sociologist, wrote an article called The Saints and the Roughnecks. Chambliss discusses the Saints as a group of upper-middle class white kids who society perceived as good because of their social status’ and the fact that they were well dressed and well mannered. The roughnecks on the other hand, were not well mannered, and not- rich, who society recognized as troublemakers, even though they both act similarly. This can be connected to the Crips and the Bloods by the similar treatment the African Americans receive compared to the roughnecks. This recognition as being a roughneck makes it much more difficult to get a job...
Morch, S., & Andersen, H. (2012). Becoming a Gang Member: Youth Life and Gang Youth. Online Submission
...d in any activities other than his gang nor did he have any desire to be. As for his beliefs he started out believing that he was wrong, but as time passed he began to rationalize what he was doing. He told him self that the bloods deserved it, or that they were asking for it. Eventually he believed himself (Scott, 1993).
Race has been a difficult topic to discuss and grasp ever since race problems began. Not only is it a sensitive topic that carries a lot of baggage to the name, but it is a continuous problem that we still today, after many years, battle with. “The Code Switch Podcast, Episode 1: Can we talk about Whiteness?” is a podcast with many speakers of different colors that discusses white ignorance and white uncertainty of talking about racial issues.
This week’s readings focus on the pathways through which prejudice comes to manifest as systemic racism as it is distributed across uneven power dynamics. Mark Totten’s (2009) work serves as an example of academic material contributing to culturally accepted, but unproven attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. The issues surrounding Totten’s unfounded association between FASD and gangs are discussed more specifically in “Moving beyond the Simple: Addressing the “Misuse” of the FASD-Gang Link in Public Discourse” (MBTS). Here, I reflect on my own experience reading Totten’s work – addressing issues more broadly, posing relevant questions, and proposing future directions of study.
This paper will cover issues that young minorities encounter in the movies; Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008), Gran Torino (2008), A Better Life (2011). Movies will be summarize, and compare and contrast youths experienced. Criminological theories shall be utilized to further elaborate issues. Finally steps and theories will be utilized towards solving issues, also possible methods to correct the issues will be addressed in the end.
One of the positivist theory demonstrated in Crips and Bloods: Made in America is Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory. Both gangs initially started as a new generation watched the turmoil that their parents endured. They saw the police targeting and the response of their parents. That is how the Crips was formed. Sutherland’s Theory states, “If an individual associates with people who hold deviant (or criminal) ideas more than with people who embrace conventional ideas, the individual is like to become deviant” (24). The founders of the Crips associated with rest of the African-American population as they grew up watching their families be brutalized by the police and result in riots or other criminal behaviors. Society had such a
The impression that I made out from watching this film is that back in 1965 in Los Angeles the gangs Crips and Bloods was found to protect black Americans from the violence cause by white police officers and white gang members. During those periods black kids in high school and junior schools were being attacked by white students in school so black people teamed up together to fight against them in school; and that was how the black gangs became. Some gangs were sponsored by Slausons, Farmers, Bausinessmen, and Gladiators. Moving forward, bastards of the party came from a passage in city of quartz which was later made a documentary film in 2005, it was produced by Alex Demyanenko, and directed by a former blood gang member Cle Sloan. Inside this movie, it explored the creation of two of Los Angeles’s notorious gangs Crips and Bloods from the perspective of Los Angeles community.
There is a deep seated hatred between rival gangs, which makes it difficult for the gang’s members to let go. Gangs became a source of income for some people, which made it difficult for many young African Americans to escape the gangs. Significance: This film shows how the police saw activist groups such as the Black Panthers and the U.S. Organization as a threat, which led to repression despite the Civil Rights Movement. This repression leads to anger and hatred and the need for a sense of belonging amongst the African American community.
The Bloods and the Crips are the two well-known gang families that started in the 1940’s in Los Angeles as a defense approach by the blacks against the whites (Dorais, Corriveau, 2009, p 8). Gangs are most often visible in specific areas such as restaurants, bars, metro stations, etc.: “The appearance of street gangs in Quebec and Canada dates from the 1980’s, when these groups started to become larger, more visible, and more disruptive to authorities and residents (Dorais, Corriveau, 2009, p 8-9). There are six definable features that can be used to identify the presents of a gang: “ a structured or degree of organization, an identifiab...
This can be applied to American society, where the society may lean too heavily towards either of these social structures. This can then create stress where stressing over goals mean that any form of achieving them becomes acceptable. Merton was more interested on the overemphasis on goals and how that may have generated antisocial behavior. This behavior arises when the expectation that all members of society should exhibit success but run into restrictions on legitimate means to succeed. He says that the cult of success can create illegitimate means because the violator knows the rules of the game, but the validation of success outweighs the weak imperative to play by the rules. He states, “…Crime… [And] the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, becomes increasingly common when the emphasis on the culturally induced success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis” (Merton 675-676). This is shown in the Crips and Bloods documentary because the individuals in both gangs know what they do is wrong, such as dealing drugs, but they still need to be successful by having money and having good appearance by dressing nicely. It is difficult for them to go by the rules when at one point, the whites did not give them
The Crips, originating in Los Angeles, California, are one of the oldest, largest, and most notorious gangs in the United States. They have been involved in murders, robberies and drug dealing in the Los Angeles area. The Crips are mostly identified by the blue color worn by their members. What was once a single gang is now a loose network of "franchises" around the United States. The gang primarily (but not exclusively) comprises African Americans. The Crips have an intense rivalry with the Bloods and are also known to feud with Chicano gangs.
Many stereotypes of gangs have been fabricated. The problem is that a majority of gang members do not fit these stereotypes, which, in turn, makes it hard for the to be caught (Klein). Traditionally they organize their group around a specific neighborhood, school or housing projec...