Crips and Bloods: Made in America

Crips and Bloods: Made in America, Directed by Stacy Peralta, Produced by Baron Davis, DVD, PBS Independent Lens, 94 minutes.

“Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become their own oppressors.” - Kumasi, 2009.

This Independent Lens production for PBS is a documentary, a sound track, a sociological and historical review, a vivid dissection of the murder that young black men carve through their own community.
This film is also an attempt to act as an adjunct to the peace and reconciliation movements in LA founded and run by ex-gang members. Listening to these articulate and reflective gang members it is sobering to assess the waste of talent and potential apart from the misery behind the 15,000 deaths over the last 40 years in LA County.

The fundamental question of why the internecine feud between the Crips and Bloods has gone untreated or unchecked is addressed in the movie. They are not white or rich, basically. The irony of Blacks killing other Blacks who share the same sidewalks, strip malls, poverty, neglect, urban decay, stigmatization and color is dissected although remains baffling.

One cogent explanation is provided by the 62 year old Kumasi, an original Slauson gang member (they used fists rather than Uzis) “Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become their own oppressors.”

Kumasi has spent 18 years in gaol – he is a revelation – passionate, articulate, forceful, enunciating the oppression and dismay with a voice made for paying attention to, with a timbre made for radio or TV that you could listen to for hours.

In one scene when he recounts how the violence was precipitated in Watts in the 1960s he remarks that “Every day he's (police, whites, the man) feeding me a spoonful of hatred. Every day that's my diet a spoonful of hatred.” Not surprisingly it's going to erupt somewhere and it did in the 1965 Watts' riots and in1992 after the Rodney King trial.

This documentary traces the genesis of the Crips and Bloods from the time of the disintegration of organized black power and civil rights organization after the murder or incarceration of every influential Black leader - Malcom X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King for example.

The territorial limits on Blacks (enforced with manic determination by the racist LA police) fostered a mind set of claiming and protecting territory within the segregated area by various local youths. It consisted of fist fights often at set times – everyone knew you had an appointment so you had to make sure you were there. There were almost no guns or lethal weapons.

After the optimism of the Black Power period was quashed the gangs were re-initiated but this time they were more deadly. The Crips evolved from the Slausons. The Bloods (a name that black soldiers called themselves in Vietnam) established themselves as the rival force to the Crips and black on black murder became the de facto norm.

Ironically the rival gang members were dying by the hundreds every year defending blocks where they were confined by the LAPD. The 'enemy' was not perceived as the establishment, the ruling class, the government, the police – the enemy was the fellow deprived Blacks living in adjacent blocks with the same paucity of schooling, skills and opportunities.

The main aim of the film makers was to start a debate and close the gang warfare down, to highlight the discrepancy between 15,000 African American killing each other and what the reaction would be if affluent white adolescents starting killing each other in such numbers in Beverly Hills.

Forest Whitaker who narrates the film made the valid comparison that the war in Northern Ireland which claimed approx 3,600 deaths (see the Cain Project) in the same time period prompted major initiatives, Nobel prize winners, disarmament and major funding initiatives but nothing of even remote urgency happened in LA.

The main initiatives even now are coming from ex gang members through education and dialog and this movie attempts to bolster this work by producing a cogent, artistic and urgent call to reverse the tide of remorseless murder. One short segement features the mothers of young men killed on both sides, face to camera, and the names of their sons scrolling past. Most are crying, all are grieving - and don't forget there are 15,000 other mothers in one small area of LA County.

The gangs were made in America, the Crips and Bloods were made in America, the poverty, police brutality, white supremacy and oppression were made in America. It is time that justice was made in America.