by Gabriel Seroussi  

The history of African Americans is one of criminalisation, a premise that can’t be ignored. A toxic narrative has invested - and it still does - the African American community for centuries. A distortion with very deep roots that has been nurtured over time as a response by white Americans to the empowerment of the black community. 

Delving into the trajectory of gangs as a typical form of contemporary African American criminality then means, first and foremost, attempting to disentangle this narrative from its illegitimate elements. In order to do so, it is essential to agree on the meaning of the term 'gang'. With such word, we identify armed groups of different types that occupy portions of territory within what sociologist John Hagedorn defines as the 'world of slums', i.e. the set of those poor and marginalized areas that, depending on the language, are known as ghettos, favelas or barrios [1]. The gang phenomenon thus took place in contexts where racial, ethnic or economic oppression persists over time. These groups often developed a strong sense of identity precisely as a response to the disappointment of expectations that contemporary society sets aside for those who inhabit the world of slums.

It is no coincidence that the first manifestations of the gang phenomenon appeared in U.S. metropolises at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the wild urbanization of the West - the apex of industrial development at the end of the century - that triggered new and uncontrolled social mechanisms. Cities like New York or Chicago were transformed, within a span of decades, from mercantile centres into industrial metropolises whose expansion was unparalleled in history. Such growth was fueled by an unprecedented influx of migrants. Italians, Irish, Russians and Poles arrived, but also Germans, Scandinavians, Jews and large numbers of Americans from the continent's endless hinterland. Languages were spoken, religions professed, customs were different. Amidst this contemporary Babylon, there were also African Americans. Between 1910 and 1940, more than 1.5 million blacks reached the north-eastern metropolises of the United States. This was the First Great Migration, the first mass movement of African American men and women fleeing the racial segregation regime in force in the southern states. America's industrial metropolises thus became the meeting point for communities and cultures far removed from each other. Hope for a better life and semi-illiteracy were the common denominator for millions of immigrants arriving from all corners of the globe.

For many, it represented an unheard-of cultural shock. Coming from a rural society, steeped in religious principles and clear value hierarchies, one migrated to an urban civilisation, conceived on the ideological foundations of 19th century individualism. In this new context, the concept of “success”, understood as the achievement of collectively recognised individual results, was a central value; however, in early 20th century American society, “success” was something for the few. Immigrants found themselves grappling with a difficult environment: precarious working conditions, systemic racism and lack of essential services forced relocated communities to find new forms of internal organization.

This is how the first gangs were born: as a means of achieving individual “success” and as a means of self-organization among ethnic minorities in the U.S. metropolises of the early 20th century. In this embryonic phase, gangs operated as power groups within their communities that, employing both legal and illicit means, attempted to assert control over collective life. Influencing electoral flows, managing labor relations and internal disputes, providing security and gaining economic control of the community were the terrains on which gangs sought to impose their power. The extent of their administrative capacity was closely linked to the financial power they were able to express. In addition to a number of legal businesses, gangs were then involved in gambling, exploitation of prostitution, loan sharking and, later, the production and distribution of alcohol.

With the exception of a few narrow time experiments, among African Americans there won’t emerge subjects capable of confederating these power groups within more complex associative forms. The black community, unlike the Italian and Jewish ones, was not structured on tight-knit family bonds and experienced a condition of almost total marginalization from the rest of society. Consequently, the African American gangs did not manage to get as rich as their counterparts and remained confined within the enclosure of their own community. While in the 1930s the Italian-American mafia flourished in the aftermath of Prohibition, black gangs did not make a comparable qualitative leap.

The African American community thus continued to face isolation, poverty and essential segregation even within northern metropolises. Despite the recovery efforts sanctioned by the New Deal - a series of economic measures enacted by President Roosevelt in response to the 1929 crisis - blacks were essentially left behind [2].

With the outbreak of the Second World War, much was about to change in the community. The conflict fostered the development of a collective African American identity. Millions of black soldiers returning home from their service in Europe were keenly aware of the sacrifice they had made in the name of freedom and tired of the abuse they were subjected to in their home country. The Civil Rights Movement was born. Meanwhile, another mass exodus took place: the Second Great Migration. This time, African Americans relocated to two different destinations: the north-western metropolises and California, the new frontier of American prosperity. Throughout the 1950s, a general improvement in living conditions affected the entire population, with a small bourgeoisie taking shape also among African Americans.

In the criminal sphere, the Italo-American mafia had become an intercontinental power. Black gangs tried with little success to confederate. In Harlem, the African-American gangster Bumpy Johnson subjected himself to the Gambino family in order to get into the heroin business, the “new” substance that was revolutionizing the drug market. This kind of subservient relationship would persist over the years. Only in very rare cases black gangs would succeed in extricating themselves from the power of the mafia. These cases coincided with the few examples of complex criminal associations that emerged in the African-American community: Frank Lucas's organization in New York and Samuel Christian's Black Mafia in Philadelphia are the most famous examples.

In the 1960s, the social climate in the United States had profoundly changed. The once unwavering faith in progress got bogged down in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, within the African-American community the civil rights movement essentially split into two sections. While the pacifist, Christian and integrationist movement of Martin Luther King dominated in the endless South, the fiery wave of “black nationalism” was leading the way in the metropolises of the Northeast and West. This radical, identity-driven current of thought had thousands of facets: most of them, if not all, were embodied in Malcolm X's intellectual journey. In 1965, the black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles was the scene of one of the bloodiest uprisings in history. After five days of battle, the toll included thirty-four deaths, one thousand injuries, and more than three thousand arrests. Watts was not an isolated case; within a few years, riots broke out in Harlem, Detroit, Newark, and Chicago.

The causes of black anger were manifold. The Second Great Migration swelled African American communities in urban areas - in Los Angeles, for instance, the number of African Americans grew sixfold between 1940 and 1960 [3]. However, unlike the 1950s, economic growth slowed and confidence in racial integration declined. Despite legislative progress in civil rights, the African American community remained a repressed and marginalized minority. Opportunities for social mobility diminished, unemployment rose, and black neighborhoods became real ghettos.

In this context, the redemption of identity pursued by “black nationalism” represented a hope for community revenge. Radical political activism turned into a mass phenomenon among young blacks living in the U.S. metropolises. In the 1960s, it was then possible to observe a convergence between the role of gangs and political organizations in African-American ghettos. Some political organizations - such as the Nation of Islam - used gangs as the “armed wing” of the black movement. Purposes of self-defense, territorial control, and management of internal community affairs created in many cases a communion of interests.

Yet, the anger of African Americans grew in tandem with white fear. The institutional response to the outburst of the black movement was furious: the violence of the American state decapitated the movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A generation of young blacks found itself confronting the challenges brought on by globalization with no hope for a better future. Impoverished, disillusioned and angry, African-American youth emerged shattered from the bloody defeat of the black movement.

It is here, in the rubble left by the 1960s, that the rise of large and widespread African American gangs took place.

Notes:

[1] Hagedorn, John. 1999.

[2] Luconi, Stefano. 2015.

[3] https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map

by Gabriel Seroussi

The African American community woke up dazed and confused at the dawn of the 1970s. The echoes of social struggles of the previous decade lingered as a distant memory. The atmosphere was gloomy. The defeat of black movement wasn’t just tangible but, more significantly, it had left an indelible mark on the collective psyche. Hope for a brighter future and confidence in the means to achieve it had dissipated. Democratic ideals and socialist dreams had waned. Disillusionment drove young African Americans towards a blind, individualistic cynicism - a new form of nihilism understood "not as a philosophical doctrine [...] but as the experience, lived on one's own skin, of facing a dreadful life lacking meaning, hope and (most of all) love."[1] As if that were not enough, new challenges loomed on the horizon for the African American community. The Western economy was teetering on the brink of its major restructuring phase. The forces of globalization provided businesses with the opportunity to relocate abroad: the deindustrialization era had begun for the American economy. The unfolding changes took a toll on the most vulnerable segments of society: in metropolitan impoverished suburbs, unemployment rose while public services declined, amidst general neglect and real estate decay. Entire areas of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago essentially became detached from governmental control. In this scenario, gangs emerged, filling up the void left by the federal government.

They were young, armed and black: groups of peers with no hope beyond their own individual rise. This new generation of gangsters was deprived of “any revolutionary aspiration, any socially constructive ethos”[2]. 

The 70s were contemporary gangsterism’s early years. In these transition times, organized groups were still few and they got the scraps of a criminal system dominated by more established players. They lacked both the economic opportunities and the means to exploit them. In the overall picture of the African American condition in the 70s, however, different situations unfolded, influencing criminal realities, too. Therefore, despite the many similarities, black gangs developed peculiar features in different parts of North America.

In the north-eastern belt, the New York case clearly emerges. The country’s economic capital was the first one to face the consequences of economic restructuring, experiencing its “dark decade”. Gripped by a deep crisis, the city saw the number of inhabitants fall for the first time in its history. Entire areas of the city were depopulated. The black community, along with the puertorican one, was the only one to still inhabit the now degraded neighborhoods. Meanwhile, both basic services and social projects thought to provide opportunities for suburban youngsters - such as the Mobilization for Youth [3] - were cut off.

Gangs then expanded in a context of total desolation. These very young organized groups mainly formed in the South Bronx, where the control of the older generation of African American criminality couldn’t reach. As portrayed in cult movies such as The Warriors - not lacking contradictions and caricatures -,  early gangs were more committed to fighting each other than trying to get rich. Thus, the criminal activities pursued at this stage were minor robberies and thefts, retail marijuana and heroin dealing, and commissioned arson for estate speculators - a real scourge of New York ghettos. A peculiar feature of gangs in the Big Apple was their mixed racial composition, with blacks and puerto ricans acting as one community. In this early stage of gangsterism, it is also interesting to observe the emergence of a street culture with its own aesthetic codes.

Young New York gangsters wore leather jackets and sewed on them the symbols of their respective groups. From Genghis Khan to swastikas, from satanic references to horror movies: a vast evil imagery underlied the criminal iconography of early New York gangs. This symbolism eventually found expression in tattoos, slogans and very early graffiti. It is within this complex context that, in a few years, hip hop culture would take hold.

The situation was quite different in the Midwest- the north-central area of the United States, the beating heart of American industry. Chicago, one of the largest metropolises of the whole continent, dominated this immense territory. On the shores of Lake Michigan, African American gangs were very different from their young counterparts on the streets of New York.

The first organized groups had already emerged at the turn of World War Two. Over time, the Black Gangster Discipline Nation, the Vice Lords and the P-Stones, along with the mexican-american Latin Kings, managed to supplant the Outfit, Chicago’s historic italian-american mafia. During the 60s, large parts of the city’s territory were carved up by these gangs, involved in drug dealing.

More than in other contexts, Chicago witnessed a close connection between political activism and black crime, blurring the line between the two worlds. A coalition of the city’s most important gangs, named LSD - Lords, Stones and Disciplines - emerged to support the Black Panthers' initiatives. Some groups even directly entered the political arena by creating societies to promote social activities- the Conservative Vice Lords serve as the best known example. The decapitation of the black movement in the 70s turned back the clock for the gangs, which put aside any political ambition, redirecting their focus exclusively towards criminal activities. This shift set the stage for the emergence of the two major opposing alliances that would share control of Chicago for more than three decades: the People Nation and the Folk Nation.

On the West Coast, the evolution of African American gangs had whole other features. First of all, the cities dotting the American Pacific coast effectively sprawled later than the others. Moreover, the African American community settled massively in these territories only from the 1940s onwards. Like Mexicans before them, blacks soon found themselves excluded from the enormous economic growth taking place in California.

In this context of severe territorial segregation, the black community also had to face numerous attacks by white groups in the 1960s. The “Clubs” that had scattered for community defense throughout the Los Angeles ghettos served to some extent as a precursor to the emergence of the first gangs in the following years. These gangs were the armed wing of the black movement against the violent actions of white supremacists. With the defeat of the social struggles in the 1960s, members of these groups chose not to disarm. In 1969, one of the most infamous gangs in the American scene was formed: the Crips. Shortly afterwards, perhaps in response to the Crips' overwhelming power, a group of gangs decided to form a coalition adopting the name of the Bloods. The founding history of the Bloods well shows a unique aspect of West Coast black criminality. The African American gangs in Los Angeles grew by affiliation: small neighborhood gangs chose out of convenience to join larger groups. However, joining a confederation didn’t entail a loss of sovereignty. Affiliation with Crips or Bloods was a way of gaining prestige in the neighborhood and of cooperating with groups from other areas: there weren’t chains of command comparable to those existing in complex criminal associations. The internal organization consisted of a leader elected by gang members.

Commonly, an initiation rite was required to join the group: this, like other aspects, was the result of the decisive influence of the Chicano- i.e. Mexican-American- criminal culture on the black gangs in California. Like Chicano groups, African American gangs chose khaki low-waisted trousers, Pendleton shirts and canvas shoes as their dress-code. To differentiate from each other, gangs confederations identified themselves with a specific color. In the 70s, the commitment of gangs in Los Angeles was still asserting control over their own neighborhood. During this phase, their main criminal business, marijuana and heroin dealing, was still a retail activity.

The Southern United States has a different history compared to other parts of the continent. It comprises a huge territory with socially and culturally distant areas within it. However, there is one aspect they all share: the South has no metropolis of comparable size to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. The polycentric and dispersed nature of the South has been a determining factor in the development of gangs in the area. Notably, one fact immediately stands out: prior to the 1980s, there was very little evidence of gang-related crime in the major cities of the Southern states. The late genesis of the gang phenomenon, however, was not only due to the size of the metropolises, but mostly to the economic and social structures in the South. The static situation of these areas delayed the outbreak of the contradictions associated with the restructuring of the American economy. African Americans themselves have therefore experienced different conditions from those living on the two coasts and in the Midwest. Unlike their counterparts forced to settle in the industrial metropolises of the North, the black community in the South did not experience phenomena of social disintegration to a comparable extent.

However, the blast wave of gang development was on the verge of hitting southern cities as well. In Atlanta, until 1980, there were no homicides attributed to gangs’ activity; in 1996 they accounted for 20% of the total homicides [4]. In the Southern states, the number of gang-related crimes increased by 32% from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, reflecting a nationwide trend [5]. In Los Angeles, from 1978 to 1988, the number of gangs identified by local police increased from 60 to 557 [6]. According to the same census, the number of organized gangs members in the Los Angeles area reached approximately 50,000 that year [7]. On the East Coast, gang activities also began spreading to smaller towns. Philadelphia, Newark and Baltimore witnessed a rise in the number of gangs in the area. In Chicago, the number of violent deaths among youths aged 15 to 24 rose from 14 in 1985 to 132 in 1993 [8].

During the 1980s, there was a clear improvement in quality. It wasn’t just about an endemic spread, but rather a real paradigm shift compared to the previous phase. Gangs entered wholesale drug trafficking, were in possession of real arsenals of firearms to wage war against each other, were in control of entire areas of American metropolises.

The reasons for this sudden maturation are manifold. The 1980s marked in fact the phase of the definitive affirmation of the neo-liberal hypothesis. Among the dictates of this economic recipe there was a firm opposition to the welfare state. President Reagan - who led the United States from 1981 to 1989 - therefore promoted a series of cuts to the few forms of welfare provided by the American federal state. The social consequences of these policies weighed on the already impoverished segments of society.

Among these, The African-American community clearly stood out. Cuts in healthcare, social housing, public transport, and education represented a serious blow to the poors in the black community. By the end of the Reagan era, the poverty rate for African Americans was at 31%, the highest peak since this data had been recorded [9]. The hyperghettoization of black people generated a knock-on effect on the community. Indeed, all those social instances that guarantee the endurance of a community decayed. The disintegration of family and neighborhood ties, school drop-outs, and the absence of communal spaces such as churches and cultural centers were the tangible results of the failure of neo-liberal economic policies.

The pivotal factor, however, for the rise of gangs is to be found in the so-called War on drugs policy. Initially launched by President Nixon in 1971 but later popularized by President Reagan in 1982, the War on Drugs began as a conservative media campaign supporting a series of laws within the judicial system. The campaign's design -  inherently racist and aimed at instilling panic in American society - resulted in the mass incarceration of black population in the United States.

From a legislative viewpoint, the War on Drugs took action in several ways. First of all, it increased the fundings for police forces- in 1981 the federal government allocated about 86 million dollars for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the federal anti-drug agency; ten years later, the sum amounted to more than one billion dollars. Then, a series of legal reforms tightened the American penal system: two examples include imposition of a minimum five-year prison sentence to those found guilty of possessing five grams of crack cocaine or more, and the requirement of long prison sentences - ranging from 25 years to life imprisonment - for those convicted of the same offense three times. Finally, the penitentiary system itself changed: a series of incentives- later implemented by the Clinton administration- turned American jails into a business for private companies. Companies were created to invest in the establishment and expansion of prisons. An entire, powerful industry with strong congressional influence thus saw the increasing rate in prison population as a benefit for its finances. This squeeze on the legal system brought the number of prisoners in the United States from 400,000 in 1982 to 1.6 million in 2010 [11]. However, figures are even more shocking when considering the African American community. Blacks made up 12% of the American population but 33% of the prison population [12]. The likelihood of receiving a life sentence for an African American was six times higher than for a white person. The racism inherent in the American system thus assumed a new form in the 1980s.

The African-American mass incarceration has been the real driving force behind the explosion of the gang phenomenon. In fact, a penitentiary system took shape in which it is very easy to get in and very difficult to get out. In the early 90s, two-thirds of released prisoners were arrested again within three years. Then, even for those who had managed to get out of the prison system, integration into society was made almost impossible. In fact, there existed a sort of 'invisible punishment', depending on the specific case, made up of exclusion from eligibility for social housing or inaccessibility to food vouchers, as well as social stigma associated with past detention. But mass incarceration was not only a trap for the African American community, but also a kind of school for gangs to mature. Entering a penal institution meant implementing criminal contacts, developing a stronger group identity, and increasing one's knowledge of drug trafficking. This is what allowed gangs to make a qualitative leap in the 1980s.

It was in the abovementioned context of hyperghettoization and mass incarceration that the economic opportunity for gangs arrived, too. Crack cocaine, as a cheap by-product of cocaine, began to spread in the United States in 1984. The rooting of gangs in African American ghettos and the new knowledge developed through the experience of incarceration enabled African American criminal groups to exploit the economic potential of this new substance.

Within a few years, crack became a mass phenomenon in some of the most important American metropolises. However, there were different views on the size and definition of this phenomenon. The use of the term 'epidemic' to indicate the spread of crack was in fact coined by President Reagan in the context of the aforementioned War on drugs. The instrumental and media role that crack cocaine assumed in the US government’s repressive policies was noted by many observers. These doubts on the extent of the phenomenon have been accompanied by questions on its origin. Indeed, various conspiracy theories took hold in the black community to explain the advent of crack. What is certain is that the US government decided to solve the problem of the spread of crack cocaine in the African American ghettos by targeting users and small-time dealers rather than international drug cartels.

Because of crack, gangs grew in number, got richer and expanded their influence. In every corner of the country there were active criminal groups. Gangsta rap was born as an expression of black gang culture. From the second half of the 1980s, African-American gangsterism then entered its adult phase.

Notes:

[1] "Nihilism is to be understood here not as a philosophic doctrine that there are no rational grounds for legitimate standards or authority. It is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and lovelessness." - West, Cornel. 1993. Race Matters.

[2] Alemanni, Cesare. 2020.

[3] In 1962, the pioneering association Mobilization for Youth (MFY) started its programme against juvenile delinquency in New York's Lower East Side. Within two years, stimulated by the civil rights movement, MFY grew into an organisation with a presence in many New York neighbourhoods. MFY disbanded in 1970.

[4] [5] Miller, Walter B. 2001.

[6] [7] Brown, Gregory Christopher, James Diego Vigil, e Eric Robert Taylor. 2012.

[8] https://home.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/crime-statistics/

[9] Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce (1981, 1984, August), Money Income and Poverty Status of Families and Persons in the United States: 1980-1983

[10] [11] [12] Alexander, Michelle. 2010.

by Gabriel Seroussi

Talking about gangsta rap means talking about the most problematic and simultaneously successful subgenre of hip hop history. The divisive essence of this music has resulted in a wide-ranging public and intellectual debate. On the one hand its violent and machistic nature, on the other its documentary and expressive intent: detractors and supporters of the genre have had more than one arrow in their respective quivers. As a product, gangsta rap has also been the masterpiece of the American entertainment industry, capable of extracting juice even from its apparently less ripe fruits. The beatification of gangsta rap, definitively admitted among the noble fathers of U.S. music culture, was celebrated a few months ago at the fifty-seventh  halftime Super Bowl show. Dr. Dre's performance was the icing on the cake in the normalisation of gangsta rap: from outcast genre to cornerstone of the international music market.

Since the 1980s, gangs have not only been the bearers of a material alternative, but also a cultural phenomenon, developing their own imagery with distinctive aesthetic, communicative and value codes. Diversified according to the areas of the country, this street culture spread like wildfire in step with the gangs' rise. In a context of total marginalisation from society, young gangsters re-elaborated in their own sense concepts such as respect, loyalty, brotherly love. These values took on enormous centrality because of the communitarian nature that characterised African American gangs.

In fact, unlike other forms of criminality, the biological family had no role in the organisational structures of these groups. This is why gangs also constituted themselves as small communities by re-conceptualising the typical value system of familism. In this reworking, machismo is of great importance and, intended as a continuous display of virility, becomes the pole star of inter-human relations [1].

Street slang, gang signs, graffiti, clothing, rap: gangsta culture communicated these values through different modes of expression. Being gangsta thus provided young criminals with a sense of belonging, identification and opposition to the rest of society. Moreover, in a layering of meanings, gangsta culture is also an internal code of recognition and communication. For an affiliate, a certain word or hand gesture could convey information that an outsider couldn’t understand.

Despite coming from the same context, hip hop has a different history. Stemming from different artistic disciplines typical of the African American and Caribbean communities, hip hop culture originated as a means of pacifying conflicts between gangs from the Bronx, New York. The same concepts of respect, loyalty, and brotherly love merged here into a cultural phenomenon with a strong political and social connotation. Rap - one of the four disciplines which make up hip hop along with writing, DJing and breakdancing - has grown abruptly in a very different way from what its founding fathers had imagined. In the 1980s, hip hop underwent many metamorphoses. In every metropolis where the culture took root, rap found new forms of hybridisation with local traditions.

Gangsta Rap can therefore be said to be primarily the product of hip hop’s encounter with gangsta culture. It is no coincidence that this marriage took place in Los Angeles, the metropolis with the largest number of gangs rooted in its territory. On the pacific coast, gangsta culture took centre stage early amongst the young members of African-American community. From low-waisted khaki trousers to Pendleton shirts, from bandanas in their respective gang colours to hand gestures to communicate. In the 1980s, gangsta culture in Los Angeles was something already well defined. Hip hop, on the other hand, arrived much later. To New York's social commitment, L.A. responded with escapism and fun. Before the development of gangsta rap, the stars of the L.A. music scene were funky and techno DJs. The few rappers active in the area were more interested in telling the sunny days in Venice Beach than the dark nights in South Central.

To change history, however, comes Ice-T: the godfather of gangsta rap. The 1958-born rapper was one of the few Los Angeles MCs who had what it took to call himself a gangsta. In fact, in addition to his writing skills, Ice-T could boast ties to the Hoover Crips Gang. So in 1986, after almost ten years as a small-time drug dealer, Ice-T decided to invest some of his earnings in the production of a single. He did so, by his own admission, after hearing the track P.S.K. by Schoolly D, a Philadelphia rapper who had made a name for himself in the underground for his raw lyrics. For the first time, Ice-T realised that it was possible to tell from the inside what the life of a gangster was like.

With the impetus of this precedent, the Los Angeles rapper wrote 6 'N the Mornin, the first brick in gangsta rap history. Step by step, between slang and references to individuals from the Los Angeles criminal underworld, the track narrated the day of a Californian gangster fleeing a police raid. Distrust of law enforcement, the tale of a hallucinated reality, the description of a world where death is an everyday affair: 6 'N the Mornin contained all the elements destined to become typical of L.A. rap. Ice-T thus offered all emerging rappers a demonstration: telling the story of gangsta life in a song is not only possible, but it also brings major success.

Ice-T’s lesson was very quickly absorbed by Andre Young, a young dj from Compton whose stage name was Dr. Dre. After the success of 6 ‘N’ the Mornin’, Dre realised that the care-free rap era in Los Angeles was over. Within a few months, proving his innate entrepreneurial skills, he brought together O’Shea Jackson, a.k.a. Ice Cube, and Eric Wright, a.k.a. Eazy-E in a recording studio. The former is one of the most notorious ghostwriters of LA rap, the latter is a young gangster from Compton.

With the pen of the former and the realness of the latter, in 1987 Dr. Dre crafted Boyz-n-the-Hood, the song that sealed the birth of N.W.A., the most important gangsta group in rap history. Ice-T's documentary narration, which provides enough detail to be deemed truthful, is overtaken by Eazy-E's subjective narration. Listening to Boyz-n-the-Hood, it is evident that the author is not just a chronicler of history: he is materially involved in it. This immersion in street life was enhanced by the first official record of Niggaz Wit Attitude - which also featured Arabian Prince, MC Ren and DJ Yella.

“Straight outta Compton!

Crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube

From the gang called Niggaz Wit Attitude” [2]

From the very first verse of Straight Outta Compton- the album’s title track- Ice Cube enlightened the group’s role in the narrative: NWA don’t narrate gangs, they are a gang. Unlike Public Enemy and other contemporary groups, NWA’s message was far more aggressive and nihilist. There are no interlocutors to express anger towards, in the Los Angeles of Eazy-E and his associates there are only gangbangers, drive-by shooters and drug dealers; the political antagonist is now just an occupying force of the territory [3]. The group's success was resounding: the newspapers took notice, the police took notice. The song Fuck Da Police became an anthem against the police. After several threats, the police intervened during a concert in Detroit, arresting the members of the group for inciting violence.

These facts contributed to the popularity of N.W.A. even among middle-class whites who, for the first time, could peer through the keyhole at the grim reality of metropolitan ghettos. Moreover, the nihilism and individualism angrily expressed by N.W.A. were not far removed from those melancholically portrayed by Nirvana in the same historical phase. The first American generation to be poorer than the last thus defined itself in stark contrast to the optimism of its parents. The appreciation of white youth was one of the roots of the success and longevity of gangsta rap. The parable of N.W.A., however, was as disruptive as it was brief. In 1989, Ice Cube left the group, followed in 1991 by Dr. Dre.

With the end of N.W.A., the 'pure' phase of gangsta rap came to an end. The Los Angeles-based group was the Trojan horse of hip hop in American show business. Once it had made its way into the collective imagery, renewed formulas had to be found to maintain and expand the position it had gained. Gangsta rap therefore evolved during the 1990s and 2000s following different trajectories. Some of these were pursued by N.W.A. members. While Ice Cube - with his record AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted - reinforced the social content of his tracks by glimpsing a meeting point between gangsta rap and political rap, Dr. Dre, thanks to his creative and entrepreneurial genius, gave birth to a new sound destined to rewrite rap history: g-funk. With fine chisel work, Dr. Dre made his beats more melodic, mellow and relaxed. The very same reality of N.W.A. was now told in a different light. Gang violence, police brutality and crack epidemic became the background. In the foreground there were pretty girls, convertible cars and top-quality marijuana. The new - more sugar-coated- formula of gangsta rap was an incredible market success.

In addition to the popularity of his albums - The Chronic (1995) above all - Dr. Dre also showed a surprising ability to spot new talents. Tupac and Snoop Dogg - shaped by Dre’s wise hands - were the archetypes of two new ways of being gangsta. The former was a complex figure, perhaps the most complex in hip hop history. One third rapper, one third activist, one third gangster: Tupac brought an unprecedented depth of thought to gangsta rap, reaching a popularity that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. The latter was the very embodiment of g-funk. The figure of Snoop Dogg, an atypical gangster- more interested in women than in gang affairs- made its way into the hearts of Americans. With a career spanning more than 20 years, Snoop is the living proof of the successful synthesis of hip-hop culture and the demands of the market.

The lesson of gangsta rap was quickly absorbed outside California as well. In fact, the influence of Dr. Dre and his associates on the hip hop culture as a whole was so profound that it is difficult to identify anyone who has not been inspired by them in the years since. From New York jiggy rap to Atlanta trap, no one could avoid being confronted with the example of N.W.A. While gangsta rap as a cultural expression of the Los Angeles criminal underworld remains a geographically and temporally circumscribed experience, gangsta rap as a form of self-narrative continues to thrive, to the extent that hip hop as we know it can be said to be born out of this subgenre.

Notes:

[1] Morris, Megan. 2014.

[2] The first three verses of 'Straight Outta Compton' by N.W.A. from 1988.

[3] Alemanni, Cesare. 2017.

by Stefano Ricaldone

Los Angeles is a unique metropolis: its history and its geography have been at the core of many books and researches. For a long time, it was thought that general patterns of major western urban centres could be derived from studying its tendencies. Today, however, it is emphasised that each city is the result of contextual factors and the history in which it has participated.

Los Angeles is not a city like any other, simply because it is the epicentre of the US cultural industry. From film to music, via television, radio and streaming, the big Los Angeles majors are ubiquitous.

While for several decades the global narrative of the Californian city was largely positive and multicultural, the great American dream, 1992 marked an epochal caesura. One of the largest and most intense uprisings of the African-American community burst onto the news channels all across the world. Los Angeles was burning. The City of Angels was the battleground of a low-intensity civil war that has been fought with ups and downs since the dawn of the United States. Plumes of smoke billowed from burnt-out cars and warehouses, roadblocks and clashes with police spread through the racialised neighbourhoods of one of the largest global metropolises. Groups of young African-Americans and Latinos emptied supermarkets and shops. The cause: the acquittal of LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) officers responsible for the brutal beating, caught on camera, of an African-American man at a roadblock.

The mainstream media pointed to N.W.A., among others, as the instigators of the riot, and to Compton youths as the perpetrators. While these were already familiar names to several Americans, terms like 'gangsta rap' and 'gang' were new to many outside the United States.

The world was beginning to learn about the dark side of the Californian city, made up of racial segregation, gangs and poverty.

Colliding imageries and narratives: on one side, long avenues with palm trees, luxurious mansions, shiny cars and beautiful, white people. On the other, a black magma of hatred, the result of years of discrimination and violence, flowing through endless asphalt streets and decaying, identical tract houses, the result of the betrayed dream of the middle-class American suburb. The genesis of such a radical opposition is multifaceted and calls into question the geography of the city, the segregation policies and the institutional violence of the political and police apparatus.

Los Angeles exploded demographically in the twentieth century. From the 1920s onwards, it experienced a sudden influx of people, as a result of strong internal migration from the South to the North of the country. Population growth then resumed after World War II. It was accompanied by a ceaseless influx of migrants from Central and South America, which still today remains at the centre of the national debate on immigration. Indeed, California borders Mexico, the country that is the gateway for Latinos to the United States.

The city then began to incorporate neighbouring towns, such as the famous Hollywood. In line with the American trend of uncontrolled urban expansion, a process of urban sprawl[1] was initiated, then become famous through film footage of the city.

For most of the twentieth century, the dream of the American middle class was to live outside of the congested and chaotic urban centres, that were epicentres of production sites and therefore home to the working class. The image of the white nuclear family living in a tract house with a car parked in the backyard is still a widespread dream in the States. In this sense, the vastness of the American territory allows this dream to be realised, together with the ever-present car, the plastic representation of individual freedom of movement. Urban real estate development was accompanied by strict segregation laws that did not allow African Americans and Latinos to live in white neighbourhoods. In fact, blacks and Latinos were administratively prohibited from living in these neighbourhoods and were pushed and herded into specific areas of the city.

Of course- needless to say- these were the areas with the poorest housing and little, if any, amenities. The maps of the cities, then as now, are a patchwork of communities that do not communicate with each other, isolated spheres where different worlds live parallel lives that do not meet.

From this point, began and developed the history of South Central, a vast suburban area south of the city centre that includes among others Compton. Initially, the area was designed for the white middle class. In the case of Compton, the neighbourhood was provided with excellent services, such as top schools and health facilities. For a long time, city laws allowed to restrict the arrival of “undesirables” and, when this was no longer possible, the white community organised itself into small groups to repel the arrival of blacks. The presence of communities other than the white one severely reduced the overall desirability of the neighbourhood, causing property values and school ratings to plummet. In the US this means less funding and lower quality schools.

The first gangs in Los Angeles were white and their aim was to target any minorities who moved into their neighbourhoods. The relevance of these groups is crucial not only because they setted the tone for the racial violence in the city, but also because they would cooperate with police to suppress the Watts Uprising in 1965, the first major African-American riot in Los Angeles.

After the Second World War, the population pressure on LA was such that previous norms were changed. Blacks began to settle in Compton and whites moved out at the same rate. The quality of schools and property values fell accordingly and would never return to their former levels.

In the late fifties, the first black gangs began to form, firstly to defend themselves against the attacks from whites and police, and later also as a means of enrichment through criminal activity. This last element was curbed by the emerging Civil Rights Movement. In this historic phase, the African American community saw the real political possibility to change its conditions. The movement was very strong in Los Angeles, so strong that gang members provided the security services during Martin Luther King’s visit to the city and had intense exchanges with the Black Panther Party (BPP). The latter had the epicentre of its political activity right in the South Central area. The infamous Crips were so influenced by Black Panthers that they initially wore black leather jackets and the beret that had always distinguished the BPP.

In Compton, there was essentially one gang, the Pirus, until the seventies, when they were joined by another, the Crips. Eventually better known as the Bloods, the Pirus had their centre at Centennial High School, whose representative colour was red, while the Crips were based at Compton High School, which represented itself in blue. The two schools had a strong sporting rivalry between their respective basketball teams and it didn’t take long for this to reverberate in the dynamics between the two gangs. After a game in which Centennial inflicted a crushing defeat on Compton, the latter’s students attacked their opponents with bottles and baseball bats. In the following years, the clash systematically scaled up in violence and scope: bottles became guns, and what had once been a school rivalry turned into a street war which lasts to some extent to this day.

In the late sixties, the Civil Rights Movement was hit hard by federal repression. Through the COINTELPRO programme, the FBI murdered the most important leaders of the movement and militarily raided the headquarters of the BPP.

What was supposed to be a new springtime in the history of black African Americans resulted in a bloodbath and the disenchantment of the younger generation with politics. The situation reverberated in the black neighbourhoods of Los Angeles; gangs, previously curbed by political organisations, were rampant among the youth. On top of this, there was a general restructuring of the capitalist system. The era of neo-liberal policies, of which Reagan would later become the most famous advocate, began.

Deindustrialisation and unemployment hit the American poor and middle classes hard, with particularly devastating effects on the most socially vulnerable, African Americans and Latinos. Caught between the ideology of the self-made man and the systemic impossibilities of redemption through legal means, new generations sought their redemption in crime. In Compton this resulted in a rampant drug market and increased gang fighting. The crack epidemic hit all major American metropolises inflicting the hardest damage on the black community.

California is not only the preferred port of entry for migrants from Central and South America, but also one of the most important drug markets in the United States. This is why the beginning of the war on drugs materialised in all its violence in LA. The LAPD was ordered to 'clean up' the mean streets of the city with no limits on the use of force, SWAT teams [2] were deployed, and the mass incarceration of the poor and gang members began. The latter phenomenon is commonly referred to as the new Jim Crow, referring to racially based mass incarceration. The militarisation of the police would only exacerbate the already complicated relationship between police and the black and Latino communities, setting the stage for the later uprising in 1992.

In this general atmosphere of urban revanchism [3], a new musical genre formed in Compton: gangsta rap. Its roots are to be found in the artistic experimentation pioneered by Ice-T and then led and brought to international prominence by N.W.A. The genre could only have been born in Compton, given the context and the metropolis in which it is embedded. The essence of gangsta rap is the evocation of gangster imagery and its celebration. What better city to produce a new revolution in rap than the one that produces the very imagery and meanings of American culture? None, which is why it was all the more scandalous. In the city where the movies portraying the US as mostly white and peaceful are produced, a group of 'runaways' built a counter-narrative that spread like wildfire across the States. Straight Outta Compton, their first album, would sell more than a million copies within two years.

What we are interested in highlighting is the relationship the artists had with the gangs in their neighbourhood. In fact, N.W.A. not only emphasised their Compton origins, but also their relationship with the well-known Crips and Bloods gangs, which thus became one of the city's defining elements.

The reference to one of the two gangs continues to this day among some Los Angeles artists: for example, at the 2022 Super Bowl concert, Snoop Dogg wore a blue bandana-print jumpsuit, an explicit reference to the Crips gang.

The album Straight Outta Compton, among other things, highlighted the widespread hatred against the police in black neighbourhoods. The famous song Fuck tha police thus became the loudspeaker of a generation that had experienced police racism and the city institutions' war on drugs.

The musical style is deliberately very problematic and provocative, from the countless racist insults to the misogyny that oozes from the lyrics, in addition to the aforementioned glorification of violence and the use of weapons. While there is much to criticise, it cannot be argued that gangsta rap is one of the factors that instigated the '92 riot. As Ice-Cube already argued on the release of the song Fuck Tha Police, N.W.A.'s aim was to tell the story of life in the metropolis and of a section of African-Americans, including the most violent aspects too, without filters.

In recent years, in Compton there has been a significant reduction in gang-on-gang and gang-on-law enforcement violence, but problems in the South Central neighbourhoods still persist. Poor socio-economic conditions, poor quality of education, heavy militarisation by the LAPD and continued mass incarceration are just some of the problems that persist in LA's non-white neighbourhoods.

The Bloods and the Crips remain at loggerheads and exert strong control over South Central areas and the prison system. They are, however, increasingly being joined by gangs from other racial and ethnic backgrounds, particularly Hispanics and Latinos.

In addition, there has been a resurgence of the Black and Minorities Movement all across the United States, which has also led to unprecedented scenarios.

A representative of these new developments and the renewed politicisation of the African-American community is Kendrick Lamar, who also grew up in Compton and is a synthesis of the history that preceded him, but who, unlike his predecessors, is much more political in his lyrics, pointing the finger not only at policemen, but also at the system as a whole.

Notes:

[1] The term sprawl refers to the uncontrolled development of the urban fabric in areas surrounding the city, an Italian example being the Brianza area near Milan.

[2] Established in LA in the late 1960s, they were used to attack BPP headquarters, raid the homes of members of the civil rights movement and lastly control demonstrations.

[3] The term was coined by Neil Smith in the 1990s to designate the set of urban policies, mostly supported by the white middle class, initiated in New York to reduce crime and combat 'decay'. The best known is Mayor Giuliani's zero-tolerance policy, applied in New York and based on the Broken Windows theory.

by Stefano Ricaldone

Situated on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, within the North American Great Lakes Region, the history of the third most populous metropolis in the United States traces the stages of the country's economic development, the structuring of corporate giants, the amalgamation of different peoples and the contradictions of rapid and sudden urban development. Chicago is not only relevant from a numerical point of view but it was, and still is, one of the three economic and cultural epicenters of North America, alongside New York and Los Angeles.

While the metropolitan history of Los Angeles began to take shape in the 1930s and developed after World War II, Chicago’s expansion commenced in the late 19th century. The city has much more in common with New York than with the Californian metropolis. At the beginning of the 20th century, its industrial relevance and the exponential arrival of migrants made Chicago the fastest growing American metropolis, even more than New York, its perennial rival, with which it still competes to this day for the primacy of most important city in the States.

As the industrial core of the great American Midwest and a pivotal junction of commercial shipping and rail networks, the city grew from 30,000 to 1 million inhabitants between 1850 and 1890.

The exponential demographic growth resulted in a strong cultural effervescence but also, and above all, in profound conflicts between different 'ethnic' communities and between these communities and city institutions, strained by a growth process whose course they were unable, or unwilling, to control. In this context of profound social transformations, the first university Department of Sociology was founded, where a new approach to the discipline was born: the Chicago school. It would develop new fields of research, including urban sociology. From the School came the very first studies on the urban and on populations and groups that live in and through it. Notably, relevant to our topic is the book The City (1925) written by Park and Burgess, that presents an early geography of where social groups were located in the urban fabric. In this work, it is already noticeable the existence of large areas of poverty and a strong “ethnic” opposition with the white middle class already “fleeing” the city center to live in the sprawling suburbs.

It is therefore a matter of strong industrial pressure and labor exploitation, to which is added an omnipresent institutionalized racism. European migrants were initially strongly marginalized but, as in New York, some of them soon became vast electoral pools and political tools in the hands of the elites: racialized groups in which self-defense organizations would evolve into gangs and, in some cases, major criminal organizations.

Thus began the city’s parallel history, made of racism, spatial segregation, uprisings, political claims and criminal organizations.

The history of gangs in Chicago has deep roots. In 1927, Frederic Thrasher, a researcher at the Chicago school, published the first study on the gang phenomenon. The book, The Gang (1927) a classic in studies of urban deviance, provided an initial mapping of the presence of gangs in the city, attempting to identify their trajectories and composition. Yet, despite the work’s groundbreaking role in initiating studies on this issue, it also has serious shortcomings, even more evident through contemporary lenses. The issue of race is addressed solely in terms of a dependent variable relating to the occupied urban context, and not as a determinant in the trajectories of social groups. In the Chicago school, in fact, it was argued that all ethnic groups would go through stages of discrimination, settlement and finally assimilation resulting in a migration from poor areas of the city to wealthier ones. As is well known, the African American community would never be fully recognised, and not only in Chicago.

Having said that, the history of Chicago gangs traces back to the community of Irish immigrants, where the Social Athletic Clubs were formed. The clubs were founded with the primary objective of attacking and confining the African American community in the narrow area of the so-called Black Belt. The aim was to prevent the black population from settling in neighborhoods other than their own. Reasons were both racial and electoral, the Irish being the Democratic constituency and the black community the Republican one. Irish gangs were thus the instrument through which racial segregation was reproduced and the political status quo maintained in the city. It was only later that these groups would also engage in illicit activities within their own neighborhoods.

In 1919 one of the bloodiest American race riots broke out in the city. In the aftermath of the First World War, there was great instability in the labor market and the mass arrival of blacks from the southern states triggered a resurgence of racism in Irish clubs that attacked the newcomers' neighborhoods. Among the prominent figures of these gangs was Richard J. Daley, who would be mayor of the city from 1955 to 1976. The event galvanized the African-American community, leading to the formation of several armed groups of Great War veterans. These groups fought back against Irish gangs and became the germ of the city's future black gangs. As in the case of Los Angeles, the emergence of armed groups within the black community occurred primarily as a defense against the continuous and indiscriminate attacks of white racism [1].

In the 1920s, it began the “mature” phase of crime in the city through the formation of the Outfit, a criminal organization led by Al Capone, which saw Italians at the forefront of alcohol smuggling and racketeering. The Outfit, however, was not the classic Italian-American mafia group. Unlike the New York families, members were not exclusively Italian, but also Irish and Jewish (also quite proportionally: 31% Italian, 29% Irish, 20% Jewish). At the height of the gang warfare over control of the liquor trade, Al Capone was the first white criminal boss to make a 'non-belligerency' agreement with a black organization, the Policy Kings, the dominant group in the Black Belt at the time. The terms of the agreement provided the exclusion of the Kings from the goods trade in exchange for peace between the two groups. Since the main source of income from crime at the time was smuggling, the group was thus excluded from a major source of profit, remaining poor and segregated in its area.

Black segregation worsened until the 1950s. The mass arrival of blacks from the South to work in factories during the Second World War increased the already heavy white racial violence, resulting in indiscriminate gun and bomb attacks in predominantly black neighborhoods. In this period too, violence served a dual purpose: preserving “white” jobs and preventing black settlement outside designated areas.

In the 1950s, the second great African-American migration to northern metropolises brought once again the housing issue of black community in the city to the forefront. The administration, now led by the racist mayor Daley, continued to pursue a segregative housing policy. Old houses on the South Side were replaced with high-rise public housing and, without overcoming rigid territorial divisions, they were in fact reproduced over again by increasing the capacity of architectural structures. African Americans remained confined to the area they inhabited when they first arrived in Chicago.

In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement first, and then the Black power exploded. Chicago was one of the epicenters of these phenomena, particularly the latter, which was more revolutionary and critical of the establishment. Black gangs, now institutionalized in the territory, actively participated in the agitation. Criminal activity took a back seat in favor of political activity, which became the main commitment. If, at first, these groups would only provide support and armed defense for political leaders and demonstrations (such as during the visit of Martin Luther King), later they assumed a leading role in political militancy. A pivotal moment of this period was the opening up to the Black Panther Party (BPP). Through some fine political maneuvering, the head of the Chicago section of the Panthers, Fred Hampton, managed to unite the Lords, the Kings and the Disciplines - the three most important gangs at the time - into a single entity: the LSD (from the initials of the respective groups), which joined the other factions of the black movement.

The FBI took action to suppress and break up such an alliance, which also saw the involvement of the Latin community and, exceptionally, a timid participation from the white working class. Operation COINTELPRO hit the Chicago movement hard, since, if extended to the rest of the country, such an alliance would have had serious revolutionary, or at least, radical transformation aspirations. The Panthers were brutally murdered [2] and gang members arrested en masse by FBI agents and the Chicago police, composed mostly of white Irishmen.

Mass incarceration didn’t dismantle gangs, but rather improved their organization and criminal effectiveness. In prison, members acquired knowledge and skills to strengthen their activities and extend their control by recruiting new affiliates.

The racial policies of mass incarceration were introduced at the same time as the deindustrialization of the Midwest, one of the most important in the country. The seventies waned, and the pompous eighties arrived with all their load of neo-liberal reforms and financial market revival. American deindustrialisation struck hard at the social level and Midwestern cities were among the hardest hit. Apocalyptic landscapes of industrial ruins would alternate with decaying high-rises; unemployment was rampant and drug addiction spread. Regan's policies weighed on the poor and the declining working class, widening the economic gap and further reducing the already limited American welfare state. In areas such as the South Side, criminal gangs represented for many young people the only avenue of employment and a means to pursue the wealth so much narrated and promoted by the media.

Political defeat of the Civil Rights Movement, deindustrialization, unemployment and worsening poverty pushed thousands of young black Chicagoans into the ranks of the now structured and institutionalized gangs.

The crack epidemic spread like wildfire and with it internal gang conflicts and clashes with the police. The murder rate grew exponentially in all the major metropolises, including Chicago. The institutional response was a general criminalisation of the black community and the accentuation of racist and military police practices. As in Los Angeles and New York, Chicago tried to crack down on small-time drug dealing and common crimes while failing to act on the structural and contextual factors that reproduced poverty and crime.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, high-rises on the South Side served as the base for powerful gangs, which not only ran the illegal trade in the area, but also controlled the territory. The relationship with the latter and with the population, which had always been particularly intense, reached its peak in those years. The historical repetition of segregative policies and widespread racial violence further strengthened bonds of solidarity within the community. Gangs were an active part of this relationship, representing a means of defense but also of income support. Consequently, the community often tolerated their activities, unlike in New York where ties were less intense.

At the end of the 1990s, the homicide rate in Chicago didn’t decrease as it generally did in all American cities. The mayor therefore decided on a controversial solution that sparked international debate: the demolition of the city’s large public housing estates, particularly those situated on the South Side [3]. This politically and socially violent action resulted in the expulsion of over a hundred thousand African Americans from the neighborhood, with only 15% of the inhabitants expected to be relocated.

Following the abatement of housing projects, the area was among the most rapidly and extensively developed real estate sectors in the city. The arrival of the Chicago L (the city’s underground) further boosted property values. However, of all former residents, almost none was then able to stay in the neighborhood due to the unaffordable costs. Recent research has found that most residents have relocated to other highly segregated and opportunity-poor areas of Chicago. The destruction of the complexes also led to a further effect, namely the relocation of gangs to other neighborhoods, resulting in clashes over control of territory and drug trafficking. The areas where the displaced South Side population resettled are today those with the highest homicide rates in the city.

The cultural history and imaginaries that define Chicago have been profoundly determined by the African American community. For example, Chicago still claims the status of a city that welcomes migrants regardless of the legality of their entry into the United States. Indeed, federal legislation acknowledges the decision-making sovereignty of the municipality within the city limits. Such a welcoming stance has meant that, first with blacks fleeing the slave states of the South, and then today with Latinos entering from Mexico, the city's territory has always been a safe-haven for people seeking a better life. In North American cities, in order to be recognised as residents and beneficiaries of municipal welfare measures (e.g. public housing), it is enough to have a driver's license, whose issue is not tied to a residence permit. This means that many illegal migrants still manage to live in the metropolis as long as they do not leave the city limits. Although important, this perception of Chicago is not particularly widespread abroad, where instead the city is recognised as one of the capitals of black music, in particular of blues, jazz and soul. Once again, as with Los Angeles and New York, the city's identity - and what it is famous for - comes from the very black population that has faced discrimination, hatred and segregation.

The history of the Windy City is somewhat paradigmatic of recent American history: from the relationship between black and white communities, to that between institutions and crime, from the process of deindustrialisation to the rise and fall of the American Dream. Profound contradictions mark the city, embodied today in being both the area where the first black President of the United States, Barack Obama, comes from, and also one of Trump's major electoral bases.

Notes:

[1] The riots of 1919 also brought another novelty: drive-by shootings by the Irish, which would later be made famous by Al Capone's Outfit.

[2] Photos of Fred Hampton's murder reached every corner of the world.

[3] In 2004, Miloon Kothari, the UN's top expert on the housing issue, visited the Cabrini-Green project and said: "Evictions of public housing residents in the United States clearly violate international human rights, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights".

by Gabriel Seroussi

For many reasons, the 20th century was the “American century”. The political, economic and cultural leadership exerted by the United States all around the world was clear. However, as it is often the case in history, the apogee of a phenomenon is the first symptom of its disgregation. With the defeat of its historic nemesis- the Soviet Union- America began its downward spiral,  the most tangible effects of which can be seen today.

After recovering from the Reagan intoxication, in the nineties all the chickens of American society came home to roost one by one. The 1992 Los Angeles uprising exposed the systemic racism on which the US was founded. The Waco massacre brought to light the problem of firearms proliferation [1]. President Clinton’s sexgate showed to the world that the United States was still a den of puritans [2]. The apogee of the American century was therefore neither the end of history nor the planet’s honeymoon. Among the unexpected protagonists of this new American era were the gangs, too.

The end of the “American century” saw the overbearing entrance of gangsterism into collective imagery. Gangsta rap was a huge hit around the world, while figures for violence in American metropolises kept rising. In the nineties, the fruits of decades of wicked policies were being reaped. The bill to pay for American society was as high as ever. The number of cities reporting gang-related problems increased from 270 in 1970 to 2,547 in 1998 - an increase of 843%. In Los Angeles County, the percentage of homicides attributed to gang activity out of all annual homicides rose from 15% in 1984 to 45% in 1995 [3].

African-american gangs apparently became the only social elevator for the young inhabitants of urban ghettos. Furthermore, in the total lack of role models, gangsterism provided an identity for a community now devoid of political and cultural references to identify with. In this sense, the success of gangsta rap played a crucial role in the institutionalisation and homogenisation of the gang phenomenon. Gangsta culture, as a reworking of the Los Angeles criminal tradition, became the common ground for black gangsterism in every corner of the country.

However, it was the increase in the consumption of cocaine and its derivatives that was the real driving force for gangs advancement. The Colombian- and later Mexican- drug cartels imported tonnes of cocaine into the United States, and then outsourced the cutting, distribution and risks involved in this business to local criminals. The gangs’ role within this economic system was variable. Depending on the local context, some gangs tended to naturally overpower others, sign agreements and wage wars. The common feature, however, was the organisational and economic qualitative leap. The Black Disciplines gang in Chicago was structured around permanent open-air drug markets, where the retail price was set by the organisation’s top brass. Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing complex on the city’s South Side, became so central to the criminal organisation that the solution adopted by the local authorities was shocking. Between 1998 and 2007, the whole neighbourhood was razed to the ground [4].

However, the increase in the homicide rate was not solely due to the ongoing wars between gangs for control of drug trade. What had increased was the quality and the quantity of firearms. The spread of easy-to-use automatic firearms enabled the development of more lethal conflict practices. What became the trademark of the gangs was undoubtedly the drive-by-shooting - the attack from a running car.

Crime of Mexican, Central American and Caribbean origin also grew by leaps and bounds. Both groups with ancient origins such as the Chicano Latin Kings and gangs born of a more recent immigration like the Salvadoran MS-13 became organisations as structured and competitive on the ground as African-American crime.

Another phenomenon that took shape during the Nineties was the expansion of the gangs beyond the confines of metropolises. Gangs therefore grew across the boundless American countryside. This expansion was particularly evident in the Midwest area and in the southern states, especially in those bordering Mexico. In the second half of the Nineties, in fact, the weight of the Mexican drug cartels on the international drug market increased. The chain reaction was an increase in the number of gangs operating in states such as Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

Meanwhile, the collective hysteria of the War on drugs continued apace. It was during this historical phase that the myth of nationally organised gangs emerged. This idea developed because of the increasing number of gangs calling themselves as Crips or Bloods. The fame of these names, made even more famous by gangsta rap, allowed the press to associate the gang phenomenon with the idea of a nationally organised crime. In reality, it was the success of the Los Angeles criminal imagery that brought about this change in the toponymy of  African-American gangs. Bloods and Crips had become something of a brand. The gangs that reached the necessary size and notoriety asked to affiliate to these groups in order to gain prestige. In such cases, the affiliation with larger criminal groups didn’t entail a loss of sovereignty or an entrance into more complex organisational schemes. Gangs therefore remained far removed from organised crime, especially from the mafia-style one. In fact, even where these groups were highly structured, they never reached the level of pervasiveness of mafia organisations. It was first a question of integration into systems of power. The strength of an organisation such as American Cosa Nostra was its political influence, its infiltration within public administrations, its links with local entrepreneurs. The colour line never allowed African-American crime to carry out this qualitative leap.

In the Nineties, African-American criminal groups were in the political spotlight several times during the decade. One case in particular drew media attention on the gangs’ world: the death of Stephanie Kuhen- an only four-years-old girl- at the hands of a Chicano gang in Los Angeles in 1995. The collective outrage at the death of an innocent child forced President Clinton to hold a public press conference in order to announce a renewed offensive against gangs.

However, the real paradigm shift in terms of repression would come a few years later with the implementation of the Patriot Act, the law introduced by President Bush in 2001 on the emotional wave of the Twin Towers attack. The increase in power of the US police and espionage corps in order to reduce the risk of new attacks ushered in a phase of extremely harsh social control by the state over its citizens. In fact, the extensive use of the criterion of “domestic terrorism” allowed also the repression of criminal phenomena unrelated to Islamic terrorism [5].

The crackdown arising from the Patriot Act continued in 2007 with the approval of the U.S. Gang Deterrence and Community Protection Act. This measure made certain gang-related offences federal crimes, with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

A recent study conducted by the Great City Institute in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago focused on the effects of US public policies of the last twenty years on the gang phenomenon. The applied measures- at both national and local levels- have weakened the most numerous gangs, but they haven’t produced a noticeable improvement in the data of gang-related violence. In fact, according to the Great City Institute, what had emerged was solely an internal restructuring of the African-American criminal world towards a fragmentation into smaller groups. Harder to harness in the marshes of repression, contemporary gangs did not lose their centrality in urban ghettos.

In Chicago, for example, the decapitation of the Folk Nation and the People Nation- the city’s two main criminal alliances- did not lead to a decrease in the number of gang members in the city, let alone a decrease in the number of murders. The aforementioned study therefore demonstrates the urgent need for a reorientation of public policies, especially the development of viable alternatives in the poorer neighbourhoods of American metropolises. The black community continues to be the most vulnerable in this respect. One figure speaks for itself in this respect: African-Americans make up 30% of Chicago's population, but 75% of homicides involve an African-American person as either victim or perpetrator [6].

Notes:

[1] The Waco Massacre was the siege of the compound belonging to the Branch Davidians religious sect by the US federal forces. The siege, which lasted 51 days, ended with the burning of the entire complex and the deaths of 76 followers, including 25 children.

[2] The sexgate Clinton-Lewinski was a political-sexual affair that involved the US President Bill Clinton during his second term.

[3] Brown, Gregory Christopher, James Diego Vigil, e Eric Robert Taylor. 2012.

[4] Kenny Duckworth, Kendrick Lamar’s father, was born and raised in Robert Taylor Homes and was an affiliate to the Gangster Disciple gang.

[5] Alexander, Michelle. 2010.

[6] Aspholm, Roberto; Córdova, Teresa; Papachristos, Andre; Williams, Lance; Hagedorn, John. 2018.

by Stefano Ricaldone

On June 2nd, 2002, the American broadcaster HBO aired for the first time its new TV series The Wire, written and directed by David Simon and set in the streets of Baltimore, back then the city with the highest murder rate in the United States. The show was an instant success that would go on for five seasons, radically changing the way of making TV and bringing to the big screen themes such as poverty, drug dealing, clashes between gangs and criminal organisations, economic crisis, police repression and urban transformation.

While in the United States the series was a success in terms of both critic reviews and audience, its echoes didn’t reach Europe until several years later, perhaps because it apparently focused on american dynamics- far removed from life in the cities of the Old Continent- or perhaps because in the same years another major hit series was being aired, again for HBO: The Sopranos.

Each season focuses on a different theme, in order from first to fifth: gangs and drug dealing, the port and smuggling, city government and bureaucracy, the public school system, the media system.

The style chosen by Simon is raw, realistic. The series does not adopt a single point of view and, although we are dropped into the city of Baltimore by detective Jimmy McNulty, there are no 'saints' in The Wire, there is no dull division between good guys and bad guys, between cops and criminals. The narrative jumps from one character to another in a continuous interweaving of racism, poverty, systemic violence, money and interests, making the show a masterful portrayal of the players acting in the great American metropolis.

The show's peculiarity lies not only in its themes, but also in the choice of cast and language; many of the actors and actresses are from Baltimore, and the accent used tries to trace that of the city's inhabitants. Characters such as the anarchist-criminal Omar (Michael K Williams). who robs drug gangs, the businessman-mafioso chasing the American dream Stringer Bells (Idris Elba) and the hitwoman Snoop (Felicia Pearson, actually convicted of second-degree murder), have entered the collective imagery of millions of Americans.

The theme of gangs is primarily addressed in relation to the war on drugs, whose players are gangs and institutions that do not, however, act monolithically. Both sides are made up of individuals whose interests and ambitions transcend their own side and often come into conflict with the leadership of the organisations they belong to. There are therefore rifts within gangs between drug dealers, soldiers and bosses; but there are as well within police and city institutions, with corrupt officers and politicians. The war on drug dealing is depicted in its social consequences: an instrument of control of the city’s lower-class neighbourhoods, which leaves dozens of dead bodies on the ground. As the story progresses, it also becomes the means by which politicians initiate the processes of urban renewal and real estate speculation, with the lower-classes paying the price.

The young people of West Baltimore are forced into a vice: joining the drug-dealing business with the illusion of the American dream or living off underpaid jobs. In the background of this choice the shadow of drug addiction and abject poverty constantly hovers.

This condition is represented in a scene from the first season through a dialogue between three characters. D'Angelo (in charge of an open-air drug market) explains to Bodie and Wallace (two young dealers) how to play chess. To be understandable, he transposes reality into the game: the king becomes the head of the organisation, the queen the coordinating right hand man, the rook the drug and the pawns the soldiers (the drug dealers). D'Angelo explains how the aim of the game is to take the opponent's king, and that normally pawns, unless they reach the other end of the chessboard and become queens, are the first to die. However, Bodie replies to this statement that this does not happen to pawns who know how to move and therefore win. In this view, the ultimate goal of the game, to take the opponent's king, fades and the only thing to pursue is individual success- to become queens. The game thus becomes an allegory of reality: individual success in the organisation, namely the climb to ascendancy and power, is the only thing that matters.

Articles and Books:

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Websites:

https://www.chicagoganghistory.com

https://www.chiraqdrill.com

https://www.streetgangs.com