Why Did YOU Do This To Your Babies? (4985 hits)

It's gut check time again. Same rules: If you are not ready to explore your inner feelings and beliefs...leave now...don't read another word!

AS ALWAYS YOU'VE BEEN WARNED
------ Part VII- GANGS

In a previous Blog by Dr. Hines titled… If it is so Negative, Why do YOU Support it? http://blackinamerica.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi... ...I suggested that “If you make a bed of nails, don't get mad when your kids are sticking each other in the butt with the nails you gave them. In the 50s and 60s we were so concerned with fighting “The Man” and gaining acceptance as equals that we forgot to worry about the message we were sending our children.”

I proposed that the original Rap Music was no more than Black CNN of its time.
But what if your good civil rights intentions lead to other unintended consequences (the law of unintended consequences: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Uninten... )?

What if while you were trying to fight the power and fight THE MAN for your rights…your babies learned the lesson of the fight, never back down, don’t let the man control you, earn your own way (money)…but not the consequences or limits?

What is a 15 year old boy took it upon himself to protect the youth in him hood because all the Black Panthers were sent to prison, the Black family disintegrated right before his eyes, drugs crippled his environment, the police were in an all out drug/civil rights/ crime spree war…that left absolute chaos in the Black neighborhoods?

What if our failure to raise/protect/ and teach our own babies, spawned a movement that grew into Rap Music, Gangs, and the violence that we live with today?
Worse, what if you blamed the children for your failure as a parent?

What if you were so selfish that you didn’t blame the person who looks back at you in the mirror?

What is this history of the CRIPS…the good and the bad… was being taught to your children…and they knew of this neglect?

Check yourself…


Raymond Washington, a 15 year-old student at Fremont High School started what would later become known as the Crips in 1969. After much of the Black Panther power base was eliminated and as other social and political groups became ineffective in Los Angeles, Washington, who was too young to participate in the Panther movement during the 1960s, but absorbed much of the Panther rhetoric of community control of neighborhoods (Baker 1988, p. 28) fashioned his quasi-political organization after the Panther's militant style by sporting the popular black leather jackets of the time. In addition to emulating the Panther appearance, Washington also admired an older gang that remained active throughout the 1960s called the Avenues, led by Craig and Robert Munson. He decided to name his new quasi-political organization the Baby Avenues (aka Avenue Cribs) to represent a new generation of youths.

Washington got together a few other friends near his 78th Street home near Fremont High School. His initial intent was to continue the revolutionary ideology of the 1960s and to act as community leaders and to aggressive protect their local neighborhoods. The revolutionary vision did not endure and because of immaturity and a lack of political leadership young Raymond Washington and his group never were able to develop an agenda for social change within the community and became obsessed with protecting themselves from other thugs in the community. Early members included Anglo "Barefoot Pookie" White, Michael "Shaft" Concepcion, Melvin Hardy, Jimel "Godfather" Barnes, Bennie Simpson, Greg "Batman" Davis, Mack Thomas, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, Raymond "Danifu" Cook, Ecky, No 1, and Michael Christianson. Many of these youth became the neighborhood "toughs" in the community and gained respect from other kids growing up in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

In 1969, a Los Angeles youth named Raymond Washington, 15, organized a group of other neighborhood youths and started a gang called the Baby Avenues. The Baby Avenues wanted to emulate a gang of older youths who had been involved in gang activity since 1964 and provided minor crimes for the Black Panthers of Los Angeles. This gang was called the Avenue Boys since they claimed their turf on Central Avenue in East Los Angeles. Raymond Washington, along with Stanley "Tookie" Williams and several other gang members from the Baby Avenues Gang were fascinated with the hype of the Black Panthers and they wanted to develop the Baby Avenues gang into a larger force. The Baby Avenues Gang began using the name Avenues Cribs since members lived on the avenue (Central Avenue). Crib members would wear blue scarves (now called bandannas) around their necks or heads. The color blue became their representative color.
Source: http://www.streetgangs.com/crips/


So here we are in 2008 and this small band of inner-city youth, trying to mimic the Black Panthers has grown into the largest criminal organization of our Black in America family. This group gave rise to many other infamous black youth gangs you see/ fear today. And we blame them for the gangs.

They didn’t start this mess…we did.

We unintentionally created a monster that we must now deal with. Like it or not, these are our children, our problems. We have to reach out to them and reshape their norms and values.

You left them to their own devices once…what are you going to do about it now? Posted By: Dr. Ahmad Glover
Thursday, August 14th 2008 at 10:42AM
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