I recently watched a documentary about street gangs on Netflix that delved into the very extreme side of racial, economic, cultural, and social geography located in America, and how it came to become the environment that it is today.
It's a really great representation of Mitchell's reading on the cultural geographies of race and race as a never-ending geographical project, transforming space and creating rules and how those rules structure our lives. It's also very focused on suburban fear, fear of each other of the same race, fear of police, and the wariness of outsiders.
*Graphic Violence and Explicit Language*
Crips and Bloods: Made in America Doc. released 2008
The two rival gangs have separated themselves into boxes/ sects, their individual territories where the rules mean life or death. Being in the wrong neighborhood can cost you your life, and it all comes down to where you're from.
It started with gentrification. Surrounding all this gang territory is exceptional wealth. This area of LA is 30 miles from Disneyland, 20 miles from Malibu, and 6 miles from Beverly Hills.
There's one man in this video who's reasoning seems silly on the surface. That the reason he's so upset about not being able to visit other projects due to gang rivalries, is because he can't flirt or spend time with other "young neighborhood hotties". When really this is another example of the denial of freedom, to not be able to just BE. He's not free to walk down any street he chooses for whatever reason he chooses because it could put his life or others' lives in danger.
geography of gang territories (crips- blue. bloods- red)
What I really liked about this documentary was that they didn't talk about gangs until maybe halfway into the movie. It featured individuals who had grown up there, living their everyday with this racial oppression constantly pushing them down and controlling their everyday actions. Then, only after the black community was fed up with their treatment did the riots start. The African American community was pushed into acting the way they did because of their mistreatment and the failure for the surrounding white and police community to accept African American rights as equal to their own. It was from there that the Crips and Bloods were born.
Kumasi, a former Slauson gang member (gang/ club pre-dating the crips and bloods) now activist, educator and community leader working to forge peace, tells pieces of his story about how he was denied his right to BE and how the geography of control surrounded and effected him everyday.
Kumasi
The trailer for this documentary also shares the economic impact of the poverty of this area has on the social identity of the people residing within it. There is no hope, there is no future, but if you're in a gang or connected to one you can wield some power. No matter how dangerous being in a gang might seem, not being in one can still make you a target.
The geography of these South LA neighborhoods is an example of how the social construction of geography that went into building these neighborhoods like redlining, subsidized housing, lack of resources, racism, the white curtain, and altogether cultural differences can slowly turn a society into a place of hopelessness, poverty, and violence.
I know this is a very extreme example, but all the parts are there. Mitchell's cultural geography of race and the geographic construction of racism and the effects it has on a society. And Shabazz's geography of wealth, violence, control, racial mobility, and the system of resistance from white culture that came up to meet the civil rights movement. Race should not define how communities are organized or how they're treated, though it's obvious this is not often the case.
Crips and Bloods: Made in America Trailer 2008
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