Quote:
Originally Posted by NineseveN
I grew up in gang neighborhoods. I grew up with gangs and gangbangers, for most of them, it's not the culture that drives them, that's for surbanized kids of status. What drives them is the basic need to survive. When you live with apes, you just can't keep clean; and when you're surrounded by predators, the only language a predator understands is, well, that of another predator. On some level, these predators identify with what the artists and media they prefer are saying. They're not hiding behind it, they're nodding their heads and saying, "yeah, my life is like that".
Most of the kids in the inner-cities aren't really criminals at their core, they're nothing more than organisms engaging in mimicry (both Batesian and Mullerian). If you somehow wiped Philly's population off of the map, the problem would go away, but only for a short time. There's an environment there that tends to breed predators, and unless that changes, cleansing is only a short-term adhesive bandage. Inner-city crime in this country has more to do with environment than it does with cultural or entertainment media.
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I understand what you're saying, and I do respect your POV becuase you lived there, hell you know more about it than I do. What I would argue is that the gangbangers who equate what those artists are saying to normal life, that is the culture. Culture isn't something that you just decide one day you're going to identify with. Those kids in the burbs who buy CD's and get tattoos on their weekly allowance aren't a real part of that culture. Those that live it. Those that are the real gangbangers like the ones you grew up with.. they are the fuel of that culture. It's what they know, and it's what's comfortable to them. The culture is what is glorified by gangsta rap and other genres. It takes the culture to make the rap, not the rap to create the culture.
I can see what you're saying, and really there is no easy solution to gang and street violence. People that are more comfortable robbing someone, than earning an honest living, do not want to help themselves. They're perfectly content doing what they're doing, and that's what feeds the crime culture. What's the solution to that? I don't know. These are just my observations.