Charleston White

So we're under better conditions.

We're freer.

Why would we join gangs and they didn't?

Well, we never had a mafia because we don't want to be gangsters.

Gangsters extort themselves.

Black people never extorted one another.

But before gang started, you got to think all the black people that came from the South that built Watts, Watts, California, all them vibrant black towns, all them vibrant black places in L.A.

before gang banging started.

Why them people didn't gang bang?

And it was vibrant here then.

You know why?

Because their children didn't have a struggle.

The gang banging children didn't come from gang banging because they was in impoverished conditions.

They could walk the neighborhoods and go get an apple off the tree.

No, when I look at them niggas in prison and they join the gangs and they fight and what they fighting about in jail, catching phase.

They don't look hopeless when they don't hear talking about how they live their gangbanging life.

They don't look hopeless.

They seem like they're bragging about it.

They got pride in it.

So have you done a qualitative study to talk to them and see why?