Crips And Bloods: Made In America

Serving as a reminder of South Central Los Angeles’ African American civil rights riots, Stacy Peralta’s 2008 Crips and Bloods: Made in America explores the tipping points that caused generations of psychologically oppressed and confined black youth of LA to change their tactics and methods of warfare in order survive by questioning the Los Angeles Police Department’s historical background towards the rise of gang culture. This documentary follows a timeline of the evolution of gang violence from three former Slauson gang members and now activists – Ron, Bird, and Kumasi – and their accounts of the external factors that influenced black youth to turn to gangs. Ultimately, Crips and Bloods: Made in America is about the generational shift of gang

mentality stemming from the historical dejection of African Americans which sparked a forty–year feud between a new wave of gangsters: the Crips and the Bloods.

The film recreates Los Angeles in the early 1950’s for the young soon to be Slauson founding fathers – constant neglect and exclusion from primarily white organizations. Regular rejection by white fraternities prompted the black youth to create their own. With no place to develop their own sense of identity, gang culture offered a newfound sense of belonging and safety that was otherwise out of reach. The Los Angeles Police Department was a predominant advocator for the perceived criminality of African Americans: monitoring invisible, social barriers and questioning those who veered from those supposed boundaries. Kumasi describes the typical African American man west of Alameda Street as a walking time bomb, “the question was upon whom,” he

says. These experiences set the stage for the tipping point known as one racist traffic stop too many – The Watts Riots. While the older generations were historically accustomed to their submissive past, the younger, infuriated generation vowed to not withstand the prejudiced skewed system any longer. Organizations like the Black Panther Organization – with motives to fight power not each other (African Americans) – and their leaders were obliterated. The Federal Bureau of Investigation claimed the Black Panther Organization to be “the greatest threat to the internal stability of the United States,” thus unmercifully incarcerated or killed any sign of black resistance movement figures, yet unknowingly paved the way for a new element of guerrilla fighters: a new generation completely detached from the submissive mentality of their ancestors, one armed with resentment and guns instead of fists – the Crips.
The Crips operated on the same value system as the Slauson’s – membership meant love and unity: a familial structure many teenage African Americans lacked, therefore they resorted to gang culture. Members and their families live within a cycle of broken hearts; families throughout a ten block radius are faced with the everyday possibility that their loved ones will succumb to the violence of gang culture because history and society has failed them in providing another outlet to resort to. With a mission to provide hope for the lost population of South Central Los Angeles, peacemakers (like Rob, Bird and Kumasi) strive to end generation after generation of youth being bred without a sense of who they are and without knowledge of the world outside of the ten block radius in which they are born.
By providing the audience with a look into the past to prove its effects on the future, Crips and Bloods: Made in America explains gang culture by diving deep into the history of South Central Los Angeles. Through the disclosure of a side the public is rarely exposed to (gang members themselves) Peralta is willingly criticizing the resources the United States has failed to utilize in an area they are historically needed most – consequently the unfortunate rationale of gang culture is fully exposed.