This morning, marking my month in Compton, I was just watching videos on YouTube.
It started when I watched a fight between some new Asian kid at school and some Latino-ish white guy.
Damn I wish I could've done what that Asian kid did. I googled information about the boys and where they are now. Couldn't really find much.
Then on the side panel of the YouTube version of that fight, I see a newsclip about some Van Nuys Filipino gang members from the 1990s being arrested. I think about how this incident looks on TV for other Angelenos, particularly white folks. The local news, is always oriented towards crises, and all you see on local news is people of color behaving badly, but then their national programming is chocful of white folk.
While pondering about that structural juxtaposition, I'd hopped upon a Streetgangs Video about some rappers from the Eastside of Long Beach.
As you might know, I had been interested in pursuing a project on the gangs of the Eastside of Long Beach. However, I have since switched gears and am in the process of writing on another project.
But anyway these video about a 20-year old Eastside Long Beach Asian rapper just caught my attention.
On the surface, it's easy for anyone to judge and dismiss these guys as stupid and/or uneducated.
However, I think if you do persist in watching, you do gain insight, just like you might gain some insight listening to minutes of a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist giving a conference talk to fellow neuroscientists. Both this guy and the Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist talk in ways that they are used to based on their environs.
I can say that I've had the opportunity to listen to both, but I can understand enough from each of them to gain insight.
I gleaned some insight from this rapper when he talked about Jin becoming a "gospel rapper" and the division of gangs between LA and between Long Beach. LA's gangs tend to be divided by streets, whereas Long Beach tends to divide along racial lines. I hadn't thought about this still existing today, but then again I didn't hang around gang members as much as I did ex-gang members and mediators.
