First Draft

Introduction :

A majority of society sees gang members and gang life as a threat with only one way to survive to eliminate them. These gang members lend a immediate threat to the security and safety of everyone in their neighborhood, there is a constant fear of death in these neighborhoods. But for the child who lives in that very neighborhood with no father ,a mother on crack , a sister who can't work because her arms show trax, a brother turning tricks, living on welfare with no one to look up to and only a hopeless future to look forward to, they turn to gangs because the outside world rejects them. The gang becomes their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, gangs become their family. Gangs are a way of life for many of these young black males because of their position in culture, sense they our born in mist poverty they our already for the most part given what will look achievable and cool .There is no way to completely eliminate gang life, and passing the blame around doesn't help either but yet we have to change the violent nature of many gangs . We must look as the young man and women trying to grow out of concrete. But first we must understand their cultural maps seem to already be set in fate ,something that we can never understand until theirs a way to truly trade places and a perfect example of the danger of cool in our society.

Major Argument's:

A gang is defined as a "group of people organized for a particular purpose: who usually engage in violent or otherwise criminal behavior". Gangs usually partake in drug-trafficking, robbery, vandalism, arson, assault, and even murder. There are endless reasons why young men and women join gangs. Many have to contest with high poverty, stressed families, unemployment, under-employment, under education, racism. Some join for a sense of protection from other gangs. But most join for the sense of family. The youth living in these environments need to satisfy this sense of emptiness , its their desire to feel secure. It gives them some kind of identity, belonging, power, and protection all forms of "cool" in our society. The gangs represent their armor from the outside world. It must be stated tho that many things have been done to try to stop gang violence. Some of the ways that have been proposed to solve this violent destructive lifestyle are citizen participation, reducing of guns and weapons, programs set to address violence, and public assistance for crime, drug use, and violence. But none of them seem to work , In my opinion its because there not geared towards the typical young male or female gang member. They our being treated as projects or cases or hardened thugs not as people, looking for the same love and support we all crave. Majority of them come from broken families. We must somehow find a replacement to the comfort and support of belonging to a gang. We must understand that people who join gangs do not see them in the same way as people outside the gang life see them.

Gang members like all human beings spend their whole life’s looking outside themselves for an object or feeling to fill the emptiness they have felt sense child birth. But if you take somebody that already feels limited , and then try to find something outside to make it feel whole , that something being an object or feeling that is just as limited ,you just end up with more of the same that has made one miserable in the first place. But people still continue try to heal this void by using broken outside bandages, knowing very well that it still won't be healed. Gang members like so many others run their whole life’s trying to avoid all that hurt and displeasement, running from emptiness while trying to fill it at the same time. By doing this they remain separate from their own life’s, looking at it, judging it, analyzing it but not truly living it. Underneath their "cool mask's" there is a great unease, a unease of fear, pain, and anxiety. These two identities our both authentic but one is used as a mask to cover thee other. Everybody plays a "cool" role or character to cover-up their own emptiness and insecurities, which is usually determined by the culture their born into. So by filling their determined cool roles they end up on a very dangers road.

A prominent thing observed in gangs and society as a whole is the use of tattoos .But why do people sit quiet ,unmoving, in pain allowing a complete stranger to repeatedly stabbed them with sharp needles all in the sake of getting a tattoo ? It seems that in society as a whole its peer pressure, and personal expression are the common reasons why people have tattoos. In gang-life its more focused on personal expression and branding ones set. While society views gang-members and especially gang-members with tattoos as rebellious and deviant, they our viewed by their admirers as a form of body art, it’s a personal expression of identity. Tattoo’s can be small and discreet or large and obvious used to express individually to indicate membership in a group or to attract attentions. The desire to be part of something, to have a identity has a great influence on what a person does and who they become. Having a tattoo can be a sign that you belong to a certain group, a certain sub-culture, While gangs may be the armor for many in them tattoo's our the pillar which waves the flag of identity .

Once a person has joined a gang, they can not see past it the "coolness" it offers. The gang takes over everything, leaving no time for school, work, or any other commitments . This may be considered unhealthy by outsiders, but it gives a focus to a person's life that otherwise would not have been provided in many cases. Some of these young men have never been exposed to happiness, they hate themselves and those around them so much that they eventually become hardened to their pain and by doing so make their lives of those around them miserable without even realizing it. These young men and women our looking for a sense of respect but when you think about it, respect is a precarious thing to all of us, once it starts to slip away, one can never get it back, and respect is all-important to people who have never had any, being respected is being cool.

Conclusion:

In conclusion hopefully a way can be found to give hope to people living in desperation, when we see this the poverty and discrimination will disappear by themselves, the gang problem with them and will see a new cultural map plotted out , a new definition of cool but the question we need to all ask ourselves is not who is at blame for the wasted youth? or the how the addiction of cool caused it but yet how can we help make that one seed that was never meant to grow, grow form concrete ?