Brotherhood and the gang life

The allure of gang life beings to reveal itself. A solution for isolated and vulnerable young men, often without healthy role-models and present father figures. Gang life can appear to provide security, purpose, brotherhood, competition, validation; things most men seek in life. Gangs can offer a sense of honour, power, and respect in a society that has provided them with none. Beneath this illusion however lies the grim reality. Children walk to school with kitchen knives from their home rattling against their tin pencil box. Children are groomed and exploited by gangs and used as drug mules sent across county lines. Social media creates a toxic and incendiary platform where everything is public, so insults and threats made online are further encouraged by the audience of peers. This adds fuel to the fire, taking the conflict from the screen to the street. Boys feel pressured to adhere to harmful stereotypes of masculinity: man up, don’t cry, don’t be a grass, solve this like men. If this discussion is framed as a battle, as it often is in the media, between drill artists and the police, then we are forced to choose a side: are we afraid of young black men, or are we afraid of the authorities? Who do we sympathise with the most as a nation? I suspect that the answer to this question depends on many factors, not least your postcode. It is easy to say that the perpetrators of youth violence and so-called gang crime are solely to blame. It’s harder to accept the sour truth that we are all products of our environment. The crimes committed predominantly by young men on the streets with knives and guns are truly abhorrent, but the motivations behind them are complex. Criminals are, for the most part, not cartoon characters; not two dimensional psychopaths born unto this world to bring pain and suffering. Most times they are just like you and I. The experiences we face in life shape us - the decisions life forces us to make, the sounds of our childhood street, the characters we meet, our school, our job, the media. We were all children once. Our young brains absorb everything and we build our ways of seeing and being around these core experiences and beliefs. We learn about our environment, and we adapt. That’s survival. One doesn't have to listen to these artists for long to realise that they are from a world every bit as violent and chaotic as their music.