I don’t know if its true or not, but is thug and gangsta culture dying off in the black community?
My impression (as an outsider looking in) is that it was partly fueled by black people being locked out of mainstream society socially and economically, and trying to find social status and money in street culture. But now that black people are better integrated into society this is less of an issue as people have ways to get money and status in legitimate ways with better integration and higher education levels.
Also street culture seems to involve a lot of collective internalized self hatred for black people. Black people bragging about victimizing other black people is a form of lateral violence as people express the collective hatred society feels for black people through victimizing other marginalized groups.
But are groups like black lives matter helping to build a meaningful sense of self worth in the black community, and a culture of celebrating black people who victimize each other and keep each other down is seen as odious within this new culture of higher self worth and collective worth?
We know that homicides have been down since a peak in 2020 but again that’s hard to correlate to gang membership.
Anecdotally I think we all notice that “gangsta culture” is less prominent in mainstream culture than it used to be, but we know gangs still exist.
The FBI report says that most gang-affiliated criminal offenders are age 13-16 and most often the victim and offender know each other. It’s very much a youth culture phenomenon rather than a mainstream age-spanning cultural institution.
Mostly this. I know someone who ran a nightclub in the early 2000s and they said they simply would not play what he called “fight music” because it would instantly start fights or worse. Music that glorified the “gangsta” lifestyle simply evolved to glorify partying and clubbing because those are the songs that would get played in clubs.
I find this statement puzzling. It was black men / gangsta rappers who created Death Row Records, def jam records, and many other labels. Is the music industry really waning?
Right. When I hear the term gangsta culture I think gangsta rap. The names that come to mind include Notorious BIG, Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, and so on. Not just as the top artists, but as the music executives who ran things.
Not the first guy I thought of but since you ask no he’s not. But you knew that right so?
But these guys are Russell Simmons, D.O.C. Dr Dre, heard of ‘em?
I more meant a culture within the black community that celebrates self destruction, celebrating black people that victimize other black people.
I get the impression this culture is dying, and I didn’t know if it was because black people are better integrated into society, but also because as black people integrate better they do not internalize the hatred for black people that society at large has, and this internalized self hatred seems to be a big part of gangsta culture.
It was music, it was always the music. They simply figured out glorifying things that make people spend money instead of shoot each other were a lot more profitable and stopped the gangsta shit.
I’m banned from reddit because I said Americans have a constitutional right to vote not guilty on a jury. Reddit is a heavily censored shithole ever since they did their IPO.