INTERVIEW WITH BLOODS

• Attached is an 1980s interview with Dusty Loc, a 17 year old boy affiliated with the Bloods. In in the video, an older white man is deployed onto the scene in an investigative manner, and he seems to voice an extreme curiosity as to what exactly impels these young men to join and die in gangs. One can feel the assumed superiority the interviewer holds as he asks questions like “Why be in a gang, what’s in it for you? … What’s the cause?”. It is almost as if the interviewer and his intended audience are in on the same joke, attempting to discern the irrationality that they perceive inhabits these young peoples’ minds. However, there was no way for me not to automatically assume a historical lens when the man asks the Bloods “You’re willing to die for what this cause is?” in a way that seems to imply how dumb the man perceives the cause to be. 
• In class we learned of a time when inner-city youth did have a cause and were organizing in order to actualize it. The Black Panther Party was founded in 1966, helping to cultivate a consciousness of independence and resilience within African-American people and establishing various grassroots social programs as the politics of neoliberalism began to drain funding towards programs meant to assist the disadvantaged. The idea that our government facilitated a vast counterinsurgency program to dismantle the Panthers (who they percieved as a domestic terrorist organization and public enemy number one), assassinating and criminalizing its members, brings a whole new dimension to the interviewer’s comment. The interviewer may hint at how stupid he perceives the Bloods’ cause to be, however his question showcases an ignorance of a history where his society spent millions of dollars violently dismantling an organization which gave inner-city Black youth a positive cause to work towards.

- Johnny Campos 5/30/18