My family has roots in Compton. At first it was a white suburb and of course there was shyt we had to deal with from CACs at first, but largely that was kinda blown out of proportion. I mean sure I’m not denying that at first the racial tension had to be crazy, but white flight happened so quickly that they were quickly outnumbered.
Most of em moved out with white flight, which is why in the 60s it was easy to get a house and land because the real estate companies were buying them up from Cacs and selling it to black folks. Add in the good paying factory jobs everywhere.
But from what I was told gangs originally started off as teenagers linking up and having crews and shyt. This was after the FBI had ruined the Panthers and other related groups internally and arrested anyone who was suspected of being apart of it. So essentially, most of the kids came from good homes. They were aware of conscious things, but largely most people tried to stay in the middle they didn’t wanna get too extreme. Just live the straight and narrow, build wealth for their families.
At first the gangs were nothing violent, all that “gangs were for the community” shyt is BS tho. Maybe for like less than a year or some shyt but it’s not like they were pillars of the community helping out old ladies and shyt. They weren’t, they were just teenagers hanging out. But if you’re a teenager from a good home, you’d naturally help old ladies across the street anyways bc that’s how you were raised.
Everything past the point where crack and guns came in ruined the entire black community. Compton isn’t even a black city - we have been gentrified out of there by Mexicans. Black people don’t even exist in the state of California like that anymore.
If you looked at the numbers there’s more Africans than ADOS in many places out here in Cali.