
Dispatches from the Rap Wars - kawera
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2016/Chicago-Gangs/
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6stringmerc
Intriguing balance of sociology and standards of conduct / research to get
access and some of the sympathetic elements of otherwise pretty dangerous and
irresponsible behavior and attitudes. Definitely fits in to me with the "in
order to assist or encourage change, understanding some of the roots as able
is valuable" even as an outsider. Like one of the subjects point out, the
horrible conditions are what drive interest, and another way out of the cycle
isn't readily apparent...though certainly a hot subject.

~~~
sevensor
It was interesting to me that the gang isn't even fighting over turf for
lucrative drug sales -- the drug business doesn't make them any money to speak
of.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Another article posted here today makes the claim that in a study in Liverpool
that gave drug addicts free drugs, there were less addicts, because drug
addicts became dealers in order to afford their own drug habit drawing others
into the same affliction.

So perhaps looking for profit is the wrong measure, instead look to see what
the street value of the drugs they consume is and see if they could afford
that without dealing.

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youdontknowtho
This smacks of the kind of "fear the inner city" black kid BS that we heard in
the early 90's.

I can just picture this reporter talking to one of the guys I grew up with
listening to their bullshit and just eating it up with a spoon. It's not to
say that the world isn't violent and screwed up, but the nexus of crime and
youth culture is always over inflated to "national panic". It just keeps
happening.

~~~
pchristensen
He's a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, not some slack-jawed
rube. Also, the point of the article is that success as gang rappers makes
these boys targets for other gangs and their lives and options become limited,
not that they're a danger to anyone outside of the gang territories.

Chicago is a complicated city - the safe parts are among the safest of any
American city, and the unsafe parts are so dangerous that it drags the
citywide numbers down. See [http://www.urbanophile.com/2013/08/12/the-growing-
public-saf...](http://www.urbanophile.com/2013/08/12/the-growing-public-
safety-inequality-gap-in-chicago-by-daniel-hertz/)

"Over the last twenty years, at the same time as overall crime has declined,
the inequality of violence in Chicago has skyrocketed ... There have always
been safer and more dangerous areas here, as there are everywhere; but the gap
between them is way, way bigger now than it used to be ... In the early 90s,
the most dangerous third of the city had about six times as many murders as
the safest third. By the late 2000s, the most dangerous part of the city had
nearly fifteen times more homicides than the safest third."

~~~
youdontknowtho
I just get really touchy when urban cultural stuff gets reported like a ritual
from darkest Africa. That being said, you're right.

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bumbledraven
> The guys have a term for these kinds of fans: cloutheads.

Really? Only 72 pages in Google's index contain this word, and none of them
use it in the article's sense.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22clouthead%22&start=70](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22clouthead%22&start=70)

~~~
rezt
How does that prove anything? It could've been a colloquialism.

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psiconaut
who was going to say people gets shot by popularity in the social media. this
is, literally, the impact of the killer apps.

~~~
futureisnow
I don't think popularity is exactly what gets them shot. It just happens that
they're looking for popularity in the same way that they're struggling to
control a territory. The 'war' is extended to the cyber realm, just jumping
one dimension up.

