Fact, Fiction, or Fu**ed up? Gang culture has the potential to become the next Black Wall Street on a National level. I tend to say that it’s both fact and fu**ed up. But it is what we have. If the current gang leaders were, simultaneously or overall, to do something like aspire to be a National Black Wall Street, getting money and taking care of their communities in the process, then we would, as a people, have a much better chance when combatting the forces that mean us harm, systematically. However, gangs would have to scale back illegalities. The government loves to make examples out of legitimate businesses and label them as fronts for racketeering and such just because someone is affiliated and does a little dirt on the side. These streets would need Black gangs to stop selling all those illegal drugs like crack, coke, and heroin and perhaps collectively grab a good percentage of the market share of the emerging marijuana market. 100 years ago the businesses were a little different; but here in 2023 the business district is still lucrative with Black businesses bringing in $141.1 Billion in gross revenue in 2020. What if the Rollin’ 60’s owned the next social media platform to do big numbers at the same time as O-Block owned every McDonalds in Chicago at the same time as all the Homies in New York City got a city contract and started building housing complexes for minorities at the same time that the Gangstas Disciples were bringing a new cancer drug into trials at the same time that every gang had social media influencers on payroll and record labels. Wouldn’t that be a much better future for Black people? Gangs already have the structure, workforce, and discipline to run large scale operations like businesses, but their value system is a little bit different. It’s basically money over everything. There would have to be a monumental shift in ethics (but an incremental shift will do, as long as we get there). Drilling would have to slow down, people would have to go back to school, young ones would have to stay in school, but it can be done.

            Gang structure is like the military. Everybody is a soldier. If an order is given, an order is followed. So instead of giving an order to go spin the block, tell him to go spin the HBCU. Financial aid is available. Don’t nobody pay for college up front. And you don’t even have to send everybody. Send two shooters to school to test it out. Have them network and bring business connections and scholarly application to your organizations. Diversify. Betting it all on crime is a very risky bet. Cops is getting everybody. They got YNW Melly, they got Young Thug (Gunna and fellow Rats copped out), They got Casenova, and they even got Torey Lanes! I’m just saying.

            Even with all this being said, there has to be an epic values adjustment. Gang leaders and their gangs have to start to value peace over violence and war, life over death, and money and community over death, violence, and war. A typical day in law enforcement consists of a drug ring taken down with gang affiliations and violent charges pending. 30 muthafu**as with a traphouse full of coke arrested. If 10 of those soldiers had professional degrees, do you really think that they would have had a traphouse full of coke? Hell no, they would have had a warehouse full of partygoers making 10 racks off of the bar 10 racks at the door, and 3 racks off of loosies in the bathroom, 3 nights a week, with 10 hittas from the set with security guard licenses and permits to carry moonlighting on payroll as the club’s security. All I’m saying is that it can be done.

            Let’s face it. Things are bad in most Urban African-American communities. To make things worse, nobody is coming to save us. Nine times out of ten they’re coming to shoot us and to do us harm. The solution – we have to use things that we already possess to pull us ahead and out of our current circumstances. One thing that the Black community has that – for better or worse – is very strong and prevalent; is GANGS. According to the FBI, there are 1.4 million gang members in this country. Much more, according to youth.gov, a third of all gang members in America are Black. That’s about a half a million Black soldiers we have. These are some of the roughest, toughest, meanest don-dadas to gun-butt yuh. They are willing to do things that a lot of people just aren’t. They are fearless, and that fearlessness can be cultivated into a community asset in our fight against oppression. If even ten percent of Black gang members got a bachelor’s degree and became professionals in an attempt to help the leaders of their gangs shift their major business operations into the legal realm and away from violence and drugs, then that would be about 47,000 soldiers in the same type of rooms that Hov (Jay-Z) was in when he was running towards that billionaire’s circle doing the work that hittas like Nipsey was doing.

-It Was Written-

-Jux Strongarm-