Bing, L. (1991). Do or die: Members of America’s most notorious teenage gangs speak for themselves. New York City: HarperCollins.

OVERVIEW

BACKGROUND

The author is a white female reporter and a long-time Los Angeles resident who establishes relationships with young gang members while they are incarcerated at a county juvenile detention camp. She then maintains communication with this group of (mostly) young black men, via telephone interviews and personal visits to their south central Los Angeles homes. Her fascination with gang kids is twofold: first, she desires to both learn and tell their story so that the desperation in their lives might be more adequately addressed by society; second, she wants to address the societal system that works to create these self-destructive individuals.

PURPOSE

This is one of the first insider accounts of Los Angeles teenage gangs. The author, over a period of several years, interacts with and chronicles the lives, loves, and battles of many of these children who kill for a living. This is the story of the failure of the American dream in urban America. "To the people who live here, Los Angeles is...a place where nothing is given to you except the weather and the ease with which things can be done...(it is) a black hole—the people here just get swallowed up by it...this book is about those people who inhabit this city." (p. xvi)

QUOTES

A gang member speaks on why he recently killed a member of an enemy set:

‘Like there was this fool, this enemy n---- from our worst enemy set, and he was with his wife and his baby. They was walkin’ down there near Vermont, where he had no business bein’. He was slippin’ (being careless; not watching his back) bad and we caught him. We was in a car, all homies, and I was like, ‘Let’s pop this dumb n----, let’s empty the whole clip (from an AK-47 with two banana clips, one on either side) in him. I just wanted to make him pay...’ Pay for what? ‘For all our dead homeboys. For bein’ our enemy. For slippin’ so bad...You got to understand—enemy got to pay just for bein’ alive...So...we circled around and pulled up on this n---- from two blocks away, crept up on him slow like, and I just gave it to him...I lit his a-- up! I killed him—shot his baby in the leg—crippled his wife!...She in a wheelchair now, I heard, wearin’ a voicebox, ‘cause one of the bullets caught her in the throat.’ Then, in afterthought, ‘The baby okay.’ We are all silent for a moment; when he speaks again his voice is a fusion of bad feelings: despair, remorse, a deep, biting resentment. ‘I just lit his whole family up and...’ He sucks in air, holds it a couple of seconds, puffs it out. ‘It was like, d---, Cuz—I killed him, that was my mission, but still—his whole family.’ He shakes his head several times, as if he cannot will himself to believe his own story...‘That’s a crazy world out there, and we livin’ in it. Dying in it, too...I tell you this—you see enough dyin’, then you be ready to die yourself, just so you don’t have to see no more of death.’ (pp. 43-44).

‘I’ll tell you though—if I didn’t have no worst enemy to fight with, I’d probably find somebody...I’d find somebody. Cause if they ain’t nobody to fight, it ain’t no gangs. It ain’t no life. I don’t know...it ain’t no...It ain’t no fun. Yeah! Ain’t no fun just sittin’ there. Anybody can just sit around, just drink, smoke a little Thai. But that ain’t fun like shootin’ guns and stabbin’ people. That’s fun. Like, see...people you kill...Okay, look, I’m so high (i.e., status in the gang)...and killin’ somebody, that make me higher. Cause you got the heart to kill somebody, then, like you got the heart to destroy. Make you tall.’ (p. 49)

When discussing the future and the possibility of parenthood, one gang member responds:

‘If I had a kid, years from now, I would kill him myself before I’d let another gang kill him. I’d kill him before I’d let him suffer so much, bein’ shot by another gang. I’d kill him because I love him so much.’ (p. 50)

The author made a connection with a young, not quite yet completely lost, boy (named Hart) in a juvenile facility whose friendship she nurtured over many months. At one point, the author made an unsuccessful attempt to adopt the young boy and remove him from the threat of returning to the violent gang world of South Central. She ventures a visit to the boy’s neighborhood several months after his release from the juvenile facility. She is escorted by Hart by his half-sister, Bijou. Bijou and Hart proceed to have a violent altercation:

Bijou has been carrying on a whispered conversation with the other kid, and now she beckons Hart to join them...Suddenly she reaches out and pushed hard on Hart’s chest...‘What y’all call me, n----?...I’ll kick you in yo’ place, you call me that again! Don’t you never call me no b----!’ Now Hart’s voice gets louder. ‘How about I call you a d--- eatin’ ‘ho?!’...Bijou’s lips pull back from her teeth. ‘You just a little buster (coward) showin’ off for yo’ friends. I’ll kick the s--- outta you, you think you so down, you d--- eatin’ little homo!’ The two begin a knock-down drag out fist-fight which Bijou clearly wins. (p. 180)

Not only does Hart suffer serious physical defeat by his half-sister, but also suffers psychological humiliation as she harangues him in front of his peers and the author. The final blow occurs when his sister destroys his one precious possession—a boom-box—by heaving it into the street. At this point, Hart picks up a broken bottle and begins lunging at his half-sister who walks away laughing at his cowardice:

Hart stands there with the broken bottle dangling from his fingers and looks around at his circle of friends. Each boy, in turn, looks away from his gaze...It is left to me to approach him. Cautiously...‘What you want?...Why you come here again, anyway?’ I tell him that I have come to see him, that I care about what happens to him. He is shaking his head in a slow back and forth movement before I finish speaking. ‘What the f--- you care about what happens to me? You white.’ ‘I do care about you, though.’ I reach out to touch his arm. He jerks away as if I had taken a pass at him with a razor. ‘Ain’t nobody can care about me. And I don’t care about no f---in’ person on earth.’ (p. 180)

CONCLUSION

The author powerfully shares her perspectives on the gang plight:

Whatever intellectuals are out there, you can bet the ranch they’re not pondering the gang problem. And maybe there aren’t any answers. Building more jails isn’t the answer, or mobilizing the National Guard. Underfunded community projects that nobody pays much attention to aren’t the answer, either. And as long as African-American gang members kill each other in African-American neighborhoods, the gang problem will continue to be a twenty-second shudder on the news. (p. 271)

It’s easy to speculate about why young African-Americans kill each other with such enthusiasm. Easy to theorize that their acts of violence might be the only mechanism they know of that might put them in touch with any larger world. In every interview, with every youngster I talked to, the same theme ran through the conversation. They all said that if they didn’t have an enemy to go after, they’d fight themselves, that, ‘you got to have somebody to fight with.’ Maybe, in some unconscious way, they are seeking the clarity of the warrior in battle. Maybe, through violence and death, they are seeking to feel alive. Certainly we, as a society, have let them know how worthless we think they are, and how unwelcome they are in their own country. We have given them our permission to kill themselves. There are so many casualties of gang warfare, so many lives fusing and sinking into the greedy sand of blind hatred. You ask questions and you look for information, and the only words that keep coming at you are the ones spoken by A.C. Jones in Gang Class (a juvenile detention camp counselor), when he told those nineteen kids (incarcerated gang members) that however down they were for their sets, whoever they killed or however they died, nothing really changes. The beat goes on. (p. 277)

CRITIQUE

After her many years of relationships and contact with variety of gang members and their affiliates, the author has no clear answer to the problem of gangs and violence. However, she accomplishes well the task of opening the life of gang struggle to a larger audience. Perhaps with this type of insight, society may then begin to seriously address these issues. This book as a good first step for both the academic and the lay person involved with urban youth to begin to grasp the reality of life on these harsh streets.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. From where does hope come in a neighborhood such as the ones described?
2. Why do you think that gang members feel the need to have an enemy?
3. How can the bangers justify the death sentence for a person guilty of taking a stroll with his family?
4. Consider the banger who shot the baby and the spouse. He appeared to feel some remorse. Is he still within reach of achieving—with help—a "normal" (by your standards) life?
5. What would you do if your life was so bad that you would rather kill your own offspring than allow them to live as you have lived?

IMPLICATIONS

1. If violence is considered by many a fun distraction from daily boredom, then society must investigate and eliminate the early reinforcements for violent activity.
2. The violent altercation between Hart and Bijou is a robust example of the deep connection with violence that most of these gang members have. If violence is the medium of interaction in one’s home, as well as on the street, then there is no escaping its deep-seated impact on the individual trapped in that situation. Violence in the home must be seriously reconsidered if there is to ever be any hope of impacting the high levels of violence in the urban streets.