Youth Gangs Quotes

Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don't cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.

Gangs have evolved. The stereotypical gang member covered in tattoos and wearing colors does not really exist any more. There's this fear that it could be any kid, but by any kid, that means any Latino kid.

I didn't have my dad there and I had another mate who didn't have his father, and you kind of form your own little family and that's what gangs are, that's why you have so many gangs now because there are so many kids without fathers that they seek their own male bonding.

A lot of people use the phrase 'underage violence,' which, to me, is meaningless.

I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

The truth is that those who join gangs - more often than not they are young men in their later teens - often do come from the most difficult family backgrounds, from an environment where they feel neglected and unwanted. Gang membership can bring a perverse sense of belonging which they may not have ever got at home.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

My family had been involved in gangs since the 1970s.

It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.

I came to the U.S. to have opportunities. I saw a lot of people in gangs. I just didn't understand that - you live in the U.S., you have all these opportunities. And then you get in a gang?

My parents were laborers so we lived on South Park, which was a low-income region of Seattle. You had a choice - you either joined or formed a gang or you let others bully you.

When I was young, running with a gang was a cool thing to do; that's how you get popular; that's how you get the girls.

The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing, and you see who's doing it and perpetrating it - they all look like Chief Keef. When it comes to the point that, you know, that kids who are doing the killings, and they're kids 13 to 19 years old, and you can replicate that in New Orleans, you can replicate that in Oakland. All the kids look the same.

Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation.

I didn't run with a gang - I didn't have time. There were a few little street gangs sitting in the spotlights at night time - talking and playing marbles. But I was so wrapped up in boxing since I was 12.

I was in middle school right around the time the Bloods and the Crips started taking root in Compton and a lot of the other neighborhoods around me. I saw way too many of my peers - smart, kind, good kids - who got drawn into gangs and violence, and their futures were going to be forever scarred by that.

Whether it is kids carrying knives because they are in gangs or kids carrying knives because they are afraid of gangs, it is the gang culture that underpins the problem.

In other countries, it's a common thing to have outcast children running around the streets in packs, and I don't think we're so far away from it here.