TV Comments

I've been watching Gangland, a History Channel program about gangs in America — street gangs, motorcycle gangs, etc. When you watch a lot of episodes of this sort of program back-to-back as I've been doing, you start noticing interesting patterns. Unless the History Channel has been inaccurate in their portrayal street gangs, their origins have all been very similar — not just similar to each other, but also I suspect similar to the the origins of the earliest tribes and nations.

Put simply, most of the gangs profiled over the four seasons of Gangland on the History Channel were first created by people who simply wanted a means of protecting themselves. Some needed to protect themselves from other gangs; some needed to protect themselves from racism; some were just friends who were bullied at school. Whatever the problems in their lives, it was clear to them that the ostensible authority figures in their lives — parents, police, politicians — were unable or unwilling to help them. Usually, they had good reasons to fear for their lives, at least some of the time.

Click for More: American Street Gangs as Proto-Nations