Race War?
Inter-Racial Conflict Between
Black and Latino Gangs in Los Angeles
Robert Donald Weide PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
California State University, Los Angeles
rweide@CalStateLA.edu
A Sociological Narrative
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What is sociology? What do sociologists do?
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The power of sociology is in the analysis not in the data
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“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood
without understanding both.” – C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
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A History of Crossroads: Historical Antecedents to Racial Gang Conflict in Los
Angeles and California State Prisons
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Spanish Colonization and the Roots of Racial Bias in Mexican Culture: late 1400s – 1848
The Anglo Invasion: 1848 – early 1900s
Populating Los Angeles: early 1900s – 1950s
The Rise and Collapse of the Civil Rights Movement: late 1950s – early 1970s
Inter-Racial Gang Conflict on the Streets of Los Angeles: early 1990s – Present
Spanish Colonization and the Roots of Racial Bias in
Mexican Culture: late 1400s – 1848
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15th century Spain and the Reconquista (1492): Birth of the race concept
– Race is a concept conceived of for the purpose of dividing human beings into stratified
social groups
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The African Slave trade in Colonial New Spain (Mexico)
– 200,000+ African slaves were imported to Mexico
– Mexico accounted for half of all African slaves imported to the New World until 1700
– Regions like Veracruz, Zacatecas and the District Federale (Mexico City) were common
destinations for African Slaves
– 1612 DF Population: 15,ooo Spanish, 80,000 Indigenas, 50,000 African
– Regime of social, economic, legal and cultural restrictions of Afro-Mexicans throughout
colonial period
– The “Mestizo Myth” and complexion bias in modern Mexican society
Famous Afro-Mexicans include Emiliano Zapata and Don Pio Pico
The Anglo Invasion: 1848 – early 1900s
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The Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
The Anglo Horde Arrives: The Gold Rush of 1849
– Hundreds of thousands of Anglos pour in from the East Coast and the South
– Mexican Californios go from majority to minority virtually overnight
– Anglo immigration increased California population by over 410% in 10 years,
and 1600% in 50 years
– 1850 – 92,597
– 1860 – 379,994
– Some Anglos from the South brought African American slaves with them
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Stolen Land – Dispossessing Californios through homesteads and hustles
– Mexican property titles were ignored
– Court cases always favored Anglos as juries were composed exclusively of Anglos
– Dispossessed Mexicans and blacks concentrated in Downtown and regional barrios
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The imposition of the Anglo American system of racial stratification
– Blacks and Mexicans ended up in the same subordinate class position
The Birth of the Ghetto: early 1900s – 1950s
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Housing Covenants: a history of geographical isolation for African American and
Mexican American communities
– Anglo development Downtown pushed the Mexican community to East LA and the black
community to South Central
– Housing covenants were laws that forbade the selling of property to non-white persons
– Housing covenants were the law in Los Angeles until they were ruled unconstitutional by
the SCOTUS in 1948
– Neighborhood racial boundaries were enforced for a generation afterward by racist
white residents and LEO’s
– “The Spook Hunters” one of the earliest documented gangs in Los Angeles. Intimidated
and terrorized blacks who dared to enter white neighborhoods
– Geographical isolation enabled the emergence of distinct black and Chicano cultures in
South and East LA respectively
The Rise and Collapse of the Civil Rights Movement:
late 1950s – early 1970s
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“I have a dream” Martin Luther King Jr. 1963 – The Civil Rights Movement began as
a movement denouncing the race concept
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Ian Haney-Lopez – Legal violence and racist suppression of the Civil Rights
Movement led to the radicalization of the movement
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COINTELPRO – FBI and ATF infiltration and suppression of radical civil rights
organizations like the Brown Berets and Black Panther Party left a void in Los
Angeles society that was filled by gangs
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Racial Nationalism: Viva La Raza and Black Power
– Radical civil rights organizations like the Brown Berets and Black Panther Party called for
the emphasis of insular oppositional racial identities, rather than the dissolution of the
race concept
– Insular oppositional racial identities complemented the geographical isolation and
cultural divide between black and Chicano communities in Los Angeles
– Informed the emergence of modern Crip, Blood and Sureno gang identities
Radical Civil Rights Organizations:
The Brown Berets and Black Panther Party
An Invisible Wall: Cultural Differences Between
Black and Chicano Communities in Los Angeles
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Clothing
Hairstyles
Language
Music
Cars
Cuisine
Religion
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Cross-racial membership: Black South Siders, Mexican Crips and Bloods
Cultural identity determines racialized gang identity, not primordial racial identity
“It ain’t what you are, it’s where you’re from”
Demographic Change in Los Angeles
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Demographic Change – Massive Latino immigration since 1970
Los Angeles County Population by Race 1940-2010
6000000
5000000
4000000
Asian
Hispanic
3000000
Black
White
2000000
1000000
0
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Competition Bias
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Both Black and Mexican gang members see one another as competition for jobs
and housing, however for very different reasons
Sureno
Crip and Blood
Employment Competition
44/60 – 73%
19/26 – 73%
Housing Competition
44/62 – 71%
19/27 – 73%
Black gang members resent Mexican immigrants for taking jobs and housing
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Perceptions of
Black gang members think Mexican coworkers are too willing to be taken advantage of by employers,
which puts Black workers in a difficult position of having to compete by being taken advantage of
White employers and landlords prefer Mexican workers /tenants over Black workers/tenants
Mexican gang members believe that Blacks are lazy and dependent on welfare,
which Mexican immigrants are ineligible to receive
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Mexican gang members think Black coworkers complain more than they work and keep their jobs
only by the threat of alleging racial bias against employers
Competition Bias
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Black Perceptions
What tends to happen is a lot of the Mexican workers are, what I don’t like about working with them is
that, they, overcompensate and course an employer would like to get as much as they can out of an
employee, so, if work starts at 7, what bothers me is that they’re there at 5:30, and they’re working
Q: To make everybody else look bad?
A: Right, or make themselves look good, either way, and it’s not fair because even though I’m not
penalized directly for that, starting at 7, but of course if you’re the boss and you getting production out
of these guys keep ‘em even later, get off at 3:30, they’re still there at 4, 4:30, circumstances may need
for that if there’s, you gotta clean up something, something went wrong, but just because you know, quit
time is quit time, pick it up tomorrow, you know not just because you want brownie points.
#69 WS Rolling 20’s Bloods, 40’s
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Mexican Perceptions
A: A lot of these black fools I’ve worked with they like to just kick back. They like to take it easy, or they
always bring the race card in and bring up fuckin slavery. But you know what, slavery’s been gone for like
500 years so get over it. They always complain about being slaves and shit. You know what they like to
complain a lot. It’s like, do your fucking job and work. We’re here to work so work. From my experience
they’re lazy. I would always take a Mexican or Latino over a black any day to do a job because they
actually bust their ass.
Q: Do you think blacks have an attitude problem at work too?
A: Yeah of course. Like I said they’re always complaining about something. Like they feel like slavery is
still existing here in America. Get over it aye, that shit was over 500 years ago.!
#02 ES State Street 13, 40’s
Inter-Racial Gang Conflict on the Streets of Los Angeles:
Early 1990s – Present
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Major Conflicts between Sureno and Crip and Blood affiliated gangs (in most
cases) developed out of the distribution and retail of narcotics in demographically
mixed areas
West Side 18 Street vs. Black P Stones (Bloods)
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Mid-City and Baldwin Village (The Jungles)
Began in 1994 due to competition for a lucrative narcotic retail location
18 Street ruled by Mexican Mafia member Francisco “Puppet” Martinez
18 Street allied with BPS enemies Hoover Criminals (Crips) and Rolling 30’s Harlem Crips
South Side Florencia 13 vs. East Coast Crips
– South Central, Huntington Park and Florence-Firestone
– Began in 2004 due to a drug deal gone bad where ECC members absconded with a
significant (multi-kilo) quantity of cocaine from Florencia 13 members working for the
Mexican Mafia
– Florencia 13 ruled by Mexican Mafia member Arturo “Tablas” Castellanos
– Florencia 13 allied with ECC enemies Pueblo Bishop Bloods
Francisco “Puppet” Martinez and Arturo “Tablas” Castellanos
A Radical Theory of Hegemony:
The Hegemony of Mutual Destruction
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“Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that
they become the instruments of their own oppression.” – Kumansi, former
Slausons member, longtime South Central resident and civil rights activist
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Divide and Conquer – Preventing potential resistance to capitalist exploitation by
distracting marginalized populations from their common interests
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Emphasizing racial and gang identities over class solidarity
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A surplus labor problem that solves itself by occupying marginalized communities
in perpetual conflict with each other and themselves
Parallels with Gangs in Denmark
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Some of the gang conflicts in Denmark are between native and foreigner gangs
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Modern refugee and immigrant populations in Denmark are the result of historical
and contemporary European colonial policies
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Historical racial bias against foreigners informs the perspective of Native Danish
gangs
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Cultural differences between native and foreign Danish gangs frame the animosity
between them (although of course few gangs are racially exclusive)
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The Hegemony of Self-Destruction: working class native and foreign gangs fighting
one another prevents them from becoming politically conscious and prevents
solidarity between the two major working class populations in Denmark