GANGSTERS ARE CRUEL, NOT COOL

Federal and local police are rounding up gang members in inner-city
Miami -- but is there any way to arrest the "gangsta" mentality?

In one dramatic sweep, the true face of the gangster was exposed. Real
gangsters don't talk in rhyme. They don't do music videos. They don't
espouse sophisticated political ideas.

Real gangsters kill people -- sometimes innocent ones. They rob people
at gunpoint. They hijack cars. They carry high-powered, rapid-firing
weapons. They do drive-by shootings.

They sell drugs to people who explain away their purchases by saying
they just want to do a little harmless partying.

Police last week arrested 21 of 25 people sought in connection with a
truckload of drug offenses and related violence. They are reputed
members of two Liberty City gangs: the John Does and the Cloud Nine
gang.

Members of the John Doe gang are believed to be behind five murders
and the manufacture and sale of crack cocaine and marijuana. The
reputed leader, Corey Smith, has a long rap sheet including armed
robbery, drug possession and a murder charge -- which was dropped when
the chief witness was shot to death.

A reputed renegade John Doe, Anthony Fail, was also arrested in
connection with three shootings.

There's no "cool" there.

Real gangsters have no political message. You're a victim of racism,
so you commit armed robbery? You're poor, so you deal poison? Society
is unjust, so you shoot people?

That kind of illogic insults every poor, black or victimized person
who chose righteous hard work over criminality.

It insults whole cultures, whole communities, whole
societies.

I've often heard apologists for gang criminality label as "sellouts"
those black people who have lifted themselves up by legitimate means.
Punks, Uncle Toms, "house Negroes" -- all disparaging terms for the
law-abiding black majority with the dignity and smarts to play -- and
win -- by the rules.

I hate seeing so many black men in brown, orange or gray jumpsuits
behind bars for breaking those rules. I wonder how many were seduced
by the "gangsta" promise of quick riches and the fast life.

But I will never accept that this is our fate. Or our
"culture."

Gangsta rap music was the rage for a time. It seems to have cooled --
particularly since the murders of rival icons Tupac Shakur and
Notorious B.I.G.

But the image is alive and well. The defiant pose, the walk my father
used to call the "broken leg" walk, the slang, the clothes, the
jewelry -- all echoes of the drug dealer.

Then you have what cops say are the real thing: Anthony Fail. Corey
Smith. Many others.

Few kids who imitate street thugs actually want to be crooks. They're
just rebelling, as does every generation of teenagers.

There is even an odd positive element to urban gangsta chic. White,
Hispanic and Asian kids have all found "cool" in the gritty black
inner-city landscape -- not unlike an earlier generation that
transcended race to embrace the cool, rebellious rhythms of black jazz
and blues.

Also, the tendency to idolize hoodlums isn't unique to the black or
Hispanic inner city. Working-class New York Italians looked up to mob
bosses for decades. This country was transfixed by the escapades of
Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. A whole subculture of
Harley-riding normal folks mimics the Outlaws and Hell's Angels biker
gangs.

So my point isn't to criticize young people who find gangsta imagery
cool. It's only to encourage them to consider the people they are
holding up as idols.

To them I ask: Do you really think people like Anthony Fail and Corey
Smith are cool?

If so, why, for heaven's sake?