A bit of a story here as I used to run with the Manu Kaha back in the day. I’ll tie in some modern day psychology to.
The rise of gangs can be linked to state intervention in families. One factor is the rise of single mother households and the other is incarceration or mistreatment of males.
Strong male role models in families provide guidance we all know this, so when this guidance is missing, young men turn to the closest males to them, who display the characteristics that society tells them they should have. As for they lifestyle stuff, that’s what society portrays as “living” ie consumerism.
I’ve talked in other threads about the need for extended family and how just living with a few generations would solve a lot of the problems we are seeing now.
I becoming quite tradcon in my view of the family unit, even as down to I’m not such a huge fan of rap music anymore despite listening my whole life. I’m starting to think you can’t pump that shit into the ears of children 24/7 for years, make them susceptible, remove role models, and then expect them NOT to act it out.
all of those things for sure man. some people get dealt a super shitty hand, i get that.
i’ve spent more time around gang members than most regular folk would have id say, a LOT of tattooing and partying, head hunters and killer beez moreso but still similar in most ways.
most seem to have parents, big brothers and uncles they looked up to in gangs and it starts there i guess.
the wanting of a particular lifestyle and not having to pay for it i 100% understand. who wouldn’t love that?
but where and when though does it become okay in the eyes of a budding or patched gang member to beat and rape women? to stand over the elderly, to intimidate the public, to destroy your community and those who grew up tough like you did by selling them methamphetine?
that’s the part i cannot get behind, and those things are no one’s choice and no one’s fault but the person committing those crimes.
if a bunch of gang members kidnapped and put my wife, mother or sister on the block as they love to do, were caught and had sentences reduced because they were in a gang?!
we love to talk like poor gang members, the only wrong they do is steal bead to feed their families.
sorry, anyway my original point was why is being hard on gangs being unfair to maori but apparently no one else?