Gangsta Culture by bell hooks

     In this weeks passage of The Hip Hop Reader (pg. 185-192), Hooks writes about how African American males are raised to be brought up in a society that knows no other life than that of hustling and violence. This "Gangsta Culture" as it's referred to, looks down on the working class, thinking that their way of making money is too slow compared to how fast they can make a few hundred bucks. Just think, a society with no real rules, doing whatever is necessary to survive in this dangerous way of life; killed or be killed if we were to go to that extreme. To have to deal with a culture that is constantly whispering in your ear that you would never really amount to anything in life, is quite a heavy load to deal with. As much as they would sometimes want to get out of it, they wouldn't be able to because first they know no other way of life, secondly they don't have the education to help them get a different career. If you don't know all the secrets to how to make it on the streets then you either wind up in prison or dead. Funny thing is, is that a lot of the prisons have many smart African American men who have the potential to make something of themselves in life. So this tells us that its not the culture that defines who we are, it's the decisions we make as a person that get us to where we want to be. Because had these men continued on with their education, they could have been successful men, without having to worry about the legalities, and the violent life, and perhaps even break the cycle of gangsta culture.