“I don’t bang: I’m just a Blood”: Situating gang identities in their proper place
| Author | Patrick Lopez-Aguado,Michael Lawrence Walker |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619854152 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619854152
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(1) 107 –126
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619854152
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“I don’t bang: I’m just a
Blood”: Situating gang
identities in their proper
place
Patrick Lopez-Aguado
Santa Clara University, USA
Michael Lawrence Walker
University of Minnesota, USA
Abstract
In this article we offer a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the relationship
between gang identification, place, and identity saliency. In our interviews with
current and former street gang members, participants consistently described gangs as
neighborhood-based entities, but also couched these local identities within much broader
Crip or Blood affiliations. These amount to multiple, simultaneously claimed identities.
However, we show that not all identities are equal—that as a social geographic area
increases, identities become more diffuse and less salient, territorial, or “gang-like”,
resulting instead in expansive, symbolic “umbrella identities” that cover several distinct
places and gangs. These umbrella identities proved quite fluid, such that Crip and Blood
affiliations had little relationship to one’s gang identity and even produced some gangs
with mixed Blood and Crip memberships.
Keywords
Criminalization, identity, neighborhood, place, social geography, social groups, street
culture, territoriality, US street gangs
Corresponding author:
Patrick Lopez-Aguado, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA.
Email: plopezaguado@scu.edu
854152TCR0010.1177/1362480619854152Theoretical CriminologyLopez-Aguado and Walker
research-article2019
Article
108 Theoretical Criminology 25(1)
In LA, it’s different. Bloods is on this side of town, Crips is on this side of town. [If] they
come across each other, they fight and shooting at each other. But in Fresno, it’s
different. You can have a Blood and a Crip from your hood cuz you know even
though all you don’t wear the same color, you all from the
same street, same hood.
(Cynthia, 15)
Cynthia’s1 explanation highlights inconsistencies in the meanings attributed to gang-
associated affiliations. She explains that while gang-involved youth in Fresno—a city of
approximately 500,000 in California’s Central Valley—commonly adopt “Crip” and
“Blood” monikers, these names are nearly interchangeable in terms of group meanings.
Whether an individual is a Crip or a Blood is a function of familial and homophilic rela-
tionships (see Zatz and Portillos, 2000). A single Fresno gang may include Bloods and
Crips defending or expanding the same territory side-by-side; these designations are not
the foundation of gang rivalries, as Cynthia imagines they are in Los Angeles. Instead,
she notes that these rivalries, and the conflicting identities involved, are place-specific
phenomena.
In referring to members’ “side of town” or “hood”, Cynthia reminds us of the impor-
tance of place for gang identity construction. It is not just that gangs are territorial and
that territory implies place (Moore et al., 1983; Tita et al., 2005), but also that the rival-
ries, kinship, and meanings tied to a particular gang identity are all shaped, in part, by
place (Maxson, 2011). Scholars have explored place as a factor shaping the likelihood of
gang violence (Radil et al., 2010; Tita and Radil, 2011; Tita et al., 2005), and a vast litera-
ture on place attachment (for a review see Lewicka, 2011; Trentelman, 2009) includes
empirical work demonstrating the emotional relationships people develop for places
(Anton and Lawrence, 2014; Devine-Wright, 2009; Parker and Karner, 2010; Waerniers,
2017). These works reflect Cynthia’s sentiment and teach us that people and groups—
gangs being a type of group—use place as a component of identity.
However, not all places are equal and neither are the identities tied to them. Moving
from local neighborhoods to districts and cities and so on, the criminalized identities2
that gang-involved youth may use are mapped onto increasingly larger places. There are
territorial differences, for example, between one’s clique, the Rolling 60s Neighborhood
Crips in Los Angeles, and the Crip umbrella moniker. That is, there is a nested social
geography of territory and identification which must be considered if researchers are to
avoid conflating the meanings that gang-involved youth attribute to their identities.
In this article, we combine ethnographic data from Southern and Central California to
argue that criminalized identities are nested geographically, so that the smaller the social
geographic area, the more meaningful the identity in terms of gang-involvement. Place
is therefore not just a background element (see Gieryn, 2000) but a distinguishing feature
of every encounter (Goffman, 1963, 1971), as well as a key resource in the situational
“activation” (Burke and Stets, 2009) of any gang identity. Rethinking gang identities in
this way provides important correctives. First, our nested strata approach more closely
reflects how members actually understand these identities, as our participants
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