My Uncle is Like That

The speaker, Kevin, discusses the topic of street gangs and how they are portrayed in the media, particularly on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. He shares his personal experience growing up in New Jersey, where his uncle was involved in gang activities. Despite the negative perception of gangs, Kevin believes that they provide a sense of community, trust, respect, and loyalty for minorities. He mentions that loyalty is more important than love, as it is a dependable action, while love can be fleeting. Kevin also praises Nipsey Hussle, a rapper and former gang member, for his loyalty to his community and his efforts to inspire and motivate others. He criticizes the media's portrayal of gangs, urging them to have a more genuine and unbiased approach. Kevin concludes by encouraging people to be open to learning and growing, but to avoid joining a gang. hi hello everybody my name is Kevin um yeah today's podcast is gonna be a little bit different I'm gonna be talking about something a little bit more serious or a little bit more serious to me I don't know if it's serious to everybody because everybody has their own definition of what serious is but I don't know I feel like this topic is kind of sensitive for me on the fact that it's something that I've seen personally and can kind of be misconstrued you know within our media outlets and you know Instagram Facebook you know well okay let me let me say what the topic is first so we're talking about street gangs okay we're talking about gang violence and we're not we're not gonna get we're probably not are gonna get into uh we're probably not gonna get into gang violence too much we're gonna be kind of more on the gang appearance and how gang is portrayed to us through Instagram Twitter Facebook snapchat YouTube um myspace if you still have it um but yeah no my thesis statement because I wrote down a thesis statement it's for a class my thesis statement is although they might seem like a nuisance street gangs provide a community for minorities and create a space where people can learn trust respect and loyalty not gonna lie not one of the best thesis statements I've ever written in my life um mostly because it doesn't have a because statement or anything like that but it's just kind of like in my opinion it's weak I feel like I could do it I can do it better I can do this topic more justice um just by talking to stuff like that but yeah let's get into it um so I grew up in New Jersey um I was born in Newark New Jersey I was raised in Linden and Corderet um if anybody knows where that is you know saying shout out to New Jersey um but that's where I'm from and most of my family's most of my family actually is all around all around the world because I am Nigerian and Ivorian uh surprise surprise um most of my family lives all around the world but my immediate family like my grandma or immediate family quotation mark my grandma and grandpa and my uncle's kind of lived in that area that little New Jersey tri-state area you know um but my grandma my grandpa lived like five minutes away from me not even maybe three I used to skateboard down there a while or I used to skateboard down there when I was little and my uncle also lived there now my uncle is kind of what I'm going to be talking about my uncle was kind of involved in you know outside activities outside activities he wasn't really inside the house much he had friends that were involved in outside activities and you know um I was around a lot of gangsters quotation marks you know people that were you know not really doing too much with their lives I mean I feel like I was only introduced to them on the court so my uncle would so I lived in my mom's house and my mom's in my dad's house and my uncle would come and babysit us whenever my mom and my dad left and what would happen is they would um they would leave him there you know I'm saying he would take us oh uncle so-and-so we want to go to we want to go to the park we want to go to play basketball see black art for sure take our take his car and drive us to the basketball court and we would have fun with his friends and his friends like like bro okay just just because I guess we were young is is what was what we were referred to as young as young bulls um young people we didn't ever really see a um like I didn't ever see a like a problem with like how my uncle was living his life and how his friends were living his life living their lives um it didn't really occur to me until when I moved here actually that my uncle was in a gang like he was doing gang activities and he was bringing me along with him but he wasn't really like he wasn't really all up in that whole scene you know he maybe had a gun and whatnot but he never really I don't think he ever did anything with it um but they did they were very intimidating to the outside perspective to the inside we were happy we were having the best time of our lives we played basketball with our with his cousin or with their my uncle and his friends we were busting them in basketball too we were kind of nice too we were known in our school him our brothers but I say that to say that from the outside perspective gangs and gang members and people who decide to devote their lives to a specific cause for that gang they can see very they can seem very intimidating and I I understand when people say like you know I don't want to be involved in that game and obviously nobody wants to be involved in the gang life like whoever wants to whoever wakes up one day and it's like you know what I want to join a gang and you know if they don't I want to I want to do illegal exit like nobody ever wakes up and does that you know so that they can be very intimidating to a certain extent but from the inside perspective I don't think that they deserve to be or from an inside perspective somebody who has seen somebody who seemed like people you know I'm saying interact and gang people interact and how they interacted with us they were like very protective of us they were very um they weren't like we weren't to be played with we weren't to they know nobody ever made fun of me or made fun of me without any type of like consequence now I'm not saying it was a physical consequence um but it was like definitely a verbal consequence uh non physical we didn't they didn't beat on kids like we wouldn't that's not what we're doing but um yeah that kind of showed me uh that kind of showed me that they're like like they were kind of like my big brothers like people that I could like like to a certain like to a kid those are kind of people that you look up to you know I'm saying and those are the people those were my my so-called role models at the time obviously I didn't I wasn't I was a pretty smart kid I wasn't like being like you know man I've been a girl to be just like them when I you know I'm saying I want to grow to be just like my uncle and I want to be in a gang and this that and a third no I feel like I was too much I was too deep in my private school life that that never occurred to me that it never occurred to me that or it never like came across my mind um it was never really like I thought that you know being a gang member or being somebody who was involved in that life would be the life for me I felt like I was on to bigger and better things especially if I was playing basketball um I felt like I was on to bigger and better things but yeah that was kind of how I lived my life in New Jersey um I think I was up in New Jersey until I was 14 years old on the move to Texas and yeah never really I speak to my uncle sometimes but from time like from time to time but he's not really a big aspect of my life right now or compared to as he was back then but yeah those big brothers kind of showed me a sense of loyalty too um and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about a little bit more in getting a little bit more depth about that um there's been this ongoing conversation I don't know if it's in any of the spaces that you guys are in but um the spaces that I'm in this is an ongoing conversation about which one is better loyalty or love um and I'm not gonna lie I have experienced both and I can probably say that loyalty is probably what you would want to receive from somebody as opposed to love love is a love is a fleeting feeling love is a very dynamic feeling and it is very complex and there's so many different types of love there's there's freaking love languages people can people can have love language people can find the ways that they like to be loved there's all types of loyal there's all types of of love stuff and you know you know lovey-dovey and all this loyalty is a an action loyalty is to be performed there's not a lot of discrepancy between love or between a loyalty and disloyalty it's either you are disloyal or you are loyal their love is like a love is a whole like it's like an intricate feeling so like you can you can maybe I love this person one day but maybe he did something to me and I you know I'm just not feeling the same type of love that um I used to feel and that's not the type of love that I subscribe to but that's for a whole nother podcast um yeah loyalty is what my uncle showed me he is a very loyal person to his to the to the gang to the he's praying he's very loyal to the gang in other areas of his life I don't know that's not for me to speak about because I'm not him but you know to certain certain people love certain people loyalty might be kind of scary because they've never experienced that type of just that type of like feeling before or I wouldn't say loyalty the film but they've never experienced loyalty before um I just I define loyalty to be something something like a complete trust or a complete um even if you even if you and this person are on bad terms I will continue to speak nothing but the best of them and I will be loyal to them because they have they have shown that to me it's a it's a very genuine feeling honestly it's one of the best feelings I've I've ever come across whether it be in whether it be in friendships relationships yeah that's a really good feeling loyalty is definitely the way to go in my opinion and that is a very big aspect of how gangs run their gang activity trust is a very huge huge component um if you are not if I can't trust you to do this for me how can I ever trust you to it's like a job like you know how you be at your job and you know um you be working there for like a working there for like two weeks and you know your job decides to tell you you know you've been working in let's say you're working let's say you're working at a big retail store and you know you're in the apparel section and you're folding clothes and that's all you do the register people are not going to trust you to know how to do register know how to check somebody out in a day you know loyalty loyalty and trust are built they are there it's like a it's a feeling that's built you have to build that trust and that dependency so that somebody can entrust you with other things so um with gangs it's a little bit um it's kind of like the same thing gangs are operated on on or gang members usually operate on trust and loyalty um if I can trust you to do this for me then I can trust you to do this for I can trust you to do another thing for me and if I can trust you to do the other thing for me maybe I can trust you to trust you to do this for me and it's kind of like an ongoing cycle to where that's right that loyalty has never been broken that nobody would ever expect for anything to happen to where anything goes bad or anything goes sideways within that game and sometimes things do go sideways but that's neither here nor there um I feel like I feel like um it is very easy to it's very no I would say that is very hard to break loyalty for me but for other people it's it's kind of different because once you've showed them that you can like you're a very dependable and then this and then maybe one time you don't you're not as dependable as you usually are it's kind of like a we're very big on this like cancel culture um in 2023 man like it's like people can't do anything bad and if they do do something better if they do something that's kind of like contrary to what you what you believe or how you operate Kanye is a big scape like I know I'm jumping everywhere but I'm just thinking of my like Kanye is such a big scapegoat for these things like he can't do anything without being criticized and if he does something great there's always gonna be these people that's like you know he he wasn't that's not that's not really his idea or he like that's not what he intended to do and you know it's kind of like weird but I don't know I just feel like I just feel like for those instances I for those people it's kind of like come on bro like you gotta stop criticizing somebody at some point like you gotta give him his props at some point some point cancel culture is so big but no yeah I feel like for people loyalty can be for some people not for everybody loyalty can be like a snip snip feeling but I feel like if I've done all these things for you all these things for you and provided for you in these different types of capacities who and I and then this one time I don't pull through like one time I don't pull through why are you judging me for that one time I feel like people should be awarded a lot of grace in those instances I've came I've came through for you a bunch of times why why are you choosing this time to kind of get in your feelings about it but I don't know that's kind of weird to me yeah but um I feel like I feel like um somebody who definitely exemplified a lot of loyalty in their gang or you know whatever they did was a guy that goes by the name and Nipsey freaking hustle man Nipsey Hussle um he's a rapper I think everybody knows who Nipsey Hussle is he makes really good music um super good artist super talented very motivational um I could speak highly for him highly about him for a while even though I don't know him personally um he was kind of based in LA he was an LA Crip um Crips are you know it's a type of gang um yeah he did a lot for his community he's very loyal to his gang he never never ever did he once renounce where he was from he wore it on his back was very open and honest about it I did these things I've I've done I've done these I've done these things and now I can tell that you've maybe it's kind of time to be able to it's time to step away from our traditional our traditional gang our traditional gang way of thinking and kind of move differently especially when we're moving we're trying to move towards the future and I applaud that extremely that is that is one of the best things that we can do with the society moving forward being a ever ever evolving ever-changing freaking bicycle or like something like be just be always moving always kind of being on the up on the upside you know those little pie charts of those little line graphs where you're just moving up like that's how I imagine life like you move from one level to the next and to the next and you're getting higher and higher as you go but yeah Nipsey also was a great example of how I feel a gang if you ever get successful because or for your gang that's how you give back and that's how you inspire the youth and motivate the youth that was a very very commendable thing that he did and he died I think was March March March the 29th you know I forget the date yeah very very huge presence that we're missing but you know we move on we move through life he wasn't really he was portrayed very well in the media and he portrayed himself very well in the media but um I feel like other gang members don't get that don't get that kind of like good publicity probably because they're you know their gang is tied in with certain things that you know are not really commendable but um yeah I feel like the I feel like the media is kind of trash like the media is like super like super bad about um gang or traditional media I'd say CNN Fox News ABC or you know those little like you know like predominantly I'm gonna say I'm gonna say it predominantly white spaces portray gang members to be these big bad wolves that are coming to get you in the nighttime like freaking Sully from Monsters Inc like he's not like like he has his own he has a kid he has things to wear like gang like gang members have things to worry about other than getting you like I don't think that you should be you should that's it that's neither here nor there but um fears only a thing that you can control but um no yeah I feel like the media portrays gang members to be super bad like extremely bad like come on man like I feel like they are out to get it not us because I'm not in the gang I'm not I'm not a gang but they're out to get certain gang members but it's just kind of weird to me how um this agenda that they're trying to push um is targeting it's it's kind of like starting to spread because not every black person is in a gang so when they look at when they look at a certain gang violence and not every gang is a good game like but I'm gonna be honest here like not every gang is this you know perfect daisies and roses and you know chocolate candy like you're not going to find that in every game but um some games a lot of games are very protective and you can learn certain values and people they do and I call them old heads old people that come out of gangs are very very inspirational they are very smart and extremely inspirational and just overall good people in my opinion but um to me we don't never see that those old people on on CNN or they're never they're never they're never elevated to that point they always stay in our little communities you know our our YMCA's you know little things like that like but they're never they're never really they never really level up in that aspect of life which is kind of kind of sad to me like I feel like we need a better representation of gangs and how that and how we operate not me once again I'm just saying we because I'm just saying we because it just seems right to say we but I'm not I'm not a gang obviously but I just feel like we are we need them like as a society or as media people CNN people this is a message to you guys you guys need to stop being so freakin prejudice and start actually looking inside games and seeing what like actually truly lies on the inside of whatever you're trying to cover we're not just trying to get the new we're not just trying to get a good story I'm saying and clicks and likes and whatnot like try to actually be genuine in your approach to gangs like actually go talk to a gang member maybe have a conversation with a crip or a blood I feel like that'll change your perspective like it'll it'll do a complete 180 with your perspective but you know that's just me talking um and yeah man that's all I got man I'll talk to you guys later y'all have a great day stay safe and don't join a gang but be open to learning and growing I have a