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It's up to gangsters to break the cycle by T Bernard

I am a 26-year-old African American male. I have been an active gang member since I was merely 8 years old and am the father of an 11- year-old son on the verge of closely following in my footsteps.

I write this in hopes of opening his eyes and the eyes of others to the recently reported racial tensions between African Americans and Hispanics that lead to melees of violence at Jefferson High School.

I seek only to educate the concerned as well as open the eyes of the youngsters that take part in violence, not only those at Jefferson High School but those that will surely follow suit after seeing the sensationalism of the occurrence on television.

That includes those who participate in racial hate on a daily basis. There is no way to stop such events without first educating those at risk of falling victim to racism's intoxicating rush and without first giving them the roots and foundation of the situation they are willing to physically fight for.

While the media and others ignorant of racial tension between blacks and Hispanics sit back and either wonder what is going on or hastily concoct their own reasons for it, the truth is that the situation has been alive and thriving for years. It wasn't until it affected an entire school and hit the airwaves that anyone gave it a second glance. To people like me, a gang member that has been in and out of correctional facilities and has managed to stay alive beyond the average life expectancy of a young black gang member, this is nothing new.

For just about a decade now blacks and Hispanics have been at war. Some of the problems began, in part, in the Los Angeles County Jail, where deputies once pitted blacks against Hispanics for various reasons.

Deputies in the County Jail would make it a practice to first separate inmates by race, which makes sense in some ways. When a deputy would have a personal problem with an inmate (clash of personality or battle of wills) that inmate would find himself tossed into a cell or module of the other race or a rival gang and eventually be beaten, raped, and possibly even killed.

The word would travel back to the other modules, and then revenge based solely on race would be inevitable; riots ensued and tensions grew stronger.

Behind the walls of California's prison system there is a war for superiority and control. Drug trade and other forms of underground commerce are the basis for what goes on in prison in respect to racial warring. The ripple effect takes form and the hate streams back into the streets as people are released or as phone calls are made.

The fact of the matter is nobody gave a damn when it was inmates against inmates and gang members against gang members; nobody batted an eye when the dregs of society were simply doing the free world a favor and killing each other.

Sadly, because of the blind eye given to a brewing epidemic that was a decade or more in the making, our children are now caught in the cycle. I don't blame the powers that be for the problem; we made our own devastating choices to participate and fuel the fires.

I do, however, blame the powers that be for believing they can simply solve the problem by an immediate call to arms once the violence directly affects their school funding or re- election chances.

Open your eyes, this is coming from someone that has been part of the problem for far to long. The state of current racial tensions can only begin to be solved in one way. The resolution is as simple as an old hangover remedy and its called the hair of the dog.

Those who were at the root of the problem from its onset are not happy with the result of their negative activities. Men like me and youths like my son and others in all ages in between don't want to be preached to by some community center leader; they don't want some smiling-faced politician in telling them that there is a better way; and they really don't want some celebrity patsy or over-exposed rapper telling them to stop the violence.

The only way to get anyone in experiencing the hate of racial ignorance in these streets to listen is to show them with someone that has walked in their shoes and has fought the same fight. Credibility is a key factor; only those that started the problem can bring the solution, plain and simple.

I have ideas in my own mind to proceed with the healing that is needed to end the fight between the once-united black and brown minorities of Los Angeles. I have actually tried over and over again to get deaf ears to hear me, but I know that I am just a black gang member with tattoos and numerous scars from being shot, stabbed, and beaten you would rather cross the street, arrest me, or include my name in some injunction.

I am not a board member of some wasteful city-funded community program and I have no college degree, so my opinion or direction is discounted from the gate.

Yes, I am a gang member and guess what? I can spell, I am articulate, and I can even correctly punctuate a well-formed written thought. I am not the only one of my kind; I interact with more than a handful just like me who want to begin to be a part of the solutions after spending so many years parties to the problems, if only a platform for our voices were available.

I am sickened by my very own racial ignorance and my own participation in fighting between Hispanics and blacks. While I was fighting to survive I had no idea that I was, in truth, fighting to kill future generations. I will right my own wrongs and strive to reform my own mind-set in regards to my enemies.

For the youngsters that seek to carry the torch of racial violence, I would hope these words are passed along to every single set of eyes and ears that need to hear them. There is no future in throwing a punch at someone that simply is not the same race as you; the fighting escalates to sticks, the sticks turn into knives, and the knives turn into guns.

Point blank, you will end up doing one of two things: you will either be killed and be buried or you will kill and do life. There is no glamour, you will not be a hero, you will not be thought of highly nor will you be labeled hard core and be respected. Both in death and prison you will be cold, you will be locked away in a small box or cage and stripped of freedom and dignity.

Seek to understand the person you hate and you will surely find that you and they are not so different. As long as you participate in the hate that was planted, fertilized and sown in the heart of someone else in some other place, then you will forever be a pawn in a game of mind manipulation. You are being used to carry out the desires of people that came before you, and you are now an expendable soldier in a war that has no winner.

Break free of the cycle, allow yourself to decide for yourself who you do or don't wish to stand beside. Exercise your right to choose who your enemies are in life instead of allowing someone else to dictate what you will and won't tolerate based on nothing more than skin color or a colored rag in their back pocket.