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Reviews

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

The war at home

By CHRIS FARAONE | April 22, 2009

3.5 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for Crips and Bloods: Made in America

If halfpipe god Stacy Peralta's debut 2001 skate documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys, attested to how sweet it can be to grow up young and blond in Los Angeles, his new Crips and Bloods: Made in America suggests how frightening it is to be born black and eight miles off the Pacific coastline.

This movie is a racist's nightmare; through extraordinary context and a score of moving interviews, Peralta shows how the blood of the 15,000 slain in the vicious 40-year cycle of South Central gang violence stains the hands of apathetic, oppressive, and even downright bigoted authoritarian structures.

Bloods and Crips won't be seen by nearly as many people as heard N.W.A's epic breakout, Straight Outta Compton, but the message is the same: Los Angeles police and politicians are ruthless and unscrupulous scumbags whose inaction has created four generations of kids who just don't give a fuck.

Related: Sports blotter: June 2, 2006, Downsizing the Mob, Ganging up on teens, More

Sports blotter: June 2, 2006
In what may be the highest-proﬁle Crips murder case since the Snoop Dogg “Murder Was the Case” incident, a Los Angeles high-school football star on his way to a full ride at Oregon was implicated last week in an investigation that reads like a Sociology 101 lesson in Crips hierarchies.
Downsizing the Mob
The arrest of 17 people last week as part of "Operation Mobbed Up" — as well as the subsequent discovery in East Providence of human remains thought to be those of Joseph "Joe Onions" Scanlon — put front and center the bygone days of the Rhode Island Mob.
Ganging up on teens
On March 10, Somerville police, responding to reports of a large fight near Pearl Street and McGrath Highway, stopped six teenage boys walking in the area.
Cop or drug dealer?
Meet Roberto Pulido, 41.
A living history
Since Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is set in a specific place and time, some theatergoers will want to relegate its incidents and attitudes — which surround the Rodney King riots — to history.
Raising the Bar (Rock)
On the "Rock and Roll Means Well" tour, Drive-By Truckers and the Hold Steady upgraded their respective brands of quintessential American bar rock with a number of arena-rock trimmings.
UMass racial-confrontation case may finally come to a close
A racial incident that rocked Western Massachusetts two years ago may finally be laid to rest this week, as a black former UMass Amherst student charged with aggravated assault returns to court, apparently having reached an agreement with the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office.
Cheap thrills
They say Dr. Lakra got his pen name from the doctor’s bag he carried around when he first began tattooing, two decades ago. “Lakra” puns on the Spanish word “lacra,” meaning scar or blemish, but it’s also slang for “delinquent” or “scumbag.”
Death of a hoop dream
This past fall, Mario Hornsby Jr., then a senior at Springfield Central High School, wrote an essay for English class.
Streets of sorrow
Two years ago, in one of the most concentrated bursts of deadly violence Boston had seen in years, nine victims were killed in 20 days.
Hate-crime victim needs help, justice
In response to a hate crime and the serious injuries inflicted on its victim over the weekend, there will be a concert at 9 pm Friday at the Asylum.
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