The Fighting 44s

Azn Thug. What do you think of when you hear those words? Some of you will picture that muthafucka who makes the rest of the Asian race look so bad, with his weird hair cut, his ricer cars, his slutty girls, his fights, his weapons, his anger and his disregard for the system that is White America. Others of you will think him a muthafuckin’ hero, you’ll see that image of danger, of a strong Asian man, ready to beef, ready to throw down, cool as shit and only describable by the word gangsta. In his black clothes, in his souped-up Integra, holding his machete like nothing, he fits that image, just as well as he fits that other image of him, when he is in court, looking quietly at the judge, face and heart cold, sometimes not caring that at the end of that day he’ll be serving twenty-five with an L, but with his head down in pain as he gets dragged off by the white bailiff.

I see something else. I see a youth who never had any opportunities and was driven into a life that ain’t never healthy for no one. I see a youth who didn’t fit into the system as it was, couldn’t deal with that stupid school bullshit, couldn’t deal with how no one gave a fuck, couldn’t deal with the fact that the world hated him for the color of his skin. So he went and made his own system, his own world with its own morals and values. His world is one where loyalty is paramount, where the knife, the baton, the gun and the knucks take the place of lawsuits and sarcastic turns of phrases. His world is one that is simple and complex, dark, but oftentimes the only refuge for a youth without a refuge. His world is one where brotherhood and caring is put right next to bloodshed, hate, anger and death. His world is one where justice is not in the courtroom but in the streets, and where the only justice that comes from the court is the justice of a man who can afford a good lawyer versus the justice of a man who can’t.

So many people ask the real OGs, the old gangstas why they chose this life. They chose it because they often had no other choice. The originals, most of them came over here speaking hardly any English, and were put into a system where the best they could do was earn minimum wage working all hours of the day, or to go to school where he knew he couldn’t succeed, just wasn’t smart enough and didn’t have the advantages that his whitey classmates did. So he quit school and lived life as best as he could, living with the homeboys, the only folks who cared and the only folks who understood, because they were dealing with the same thing. When they dropped out, and their parents kicked them out the house, who was there to take care of ‘em? The homeboys. When folks wanted to come after them and killed them dead as dead, who backed ‘em up? The homeboys. When they wanted to kill themselves because they couldn’t deal with the bullshit that was life anymore who helped them outta it? The homeboys.

The life of a G is a complicated thing. So the next time you laugh at a young buck who is in his ricer car, the next time you look at an Asian and feel ashamed because he’s fucking with the system, the next time you look at a young Asian man who drops out of school and joins a gang, fucking think before you speak. In the next few months I’ll be bringing your asses into the life, the life of an Azn Thug.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2004 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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