Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

by Gregory Boyle

No hopeful kid has ever joined a gang. Never in the history of gangs, and never in the history of kids. Not once, not ever. Hopeful kids don’t join gangs. Gang involvement is about a lethal absence of hope. No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang, he’s always fleeing something. There are no exceptions. That is a good diagnosis. Journalists in particular have a hard time with this concept. “Well, everyone knows that kids join gangs because they just want to belong,” more than one has scoffed at me. “Not true” is always my reply. “Kids join Little League because they want to belong. They join gangs because they want to die.” I tell them that it’s more accurate to report, “Everyone says kids join gangs because they want to belong.” If they were to interview a homie, however, they would be told that the gang is like “a second family” and “they have my back.” Gang members will say, essentially, they are looking for “wine, women and song.” Join a gang—see the world. They say this because it is easier than explaining how “my mom used to put cigarettes out on me and hold my head in the toilet and flush until I nearly drowned.” Gangs are the places kids go when they have realized their life as a misery. And who doesn’t know by now that misery loves company? But in thirty years of walking with gang members, I’ve never met a bad guy. One would think I would have by now.