When color decides crime: from white mafias to latino maras, America faces up to its prejudices
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
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Editorial
When color decides crime: from white mafias to latino maras, America faces up to its prejudices
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
Flashmag! Issue 165 October 2025
The greatest trap of American racism isn’ t just the insidious hatred, it’ s the denial that it exists in the most unthinkable areas like crime and its repression. While the first white gangsters were buying homes with New Deal loans, America’ s young blacks were entering a cycle where the street and prison replaced the factory and property.
From Chicago to Los Angeles, from Nicaragua to Marseille, gang history tells an inconvenient truth: crime has never just been about poverty- it’ s always been about class, color, institutional tolerance and geopolitics. While Donald Trump bombs the Venezuelan coast to combat drug trafficking, we mustn’ t forget that America doesn’ t deny its hatred of others: it paints it in the colors of law and order.
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