The history of Black street gangs and their relationship with Black communities, particularly in the West, is a terrain as intricate as it is misunderstood. This history is layered with trauma, survival, resistance, and expression, a web that cannot be unraveled without confronting the systemic racism, economic disenfranchisement, and state violence that birthed these organisations. What is often flattened into narratives of violence and criminality deserves a more nuanced and human view. Though I do not claim authority or lived experience to tell the full story, I aim here to sketch an idea, one that links Black gang culture to art, and the art world's uncomfortable tendency to erase that origin.