Query: Why "Cripples" (> "Crips") as gang-name?

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

     In a tangent on the discussion about the origin of the name "Crips," Dan Nussbaum asked ans-l, Jan. 21:  'What are "pimp canes?"

     I then asked ads-l member Wilson Gray (who had used the term in telling about the Crips), and I'm grateful for his reply, which now follows:
> A "pimp cane," from my point of view, is a modern doodad that came in when pimps no longer dressed like gentlemen of  leisure in three-piece suits that would have fit(ted) in on Wall St. It's a kind of swagger
> stick for pimps, very roughly modeled after the bishop's crosier. Instead of having the crosier's crook, it's straight, about 5 ft. long or so, with a flashy, bling-bling nob at the top. A WAG is that it was introduced by today's version of Iceberg Slim, a guy who calls himself "Bishop" Don Juan (or whatever his "sporting name" is).
>
    Mad-TV had a long-running sketch series featuring the pimp, "Dolomite," whose pimp cane has been stolen and he and his bottom woman are conducting a world-wide search for it.

     There's an old, neo-blaxploitation comedy entitled "Fear of a Big (or a Black) Hat" or something like that. It has a scene featuring a pimp in all his glory: sombrero-sized fedora, fur coat, platform shoes
> with fishbowls containing live goldfish in the heels thereof, etc., strutting along the sidewalk with his pimp cane. Actually, it's more like a staff topped with a fancy knob than a mere cane.
>
 What follows is worth what I'm charging you for it. ;-)

> As for the name, "The Cripples," it was motivated by the fact that they carried walking canes of the usual type as their badge and as a weapon with which to cripple anyone who fucked with them. (This was
> back in the mid-'Sixties, before firearms became readily available.) They could have called themselves "The Cripplers," I suppose, but then there'd be no obvious connection with their carrying of canes and it
> would also be less cool. Cf. the old R&B song that went:
>
> I don't claim to be bad
> I don't claim to be strong
> I just want to keep bad people
> From doing me wrong.
> But I'm like poison ivy
> I'll break out all over you
>
> Or as the owner of the after-hours joint in a Richard Pryor bit put it:
>
> You got your shit and I got my shit. You respect my shit and I respect your shit.
>
   The original motivation for forming the gang would have been to protect themselves from bad people and not to frighten anybody else. But, once that they had formed, it would have become necessary for them to demonstrate that they were actually able to protect themselves, lest they be <choke! gasp!> disrespected. At that point, the stone begins to roll downhill.

   Back inthe '50's, around the time of "The Blackboard Jungle," I read a short story about a gang whose battle cry was, "Wa-wa-wabbit twacks!" The concept of being threatening by being ostensibly unthreatening is
> not a new one.
>
> -Wilson
>

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