The “lumpenproletariat’s redemption”: Black radical potentiality and LA Gang Tours

Abstract

In 2010, a group of black and brown former gang members from South Los Angeles started a tour called LA Gang Tours, in which they give oral histories of their lives to an overwhelmingly white tourist population. Some local politicians, reporters, and activists contend that the tour is “exploitative” because tour guides profit off of LA’s gang history. Using interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis, I argue that the exploitation critique misses tour guides’ analyses that link racism and classism. Challenging the exploitation argument, I theorize tour guide labor as a “lumpenproletariat’s redemption,” by which they use and critique capitalism.