Part of the problem is that black culture in America has glorified being a "gangsta." As a result you have a lot of nice, decent individuals who comport themselves in a way that communicates negative things to people who aren't immersed in that culture enough to know better.
Nor should they need to know better. Being a gangster should be a universally reprehensible thing, like being a drug dealer, or gang banger, or mafioso. Gangsters are killers and thieves.
