SIMMONS: The undoing of a village’s character

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

From Los Angeles to the District, police officials are investigating bands of marauders; some appear to be racially motivated because the assailants are black and the victims are white, while others are partaking in black-on-black crime.

Character counts, but were shaming ourselves — again.

Wheres our moral compass, people?

Recall the race riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., when many of our cities were torn asunder after word spread that King had been killed on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.

The motivation then was anger, bereavement, even disappointment, that someone had dared to mortally wound the most prominent and beloved Christian warrior of American civil rights, and overwhelmingly black perpetrators destroyed their own neighborhoods and communities.

Flash forward, so to speak, to today, which is afflicted, as then, with unbearably high unemployment rates in major metropolitan areas.

Unlike the 1960s, however, when morality and a keen sense of community were major planks of a burgeoning movement, we have seemingly kicked both to the curb.

In a way, Bill Cosby warned several years ago of the coming of this new expression of civil and racial unrest.

In a speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, he said black Americans were not holding up their end of the civil-rights bargain.

But much of black America excoriated him for airing dirty laundry.

He was right then, and he is right now.

What was trending socially and economically then is more pronounced now.

Sagging baggy pants. Bodies pocked with piercings and tattoos. An ingrained sense of entitlement. Timeouts for youths instead of stern tongues and swift hands. Free reign instead of parameters.

The village has practically been dismantled.

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