Where is shame?

A conversation I had with a co-worker the other day got me to thinking about this. I know it’s outside what I usually post here, but two articles on Drudge Report this morning struck me as similar and in the same vein as the discussion my friend and I had.

The first article on Drudge was from the Guardian – not usually my favorite read – about Tony Blair catching flak because he dared to say that the recent spike in violence in Britain was caused by Black youths.

His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped “by pretending it is not young black kids doing it”.

Imagine that! Having the audacity and temerity to mention that Black culture is affecting civil society! How dare he. But, seriously, that’s the problem – we can’t fix the problem of violent youths if we can’t isolate the cause, and it appears that the culture is the problem. 

Ignoring the root causes only encourages the offenders – they’re kids looking for boundaries and as long as society makes excuses for their bahavior, they’ll continue being sociopaths. If the reason that they’re supposedly misbehaving is a perceived racism that’s directed against them, why can’t we admit in public the race of the perpetrators?

And not to equate being black with same-sex sex, the other story (from Breitbart – AP in drag) was about police catching an unusual number of men in Atlanta’s airport bathrooms having sex;

At the world’s busiest airport, plainclothes officers patrolling public restrooms in search of luggage thieves have instead uncovered a rash of other, more sordid crimes.

The new restroom dragnet has led to the arrests of more than 30 people in three months for indecent exposure and public sex acts at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Now, what does one story have to do with the other? Well, this line;

“Police have far better things to do with their time than to arrest people for this,” said Kenneth Sherrill, professor at Hunter College of The City University of New York. “Being ‘sex police’ in bathrooms strikes me as a perversion of rational law enforcement activities.”

Yes, police do have far better things to do. I agree that public officials shouldn’t have to range the restrooms for people who can’t control themselves in public. Which brings me to my point.

Where is shame these days? I hate to sound like the old coots from my youth, but when did criminal behavior become the norm? When did people start making weak and petty excuses for what used to be acts that stayed on the fringes of society – out of our public restrooms and off of the front pages of our newspapers?

When I was a non-commissioned officer, one of our tenets was that we would never turn our backs on a deficiency – that we’d correct problems on the spot. I’ve tried to carry that same nugget with me to civilian life. I’ve stopped mugging, I’ve stopped winos from harrassing innocent people , I’ve broken up youths fighting, I’ve chased down people who’ve lost their wallets and purses, reported crimes to police as they were happening and reported drug dealers. Of course, I could make that a full time job here in Washington, DC.

The reaction I get from the police as well as my friends is that I must be crazy. I’m just trying to be a good citizen, and I’m ashamed as an American to see what’s happening to my community. But I’m more ashamed that no one else, or very few people, here are doing their part.

Maybe if we all were a little more ashamed of what we’ve let this society become, we can start doing our part.

Category: Society