Blowing the Whistle on Gangsta Culture
By BOB HERBERT

Edwin "E. J." Duncan was a young man from a decent family who spent a great deal of time with his friends in an amateur recording studio his parents had set up for him in the basement of their home in the Dorchester neighborhood.

It was in that studio that Duncan, along with three of his closest friends, was murdered last week, shot to death by a killer or killers who have yet to be found. Whoever carried out the executions, it seems clear enough to me that young Duncan and his friends were among the latest victims of the profoundly self-destructive cultural influences that have spread like a cancer through much of the black community and beyond.

I keep wondering when leaders of eminence will step forward and declare, unambiguously, that enough is enough, as they did in the heyday of the civil rights movement, when the enemy was white racism.

It is time to blow the whistle on the nitwits who have so successfully promoted a values system that embraces murder, drug-dealing, gang membership, misogyny, child abandonment and a sense of self so diseased that it teaches children to view the men in their orbit as niggaz and the women as hoes.

However this madness developed, it's time to bring it to an end.

I noticed that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Snoop Dogg and other "leaders" and celebrities turned out in South Central Los Angeles on Tuesday for the funeral of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the convicted killer and co-founder of the Crips street gang who was executed in California last week.

I remember talking over the years to parents in Los Angeles and elsewhere who were petrified that their children would be killed in cold blood - summarily executed, without any possibility of a defense or an appeal - by the Crips or some other gang because they just happened to be wearing the wrong color cap or jacket or whatever.

The enthusiastic turnout at Tookie Williams's funeral tells you much of what you need to know about the current state of black leadership in the U.S.

The slaughter of E. J. Duncan, who was 21, and his friends - Jason Bachiller, 21; Jihad Chankhour, 22; and Christopher Vieira, 19 - was all but literally accompanied by a hip-hop soundtrack. Duncan, Bachiller and Vieira were members of a rap group called Graveside, which favored the rough language and violent imagery that has enthralled so many youngsters and bolstered the bottom lines of major entertainment companies.

This mindless celebration of violence, the essence of gangsta rap, is a reflection of the nihilism that has taken root in one neighborhood after another over the past few decades, destroying many, many lives. The authorities here have not suggested that Duncan or his friends were involved in any criminal behavior. But the appeal of the hip-hop environment is strong, and a lot of good kids are striving to conform to images established by clowns like 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg.

The members of Graveside wanted badly to make it as rappers. Said one police officer, "They probably didn't even know they were playing with fire."

The Rev. Eugene Rivers, who has been fighting for years to reduce youth violence in Boston and elsewhere, was a neighbor of E. J. Duncan's. "My son Malcolm knew E. J. well," he told me.

He described the murders as a massacre and said he has long been worried about the glorification of violence and antisocial behavior. "Thug life," he said, "is now being globalized," thanks to the powerful marketing influence of international corporations.

This problem is not limited to the black community. E. J. Duncan and his friends came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. But it is primarily a black problem, and it is impossible to overstate its dimensions.

I understand that jobs are hard to come by for many people, and that many schools are substandard, and that racial discrimination is still widespread. But those are not good reasons for committing cultural suicide.

I'll paraphrase Sam Cooke: A change has got to come. Reasonable standards of behavior that include real respect for life, learning and the law have to be re-established in those segments of the black community where chaos now reigns.

This has to start with a commitment to protect and nurture all of the community's children. That may seem at the moment like a task worthy of Sisyphus because it will require overcoming what the Rev. Rivers has described as "the sins of the fathers who have cursed their sons by their abandonment and neglect."

Sisyphean or not, it's a job that has to be done.

The Crisis in the Black Community
Published: December 30, 2005

To the Editor:

I applaud Bob Herbert for shining a spotlight on the behavioral problems that plague the African-American community. While I agree with him that many of these problems are self-imposed, we unfortunately live in a society in which certain large and powerful corporations (particularly in the music, movie and computer game industries) have significantly contributed to the erosion of our culture and sold out our youth by celebrating ignorance and creating a climate of anti-intellectualism.

Just look at 50 Cent, ''The Dukes of Hazzard'' and Grand Theft Auto.

I. Ross Novich
Summit, N.J., Dec. 26, 2005

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The Crisis in the Black Community
Published: December 30, 2005

To the Editor:

Congratulations to Bob Herbert for having the courage to address the handicap of poor family structure in the African-American community.

I have been running a self-esteem program for children in family homeless shelters for the last 12 years and can attest to this national tragedy. Children reared without a structure centered on personal responsibility to a family unit begin life with a handicap. It is difficult for children to transcend this situation and have a sense of self-worth and a responsibility to the larger community.

Traditionally, the church pulpit has been the speaker for moving black society forward in our country; other voices must be heard to turn this situation around for the health of the community and our nation.

Brian E. Kaye
Brooklyn, Dec. 26, 2005

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The Crisis in the Black Community
Published: December 30, 2005

To the Editor:

I was encouraged by Bob Herbert's charge to African-Americans.

As a white public elementary school teacher, I am convinced that we will never bridge the white-black achievement gap unless white folks and black folks both take responsibility for their own behavior and work together to make sure that struggling students of color succeed in the classroom and beyond.

Well-meaning as any teacher, white or black, may be, I know that we can do only so much without the support of the community.

Marc Kornblat
Madison, Wis., Dec. 26, 2005

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The Crisis in the Black Community
Published: December 30, 2005

To the Editor:

I agree with Bob Herbert that ''the problems facing black people today are comparable in magnitude to those of the Jim Crow era of the 20th century.'' But instead of racist laws and customs of yesteryear, I believe that it is our draconian drug laws that drive Jim Crow today.

A substantial percentage of black men and women with criminal records is linked to the uneven application of our current drug laws.

That H.I.V. and AIDS have become the black plague can also be linked to drug usage and sex with drug users. Relying upon arrest and incarceration disrupts families for generations, creating an instability that many cannot overcome.

For the black community to rise up against Jim Crow today, a new and progressive vision regarding drug-taking behavior is needed. This vision must come from the black community itself.

Howard Josepher
New York, Dec. 26, 2005

The writer is executive director of Exponents, a nonprofit group helping people with drug problems and AIDS.

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The Crisis in the Black Community
Published: December 30, 2005

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert writes, ''Despite the sometimes valiant efforts of individuals and organizations there's a vacuum where our leadership should be.''

After 40 hours of professional courses in early childhood development, I was plagued by the question of how to reach illiterate parents who rarely seek medical treatment and who watch few if any TV programs that could help them understand the importance of education.

Every black person should be taught to read as a child, even if only to be able to read how ancestral slaves were maimed and killed for trying to learn to read.

If black churches are the community's core strength, they should be sending literate parishioners door to door with secular readers, thereby guaranteeing that every black person will be literate.

C. J. Kingsley
San Francisco, Dec. 28, 2005

Bob Herbert: A New Civil Rights Movement
A New Civil Rights Movement

One of the cruelest aspects of slavery was the way it wrenched apart black families, separating husbands from wives and children from their parents.

It is ironic, to say the least, that now, nearly a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, much of the most devastating damage to black families, and especially black children, is self-inflicted.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that some of the most serious problems facing blacks in the United States - from poverty to incarceration rates to death at an early age - are linked in varying degrees to behavioral issues and the corrosion of black family life, especially the absence of fathers.

Another devastating aspect of slavery was the numbing ignorance that often resulted from the prohibition against the education of slaves. It was against the law in most instances for slaves to even learn to read. Now, with education widely (though imperfectly) available, we have entire legions of black youngsters turning their backs on school, choosing instead to wallow in a self-imposed ignorance that in the long run is as destructive as a bullet to the brain.

I remember interviewing a 17-year-old dropout in Brooklyn who had already fathered two children by two different girls. He wasn't working and he wasn't helping to support either child. I asked if he had considered going back to school. He looked at me, puzzled. "For what?" he said.

Most black people are not poor. Most are not criminals. Most are leading productive lives. The black middle class is larger and more successful than ever. But there are millions who are still out in the cold, caught in a cycle of poverty, ignorance, illness and violence that is taking a horrendous toll.

Nearly a third of black men in their 20's have criminal records, and 8 percent of all black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are behind bars.

H.I.V. and AIDS have literally become the black plague. Although blacks are just 13 percent of the overall population, they account for more than half of all new H.I.V. infections. Black women account for an astonishing 72 percent of all new cases among women.

This is frightening.

Black children routinely get a rough start in life. Two-thirds of them are born out of wedlock, and nearly half of all black children brought up in a single-parent household are poor. Those kids are much more likely to drop out of school, struggle economically, be initiators or victims of violence, and endure a variety of serious health problems.

We can pretend that these terrible things are not happening, but they are. There's a crisis in the black community, and it won't do to place all of the blame on society and government.

I've spent years writing about unfairness and appalling injustices. Society is unfair and racism is still a rampant evil. But much of the suffering in black America could be alleviated by changes in behavior. What's more, those behavioral changes would empower the community in ways that would make it easier to successfully confront opponents in government and push the society in a more equitable direction.

The problems facing black people today are comparable in magnitude to those of the Jim Crow era of the 20th century. There were leaders in those days who were equal to the challenge.

I believe that nothing short of a new movement, comparable in scope and dedication to that of the civil rights era, is required to bring about the changes in values and behavior needed to halt the self-destruction that is consuming so many black lives. The crucial question is whether the leadership exists to mount such an effort.

A good first step would be a summit meeting of wise and dedicated men and women willing to think about creative new ways to approach such problems as crime and violence, out-of-wedlock births, drug and alcohol abuse, irresponsible sexual behavior, misogyny, and so on.

Addressing issues of values and behavior within the black community should not in any way imply a lessening of the pressure on the broader society to meet its legal and ethical obligations. It should be seen as an essential counterpoint to that pressure.

Most important, it should be seen as a crucial component of the obligation that black adults have to create a broadly nurturing environment in which succeeding generations of black children can survive and thrive.

Despite the sometimes valiant efforts of individuals and organizations across the country, we are not meeting that obligation now. And that's because there's a vacuum where our leadership should be.