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 It had been my hope to write about Alonzo Mourning and his heart for our children as seen through the wonderful “Zo’s Summer Groove.” What he does is more than commendable.
Especially in a time when athletes, amateur and professional, are in the news because of behavior that is selfish, deplorable and sometimes even criminal.
But after what a group of young black males did to a black woman last week, I felt I had no choice but to change my subject matter.
As you must have heard by now, a pack of about ten young black males, apparently all of them teenagers, repeatedly raped a black woman in the Dunbar Village housing complex, located in Palm Beach County.
Not only did they rape this woman over and over again, they also forced her to commit a sexual act on her son.
There is a depravity underlining this act that is as horrifying as the act itself. And our community needs to recognize the seriousness of what has happened and what it portends.
Something in the socialization of our children has made them want to participate in crimes that are violent, degenerate and evil. Crimes that not only victimize someone but debase him or her as well.
We need to ask ourselves what happened to those young minds that they were even open to the suggestion of raping and terrorizing a mother and her child? What is it that prevents them from caring about themselves, and allows them to care even less for someone else?
And if they really thought they could commit this heinous crime and get away with it, what were they planning to do next? And to whom? When? Where?
Here is a group of young people who have been on the planet for less than two decades and they determined they were above any laws, social conventions or expectations of decent behavior. They believe that whatever they want to do, they can do.
No matter who gets hurt or how severe the pain.
One thing is sure. None of them was born with that mentality. Environment in the home and the communities where they are growing up are responsible for what they have become.
So everybody gets a piece of the blame for this one.
The parents get the blame for what they did not teach but did allow.
The police get the blame because they knew what kind of place Dunbar Village had become but did not care enough for the people to put regular patrols or a substation in place.
The community at large, especially black men, is to blame because we did not care enough for the women and children of Dunbar Village to risk ourselves enough to make it safe.
One more thing. The mindset of these young males is not peculiar to children in Dunbar Village. The same factors that produced it are in all of our communities all over this country.
Here is one more warning sign that many of our children are not only in danger of never realizing the great potential they have, but are becoming what we could never have imagined.
The responsibility for what they have become and for what they will never become is ours.
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Pictured above from left to right are Jakaris Sansay Taylor, Avion Lawson and Nathan Walker.
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