I attended the city-county meeting on Dec. 20 at which the Durham Gang Assessment was presented to our elected leaders. There was lots of talk about suppression, prevention and intervention but barely a mention of race. Only once did the word “Hispanic” get mentioned, and I don’t recall ever hearing the word “black,” unless you assumed that discussions of pants hanging off kids’ butts was a discussion of black youth. It made me wonder if they were talking about all the white gangs running roughshod in and around Rougemont and Bahama.

Seriously, though, the reason I’m not especially optimistic about any truly effective anti-gang efforts in Durham is this very unwillingness to mention how race factors into it. It was clear that none of our City Council or Board of Commissioners members wanted to bring it up, especially not with Lavonia Allison staring them down from the audience. The other reason is the expense of the recommendations by the two consultants. If we were to implement those you can just about forget any renovation of our deteriorating water system.

But if they do want to venture into that area, here’s an interesting read for our honorables. Seems it’s open season on blacks (not even necessarily black gang members) for Hispanic gangs in parts of Los Angeles. As they say, everything hits the West Coast first, so we better be ready.