On New Year’s Day after the life had drained from Darrent Williams’ body onto the floor of his stretch limousine, a lot of Denver awoke to the realization that the city has a gang problem.
It wasn’t news to Peter Groff, though.
Young men who weren’t starting cornerbacks for the Denver Broncos were being killed in gang violence years before Williams’ murder, he said, and the incidents rarely merited a headline, much less impassioned calls to action.
The dropout rate was equally appalling, as was the widespread tolerance of drug abuse, crime and alienation.
Groff had been ruminating on this for a long time. It was heartbreaking, he said, heartbreaking and infuriating.
Every year on Martin Luther King Day, the state senator gives a speech as his way of honoring an icon and keeping the dream alive. Last week, he chose the occasion to confront the gangsters and the culture that celebrates violence and despair.
He put it all out there: the “self-imposed genocide,” the glorification of “mediocrity and anti-intellectualism,” the culture of “death, disrespect, division and materialism.” Nobody got a pass – not those who tolerate racism and discrimination, and certainly not those who use entrenched bigotry as an excuse.
When the speech ended, he returned to the work of the legislature, struggling to keep up with the demands on his time as his message reverberated through the community. Many people thanked him; others, he was certain, would accuse him of abandoning the ‘hood.
“It comes with the territory,” he said. The important thing is that the message be heard.
“In a perfect world, you’d see a rededication to the culture that allowed us to survive slavery and Jim Crow,” he said.
In that world, mothers would roust their saggy-pants sons out of bed and get them to school; fathers would demand to see their daughters’ homework assignments completed every night; teachers would challenge kids and hold all of them to high standards of performance; and nobody, nobody would tolerate the glamorization of guns, drugs and death.
“There is a sense of self-responsibility people need to take,” Groff said. They need to stand up. “You can’t tell me that high school students today have it harder than the Little Rock Nine or their ancestors picking cotton. No one will ever be able to convince me of that.”
Success doesn’t come easy.
Last year, Groff visited Taiwan and saw a group of young people gathering on the street at about 8:45 one evening. He asked a guide what they were doing out so late, and he explained that the kids had been studying for the exams that would allow the very best of them to go on to college. He and the other Americans traveling together fell silent at the sight of hundreds of ambitious young Taiwanese students, hungry for success.
“The mindset of our kids is so different,” he said. “We’ve got to get back into this idea that we can better ourselves through school, and that college is expected of us – not that if you get shot and don’t die, you’re the cool guy on the block.”
That’s pervasive across the culture, he said, reinforced in profane, violent music and the gang trappings of hip fashion.
Sure, hip-hop has gotten a bad rap, he said, but some elements of the culture undeniably have been nihilistic and corrosive.
“My wife, who has two degrees from Duke University, has no street cred in this culture, while 50 Cent, who was shot nine times, is the model,” he told me.
I wondered aloud if Sen. Barack Obama might become a catalyst for change.
“It could be a point of pride” if Obama runs for president in 2008, Groff said. It would be history-making and could be a real source of inspiration. But Obama can’t do it alone.
“The change has to come on the street,” Groff said.
“Each generation has to face its own barriers. This one has no less an obligation to do that than the generations of my parents or my grandparents.”
It’s up to them, he said.
“I hope someday they, too, will finally say, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
