I thought Wilbon abandoned his argument just as it was getting interesting with his turn into the Len Bias situation. I understand what he was saying, I just think it was another column for another day.
That said, I don't quite understand the point as well as I understand the emotional punch the column packs. He seems to be arguing -- correctly, in my view -- that abandoning virtually your whole upbringing is a complex, complicated problem, but he then advises people to do it immediately, as if that were easy or possible. Moreover, if we accept his premise that you can't really leave it all behind forever because it can always come and get you, then the whole column seems to me distressingly futile. You do all the right things and some guy from your past comes and shoots you down anyway, where do we go from that?
Sooner or later, also, somebody's going to have to talk about guns, particularly their ready availability in poorer black neighborhoods, the importation of which used to be a big issue for Rudy Giuliani before he needed cracker votes in South Carolina.
