"In the aftermath of the troubling State Fair Park incident that involved marauding black teenagers..."

"... it seems lots of people have become experts on African-American culture."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane disparages these pseudo-experts.

According to the U.S. Census, there are approximately 220,000 black people in Milwaukee. Anyone who believes they can make such general assumptions about them is way off-base.

Clearly there's a segment of mostly younger Milwaukee black residents in the community that needs immediate intervention. But calls for more personal responsibility are only appropriate if you truly believe the concept, which means you only hold the people who actually committed the crime personally responsible and no one else.

And you certainly can't blame it on culture....

Is Kane saying that if we believe that each individual is personally responsible for the crimes he commits, then we cannot think of the larger culture as causally related to crime problems? Obviously, it's important to refrain from judging individuals according to stereotypes — true or false stereotypes — applicable to groups, but Kane seems to be making a much broader point.

ADDED: Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter lectures black teenagers: "You have damaged your own race."