Gangster culture An element of rap music has shifted from the ghetto to mainstream

What was the cause of the riots in the United Kingdom?

This wasn’t a political riot. There wasn’t anything political about it. It wasn’t even race-on-race rioting. It was races rioting together — rioting against the state, and for themselves.

Last week, renowned British historian David Starkey made this point to the BBC: The rioting was just shopping with violence. People sensed a moment of lawlessness and impunity.

But Starkey’s point was an observation, not an explanation. How did thousands of people in the land of the Magna Carta, the land of liberty and law, simply decide to become petty little gangsters?

Starkey referred to a speech made in 1968 by a politician named Enoch Powell, who had warned about unlimited immigration to the U.K., using the phrase “rivers of blood.” Starkey said the violence predicted by Powell had come true — but it wasn’t race versus race.

It was various races together. “The whites have become black,” he said. “A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.” Uh-oh.

Hundreds of people immediately filed censorship complaints against Starkey and the BBC, and he was widely condemned as a racist.

Perhaps Starkey could have been more careful; he said white had become black — and then immediately became more precise, meaning they had accepted a particular segment of black culture, namely gangsta rap. But his meaning was perfectly clear — to anyone who has listened to rap music, with its glorification of violence and material excess, and who has seen the glamourization of that lifestyle move from ghettos into the cultural mainstream.

What grown men wear hoodies in public? Or their underwear up high and their pants down low? Those aren’t crimes, of course — maybe fashion crimes. But far more serious is the set of values that has been swallowed along with the cultural touchstones of fashion and diction.

Gangsta culture calls women “hos” and “bitches,” a crude misogyny with an undercurrent of a threat of violence. It glamourizes fighting, shooting and even dying in gangland warfare. It holds that the point of wealth is to squander it on bling and champagne.

For some folks, it’s a joke. Take Sacha Baron Cohen, the British comic who created a character called Ali G — a twenty-something white kid trying so hard to be a gangsta.

It was a laugh riot, so over the top it was hilarious. Except that thousands of British kids decided that’s who they wanted to be when they grew up.

As U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday, this isn’t just about mimicking some questionable role models. It has become a substitute moral code. Starkey accurately pointed out where it came from, and where it has gone.

When thousands of British thugs decide it’s not a fantasy anymore, but rather a code for living, that’s the time to blow the whistle.

Cameron’s right. This is a slow-motion moral collapse. And the solution is surely not banning rough music or comedy. But being free to talk about it openly, like David Starkey did, is part of the solution, not part of the problem.