Enough!

WHILE I WAS ON furlough, the Zimmerman verdict dropped like an anvil on a crate of eggs, followed by the reaction to the verdict, then the reaction to the reaction. There were rallies in some big cities, scattered vandalism, but thankfully nothing like the 1992 Rodney King riots.

Following the reaction to the reaction came seepage, like water leaking through a dam, creating a lake stocked with the usual fish of societal wrongs and collective failures. Most translated, effortlessly, to: It's the fault of the majority.

I couldn't read everything - who could? - but I read a lot, and the most passionate column came from my colleague Helen Ubiñas, who called us out, challenged us, got in our faces and accused us of not caring much about dead black kids. "At the very least," she wrote, "let's finally own that we don't care enough."

I guess I'm guilty, but how much is enough?

Does the black community care enough when police investigations into shootings are met with the silence of a "no-snitch" culture? Who owns that?

How do I create positive change?

"I love mankind," wrote Charles Schulz. "It's people I can't stand."

I am the opposite. I feel for people who get lost or get harmed - especially innocent ones caught in the crossfire. It's the sociopaths living out their gangsta dreams I have no time for. Most are beyond redemption.

Bill Clinton once said there's nothing that's wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America. I feel there's nothing that's wrong with the black community that can't be fixed by what's right with the black community. That's where it must start.

I understand the linkage between poverty and crime, but I don't see the same murder rate in poor white neighborhoods. Writing in Time, Mayor Nutter said 75 percent of Philadelphia's murder victims are black and 80 percent of those charged with murder are black. Who owns that?

There have been other violent episodes in America's history, but none lasting so long and rarely so flagrant, with gangstas nonchalantly spraying rec centers, basketball courts and city streets with semiautomatic fire.

Some of you will call me racist, but facts are facts. The No. 1 cause of death of young black males is homicide. The killers are not Klansmen nor cops nor Town Watch white Hispanics. They are other young black males.

If violence flows from poverty, hopelessness, ignorance and social dysfunction, there is a success formula, an equation of pluses and minuses.

Plus: education, work, marriage, family. In that order.

Minus: drugs, guns, unprotected sex, thug culture.

Some of you will call me conservative for pushing "simplistic" family values, but do you have a better plan?

Help from organizations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the NAACP is welcome, but I think a bottom-up approach is better than top-down.

I know that many individual African-Americans do care and put their asses on the line. There aren't enough of them.

In 2007, after the "10,000 Men: A Call to Action" meetup, I wrote about the Brotherhood of Huntingdon Street, 20 black men who returned to the 'hood to help black kids. I mentioned them again in 2011, asking for help from the community - and they got some, thanks to Daily News readers.

So what I can do, and will do, is turn the spotlight on African-Americans working from the bottom-up to save their kids.

What can you do? If you marched for Trayvon Martin, but haven't mentored a black child or volunteered in a black school or charity, have you done enough?