Last week, Globe columnist Joan Venocchi chastised the city of Boston and Governor Patrick for being more upset that a State House window was shattered by a stray bullet fired by armed thugs on the common than they were about stray bullets shattering lives and livelihoods in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan.

While she's right that the city and its residents are willing to tolerate violence in the ghetto, as long as it stays in the ghetto, her contention that the government or the media have ignored the violence in the city's hotspots is disingenuous, I think. "Bullets don't threaten Beacon Hill windows every day. When they do," she snarks, "it's news."

Well, of course it is. Aside from the delicious irony of it, which she herself is cashing in on, there are photos like this one from The Herald to be had:


But it's easy to get outraged by the outrage at the shattering of a window, too. Easier than finding a real solution to the problem. And make no mistake: the problem—gang violence in the inner city—has received plenty of press. The problem is not that the problem isn't getting press. The problem is that no one has the stomach for any real solution.

And when you throw in the opportunists and the cranks (who, like Venocchi here, don't care about the problem so much as the degree to which those who should care about it don't sufficiently for their taste) and the self-styled saviors, like Reverend Eugene Rivers, you've got a sideshow to accompany the violence that does little but add insult to injury.

Venocchi implies here and has written elsewhere that more police on the streets of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan is the answer, but she's only half right. And she could be all wrong: if the operation isn't executed properly, it could easily inflame tensions, or lead to race riots. While she doesn't mention race but once in her op-ed, it is the elephant in the room.

The "Two Bostons" Michael Flaherty mentions, for example, are divided on racial lines. And racial tension is tough to tackle. Any large scale intervention in these neighborhoods that involves the police would have to be handled with utmost delicacy.

The communities in crisis desperately need stabilizing, can't do it themselves, and don't want to cede authority to police. Whatever the nature of their suspicions regarding police authority—which may be legitimate on some levels—building a working relationship with the authorities is arduous and takes a lot of time.

It's a little like when police are called to the scene of a domestic violence incident, and once they get there and start to take the husband away, the wife starts beating up on them.

The city knows it's a thin line.

Because it's so unpleasant to talk frankly about race, discussions of inner-city violence rapidly devolve from the concrete to the abstract. None of the solutions readily available to us can right the wrongs of institutional racism and economic stratification in society, which seem the roots of the inner-city's desolation and despair. Short of upending the whole social order, the problem seems intractable.

Many of us are quite comfortable with what we've got, and regardless of how sad we may be that others aren't as fortunate, aren't quite willing to give up much, if anything, to see a solution. That's why even the well-meaning among the complacent classes are always calling for a greater police presence, and stopping short of real, radical social change that could possibly make a difference in the long-term.

And anyway, we know intuitively that it takes generations to move up and on from poverty. Because poverty is not just economic, it's cultural. The only solutions are long-term, and, like I said, we don't have the stomach for it. So we go round and round, mired in a self-indulgent cycle of recrimination and guilt, armed with our righteous indignation and sophist's rants.

One of which you're seeing in the "debate" around the shooting on the Common is that the entire city bears responsibility for the plight of our inner city, and so the whole city should pay with violence.

I can't be the only one who hears a veiled threat in Reverend Rivers' words: "The present anarchy on the streets of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan will not be geographically contained forever." Or the worst kind of schadenfreude in Venocchi's: "Crime often has to hit home before the comfortable classes understand its grim inevitability in other people's lives."

Society is an abstract notion, and it's not helpful to blame it here. It's hard to see how residents of Beacon Hill, however much we might not like the air of entitlement they display, are directly responsible for black-on-black gang violence in Mattapan.

And it is also difficult to see how the solution that Vennochi herself implicitly supports—more cops on the street—would do anything but inflame tensions there. Police work where their authority is respected, and where most people are willing to cede authority to them because they have more to gain by doing so, and more to lose by not doing so. This is not the case in gang-ruled territory.

We are not dealing with nihilists, or anarchists, as Vennochi calls them. We are dealing with economists. The lawful economy has all but abandoned this area, and lawful enterprise will not return until it is stabilized. But in the meantime the gangs have taken over governing and economic functions. Their rule is authoritarian, and they traffic in drugs, guns, and prostitution, but they are organized.

The question is, how do you restore the lawful economy of the neighborhoods—which is what must happen—without securing them first? How do you secure them when the measures needed to do so will inevitably be seen as racist?

So far the idea has been to negotiate with the gangs themselves—Rev. River's "thug summits" and such—but is not only recognizing but legitimizing the rule of gangs a good move? Or will it embolden them? And what inducements to disband are there, when going to work for a gang can lead to bling and glory?

The jobs in the mainstream economy available to these thugs are for chumps, and they know it. Mainstream society has nothing of honor to offer them. How do you get out of the ghetto at $7.50 an hour? Or are you going to stay in substandard schools without heat or AC and try to get an education while bullets fly around you?

The real conundrum is this: these neighborhoods are not equal, and in order to get to where they're secure, they will need to sacrifice. No one can come in and solve the problem. Not the police, who will be viewed as just another gang, and not the government, who will be throwing money into a black hole. The solution has to come with sacrifice from those who are already in the maelstrom of violence and desperation.

And the thing that feels wrong about it is it's just not fair.

The more we dwell on the unfairness of the short-term situation and its solutions, the less capable we become of laying the foundations for a long-term solution. A big part of the problem is the perspective we have on the social causes of the current problem. It's not really the fault of those perpetrating the violence, the theory goes, it is "society" which has driven them to it, by not providing them with the tools to enter the mainstream—the social stability, the educational opportunities, the jobs that are available to others.

And there is truth in all of this, and it is important for heading off future crises. But for the purposes of solving the current one, it may be a mitigating factor in punishment of crimes, but it should not be a hindrance to it.