GANG WATCH : Brandon Lott, 2

Suppose it had happened in Brentwood?

Suppose that Brandon Lott, the cheerful little 2-year-old who was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting as he watched older children playing with sparklers Wednesday evening, had not been the child of a black, working-class family living in South-Central Los Angeles?

Suppose, instead, that Brandon had been one of those children of affluence and privilege who run and play in safety across the rolling lawns of Brentwood or along the tree-lined streets of Hancock Park.

Suppose that a family party attended by those children had been set upon by a band of roving thugs. Suppose Los Angeles had listened to their mother say, as Brandon’s tearful mother, Dorothy Overland, did: “They started shooting at the babies.”

If that had happened, civic outrage would know no bounds. But because they are who they are and live where they live, Brandon’s wounds and his family’s grief simply are part of the body count that has become the objective measure of this city’s neglect of its minority and working-class neighborhoods.

There is nothing extraordinary or heroic in the willingness to undertake the defense of innocent life. It is, in fact, the minimal duty members of a decent society owe to one another. Los Angeles--all of it--failed in its duty to Brandon Lott. In a place where such failures become routine, you can’t build walls high enough to shut out the shame.