Maybe you thought this "respect" thing was all about macho teenagers responding to some personal offense with some violent act.
You'd have been right - but only partially.
In recent weeks, the idea of respect - or disrespect - has been part of an effort to understand why there is so much more killing in Baltimore this year.
There's something to the intensely personal side of the respect question, says Philip Leaf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has made a long study of gun violence in Baltimore and elsewhere.
But there's also a more inclusive dynamic, something societal and generational. The disrespect felt by young people, even when it doesn't result in someone's wounding or death, goes far beyond the real or perceived disrespect inherent in street life.
From decrepit schools to broken families to a forbidding labor market, Mr. Leaf says, society is saying it undervalues young people.
"It's a pervasive problem of feeling abandoned in Baltimore," he says. "There are lots of ways in which society is leaving you behind."
They have failed, often, in schools, and they have probably failed at a much higher rate than the already dismal numbers indicate.
"We have large numbers of children who are not graduating from middle school or high school," Mr. Leaf said. Often, they end up on the streets. They have seen affluence on television, and their desire for what they've seen far exceeds their economic capabilities.
Even young people who do go to school feel disrespected - and vulnerable. Some of them take guns to school. "There is a feeling now [in some neighborhoods] that you don't know when something is going to happen," he says.
It's no secret that much of this is rooted in the drug culture.
"The drug epidemic in Baltimore has persisted for a longer period of time than Detroit's, Cleveland's or some other cities'," he said in an interview. "It's a combination of the dropout rate, the lack of employment locally and the drugs - the confluence of those things is really driving the problem."
Precisely why there should be a spike in murders now, he said, is unclear. My own thought: Measuring the toll in neat, yearly increments, we reduce the problem to an artificial scorecard. The confluence of unabated social pathologies might produce even more violence.
Young people in the city, Mr. Leaf and other youth workers say, are "hyper-vigilant." Often, their parents have instilled in them a protective ethic that demands a kind of pre-emptive response in dangerous situations. Mr. Leaf says it has two parts:
"If you are involved in the illegal activity, you don't want somebody to take your package [your drugs]. So just the nature of the activity makes you vigilant," he says. "And when you are talking about 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds, that issue of respect [comes into play]. A lot of the beefs start because somebody felt disrespected. If you have a knife, you reach for the knife. If you have a gun, you reach for the gun - or you go to get one."
All the ingredients are there, Mr. Leaf says, for interpersonal violence and trauma. Younger brains, he says, simply have not developed the kind of impulse control they will have later - that is, if they live long enough. It's not surprising, then, that police are reporting more and more young people involved as shooters or victims.
Recently, he says, the real or perceived arrival of gangs - the Crips and the Bloods are mentioned, typically - adds a certain romance to the confluence. Some say gangs give young people a sense of belonging not provided by their families.
The prospects for recovery are not great, particularly if the economy, already dismal in parts of the inner city, gets worse in a general downturn.
"We have a huge number of homeless individuals, typically young men, who often live with relatives. At some point they are not cute and huggable anymore, and so they are out on the streets," Mr. Leaf said. These young men are jobless, and they are not particularly employable.
Bright spots can be found, however. While some city neighborhoods see more killings, Cherry Hill has had fewer. It's a remarkable turnaround for a neighborhood with its share of problems. Community leaders, parents and the faith community have made progress there, he says.
Groups like this are demonstrating the kind of committed respect for life that young people need to see.
Correction
Last week, I wrote incorrectly that Theodore R. McKeldin had been president of the Baltimore City Council before becoming mayor. I regret the error.
C. Fraser Smith is senior news analyst for WYPR-FM. His column appears Sundays in The Sun. His e-mail is fsmith@wypr.org.