Preface: I love my city. But in trying to unpack the events that have unfolded over the past two weeks, I have at times been guilty of focusing on symptoms more than chronic problems. I have been guilty of chastising rioters, while those who are culpable of much more heinous crimes elude reprimand. Five hundred miles away, I am physically removed from the city I call my own, but the disconnect runs so much deeper. The following is an attempt to explain the reaction of thousands of Baltimoreans in the wake Freddie Gray’s death at the hands of police. A short article cannot cover every aspect of an exceedingly complex issue, but I hope this proves illustrative for the Middlebury community. I would like to thank my brother Zach for contributing heavily to this article. Were it not for his frank appraisal of my attitude, I might still be stuck in a trap of self-aggrandizing victim shaming.
Baltimore has a magic about it. To some it is “Smalltimore,” because the community can feel so tight-knit that it’s easy to forget it’s not a small town, but rather a city of 620,000. From the glitzy high rises of the inner harbor and harbor east, to the quirky gastropubs and tattoo parlors of Canton and Hamden, it’s easy to see why Baltimore gets the nickname “Charm City.”
But there is another Baltimore. The one called “Mobtown.” The Perkins Homes, Sandtown and Cherry Hill. A city where blighted neighborhoods hold tens of thousands of abandoned homes, where the future is bleak and the residents are almost exclusively black. A place where people have learned to internalize the crushing shame of poverty and acclimate to their demoralizing abandonment by the other half of the city.
Trite mass media overtures focusing on the rioting, looting and disorder that befell Baltimore portrayed protesters and rioters as ignorant. Many people asked why anyone would turn on their own community. But major news outlets, and a large portion of America, have missed the point entirely.
The question we should ask is not “why are people rioting?” – the answer to that is obvious: desperation, marginalization and hopelessness. The history of race relations in Baltimore is more grotesque than an Edgar Allan Poe story. The housing situation is a travesty, the public health system is a wreck and the police force echoes the blatant disregard for human life which we see in New York, Ferguson, Miami and other cities around the country. Then there is the deplorably underfunded public school system, which barely manages to rush half the class out the door with a diploma. All of these factors are exacerbated by the flow of jobs out of the city – causing local unemployment to climb as high as 20 percent. (This could be partially offset by an upgrade to the archaic public transportation system, but instead the governor has slashed plans to expand transport services.)
The question we should ask is not, “Why are people rioting?” – the question is – “how do people restrain themselves? Poor black Baltimoreans are treated like animals. No human being can swallow his or her pride forever. The powers-that-be have no right to condescend, nor does the rest of America, from the outside looking in. We as a people have ignored the problem of racial divides for too long. If we fail to bridge that chasm, we cannot fault the oppressed when they throw stones across the gap.
Too often we label black dissidents as “thugs.” But it’s time for some self-reflection. “Thug” is just a way to euphemize and dehumanize Black America so that “Charm City” does not have to admit to wrongdoing. As Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes said, alongside Seattle Seahawks Cornerback Richard Sherman, “thug” is the new “n****r.” We label black men “thugs” and the weight they must bear is a life of perfection simply to break the expectation that they are criminals.
“Must be pretty cool to be white and just represent yourself and not your entire race,” said Kumail Nanjiani, the actor from HBO’s Silicon Valley on Twitter. When you see a white criminal, they are just a criminal, but when you see a black criminal, they are a criminal and they are black, so we go on reinforcing the stereotypes we have already created. When we call people “thugs,” we are condemning their image to criminality. When the police chased Freddie Gray in West Baltimore, they were chasing another “thug” to lock up and remove from the streets. Skin color was the only probable cause they needed.
On the first and only night of riots, Governor Larry Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called in the National Guard, maximized police presence across the city, instituted a mandatory curfew and declared a formal state of emergency. But Baltimore has been in a tacit state of emergency for years. The only difference this time is that black and white police cruisers were flanked by tan National Guard Humvees.
The city must cease using force as a means of “control.” The military-prison-industrial complex is bleeding Baltimore like a stab wound and Governor Hogan’s misguided war on heroin is doomed to failure. Social inequity, racial injustice and police brutality are catastrophic multi-faceted problems, and they will require decades of work, but in the myopic view of our government, “crime” is much easier to fix.
America needs to wake up. Baltimore did not riot in a vacuum. The officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death will stand trial for an array of charges from false imprisonment and negligent conduct to manslaughter and murder, and the race conversation has been renewed, but we cannot let the momentum wane. We must open our eyes and ears, see what is really going on and listen to the people who have long been shouting to be heard.
My brother and I believe in our city, and we support those who have taken to the streets. The events of the past two weeks have not destroyed the community; they have brought it together to fight for the common causes of truth, justice and equality. It is our hope that the national conversation continues to shift away from “Why are people rioting?” to “What’s the next step?.” These communities need more than cathartic justice against a few oppressors. We have too long scorned our own, but now it’s time to give them back their pride.
Jackson Adams '17 is from Towson, Md.
Zach Adams is from Towson, Md.
