Friday, March 12, 2010

Baltimore's Shame


As of this posting, there have been 28 homicides in Baltimore. That's one murder about every 2 1/2 days. The spin-meisters will applaud that the murder rate has fallen this year.

Does anybody think that the city has been snowbound for so much time might have inhibited the life on the street out of which many of the murders arise.

Little old white ladies in Roland Park needn't worry. Yuppies in Canton, Fells Point, and Federal Hill haven't a care. EVERY SINGLE MURDER IN BALTIMORE STILL HAS A BLACK MALE AS THE MURDER VICTIM.

Racism is far more complicated that the faux-moral outrage and indignation we see reacting in horror to the utterance of the horrible "N" word. The verbalizing "Nigger" is indefensible especially when used to demean and dimiss others. There are reasons why the murder profile in Baltimore tallies up the way it does and it is not by coincidence that the only murder victims in Baltimore so far this year are black males.

Let the politicians and social activists say what they will, our brothers, members of our community at large are being written off as second class citizens.

It's time to raise expectations across the board. It's time for schools to stop making excuses for why male black students are not achieving and realize no matter what their background consists of, it is still the school's responsibility to teach all students effectively.

All these things interrelate. However, since the horror of death seldom reaches most neighborhoods, it's so easy to brush off the hard realities. It's far more complicated than simply gang violence, the drug trade, and broken families. The solution is far from unobtainable.

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