******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
In the otherwise informative article below, Michael Fletcher claims that, despite the stark inequalities that exist within the city, the problems that face Baltimore are not racial. To back up this claim, he makes reference to the prominence of blacks within various institutions of municipal governance and within law enforcement itself. While that may be true (although the black mayor's background hardly seems representative of the typical west Baltimorian, not least of all because her mother was a pediatrician), it hardly seems that non-whites who do gain entry to institutions like law enforcement do not in fact imbibe the prevailing (white-supremacist) norms of those institutions. As sociologist Alice Goffman reports in her recent ethnography on fugitive Black men in a Philadephia neighborhood, the local police - despite the seeming racial and gender diversity among its ranks - appears to be no less racist and misogynist than the typical all-white police forces of the Midwest. In discussing the strategies that police use to get women and other family members to inform on their loved ones, Goffman describes her own interrogation by aggressive police officers looking to elicit information from her about her contacts: "I had dropped Mike and Chuck off on 6th Street and was heading toward the airport to pick up a friend. Two unmarked cars come up behind me..and I pull over. A cop walks over to my window and shines a flashlight in my face; he orders me to step out of the car and show him my license. Then one of the cops tells me I am coming with them. I leave the car...and get into the backseat of their car, a green Lincoln. On the way to the precinct, the white cop who is driving tells me that if I am looking for some Black dick, I don't have to go to 6th street; I could come right to the precinct at 8th and Vine. The Black cop in the passenger side grins and shakes his head, says something about how he doesn't want any of me; he would probably catch some shit. At the precinct, another white guy pats me down. He is smirking at me as he touches my hips and thighs. There is a certain look of disdain, or perhaps disgust, that white men sometimes give to white women whom they believe to be having sex with Black men - Black men who get arrested, especially. They take me up the stairs to the second floor, the Detective Unit. I sit in a little room for a while, then two white cops come in, dark green cargo pants and big black combat boots, and big guns strapped onto their legs. They remove the guns and put them on the table facing me. One cop leafs through a folder and puts pictures in front of me of Mike, then Chuck, then Reggie [i.e. the men she is observing for the study]...They question me for about an hour and a half. From what I remember many hours later: Is Mike the supplier? Do you think he'll protect you when we bring him in? He won't protect you! Who has the best stuff, between Mike and Steve, in your expert opinion? We know you were around here last week when all the shit went down. (What shit?) We saw you on 2nd Street, and we know you're up on 4th Street. What business do you have up on 4th Street? I hate to see a pretty young girl get passed around so much. Do your parents know that you're fucking a different nigger every night?...What is your daddy going to say when you call him from the station and ask him to post bail? Bet he'd love to hear what you are doing. Do you kiss him with that mouth?" - Alice Goffman, On the Run:Fugitive Life in an American City, pp. 69-71 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/what-you-really-need-to-know-about-baltimore-from-a-reporter-who-lived-there-for-30-years/ ____________ "The two maps below offer a striking look at the two Baltimores, one affluent and predominately white, the other impoverished and largely black...Slide between the two maps and you'll immediately notice that the wedge of white Baltimore, jutting down from the Northwest to the city center, is largely free of vacant buildings. But in the black neighborhoods on either side, empty buildings are endemic...Think of your neighborhood, and try to imagine what it would be like if one out of every three homes were boarded up." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/these-two-maps-show-the-shocking-inequality-in-baltimore/ _____________ "There are — without a doubt — two Baltimores, as is the case with the District and most American cities...In Baltimore, the distance between the haves and the have-nots is less than four miles...That’s the distance between the breathtaking tulips and imposing mansions of Sherwood Gardens and the heartbreaking destruction and boarded up buildings of West Baltimore. Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who died of a severe spinal injury he received in police custody, lived in West Baltimore, in a neighborhood called Sandtown-Winchester that is filled with blight and desperately poor people. Yet just across town are the hipster condos of Fells Point, where the local Tasty Tuesday Whole Foods special — 'USA caught' wild salmon, $17.99 a pound — was totally on, protected by a perimeter of the police and National Guard." http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-baltimore-a-lush-scene-out-of-renoir-in-a-riot-torn-city/2015/04/28/75ea3e02-ede0-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html _________________ "[T]he unemployment rate for [Freddie] Gray’s neighborhood – Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park – was 24.2%...those living in Gray’s neighborhood in Baltimore are dealing with an unemployment rate that would cripple cities and towns in other parts of the country. More than a third of households, 35.4%, in that neighborhood live in poverty. More than half, 51%, make less than $25,000 a year. Between 2008 and 2012, the median household income for that area was $24,006. Compare that to some of Baltimore’s mostly white neighborhoods like South Baltimore or the Roland Park and Poplar Hill areas. In 2010, only 2.7% of South Baltimore’s residents were black. More than 50% of the area’s residents made above $75,000 a year. The median household income for the area was $85,173 – three and half times the income earned by those living where Freddie Gray grew up." http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/28/freddie-gray-neighborhood-baltimore-poverty-unemployment _________________ "Decades of policy shifts, such as ordinances declaring neighborhoods drug-free, mass arrests on petty charges and skewed crime statistics, turned the police department into a force obsessed with numbers first and police work second, Simon said. 'In these drug-saturated neighborhoods, they weren’t policing their post any more...they were just dragging the sidewalks, hunting stats, and these inner-city neighborhoods – which were indeed drug-saturated because that’s the only industry left – become just hunting grounds. They weren’t protecting anything. They weren’t serving anyone.' Police, rewarded for high arrest rates and receiving overtime pay for court hours, learned incentives for indiscriminate tactics, Simon continued. 'They were collecting bodies, treating corner folk and citizens alike as an Israeli patrol would treat Gaza, or as the Afrikaners would have treated Soweto back in the day. They’re an army of occupation. And once it’s that, then everybody’s the enemy." http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/29/david-simon-baltimore-police-army-occupation ____________________ "[I]n Sandtown-Winchester, the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray grew up and was chased by the police, life expectancy is 69.7 years, on par with Iraq and Kazakhstan. According to the 2010 census, the area was 97 percent black; more than half the households had incomes less than $25,000; and just 6 percent of adults had a bachelor’s degree or more, far below the 25 percent for the city as a whole. Unemployment was double the city average. A more recent study found Sandtown-Winchester had the highest rate in the state of residents who were incarcerated." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/us/baltimore-riots-are-another-scar-on-a-city-battered-by-neglect.html?_r=0 ____________ "Freddie Gray’s life and death say much about the difficult problems that roil Baltimore. As a child, he was found to have elevated levels of lead in his blood from peeling lead paint in his home, leading to a raft of medical and educational problems...His criminal record says he operated on the periphery of the drug game. He did a short stint in prison, and according to news reports, his mother used heroin.None of that is unusual in the West Baltimore community where he grew up — nor are they unusual in many of Baltimore’s impoverished neighborhoods. The federal government has said that Baltimore has the highest concentration of heroin addicts in the nation. Gray's neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester, once home to Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, has more recently distinguished itself as the place that has sent the highest number of people to prison in the state of Maryland." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/what-you-really-need-to-know-about-baltimore-from-a-reporter-who-lived-there-for-30-years/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
