The Roots of Baltimore’s Riot
Extract from the Time magazine
The city’s eruption follows decades of systemic failure
A “Slow-Rolling Crisis”
Baltimore’s troubles persist despite the rise of a generation of black leaders and a highly diverse corps of public employees. The mayor, the schools’ CEO and the police chief are all African Americans, and 48% of the police force is black. Indeed, Baltimore has always produced strong black figures, from the religious leader Mary Elizabeth Lange to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (who once lived in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray died).
Signs of Hope
The men and women who leaped to defend and repair their neighborhoods are the agents of hope that Baltimore so desperately needs, and theirs is the energy that might be harnessed to meet the daunting challenge of what comes next. Obama was right when he said “there are police departments that have to do some soul-searching,” and Baltimore’s is obviously high on the list. But as he went on to say, our communities–and the whole nation–have soul-searching to do as well. We might start by noticing not just what went wrong in Baltimore but also what went right.