If I hear one more person repeat robotically “This is not what Freddie Gray’s family wanted”, I will throw up. They are not the only family who lives in West Baltimore. Other residents have every reason to experience their own reaction to the way things are in the city. And that’s what they are doing. Let’s express any form of judgment of what they do but let’s not hide behind the inane appeals to Freddie Gray’s family. It’s obviously not about that family.
Also, the Mayor of Baltimore is not making a great impression on me. All she has to say is “thug this” and “thug that.” In the meanwhile, I’m hearing that she cut funding for public schools and diverted the money to the prison system. So right now maybe she should be talking about what it is that she is planning to offer to the looting and rioting kids that is better than what they are doing at this moment.
There are areas in Baltimore that are really hopeless, really bad. And the Mayor who has done nothing to change that should be speechifying a little less actively.
Clarissa's Blog 
You know, I knew someone who once went to Baltimore for grad school, and she said, “Baltimore is the whitest city.” When I mentioned the city wasn’t totally white, she countered with how the neighborhoods were very segregated, with a sharp line between the “good” neighborhoods and the “bad” neighborhoods. Her grad school program was very white and she missed her hometown in California.
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The city is EXTREMELY segregated. It has these beautiful areas but then also these completely dilapidated, horribly sad areas. And the division is deeply racialized.
It is a majority black city where a white person can, indeed, exist for a long time without noticing this fact.
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It was Maryland Governor Hogan who cut funding for schools and diverted the money to prisons. The Mayor did not do this.
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Then he’s a jerk, too. But she has nothing to be proud of in that city.
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Mayor SRB inherited the problems in Baltimore. She didn’t cause them and she hasn’t solved them. Well-meaning leaders have struggled to overcome many obstacles for years, with little success. The history and complexity of school funding politics in Maryland is particularly sad. The city and state began a grand reorganization of city schools in 1997, with an infusion of funds. But it’s been a constant uphill battle with few victories. The failure of the schools has deep social and economic roots.
The Baltimore metro area has a high percentage of minorities, and the city is majority black. The entire area is segregated in the extreme, and has been for decades.
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