I'm writing this because my heart and
my mind are telling me with vigorous force that I have to. Because
I've been on and off nauseous and crying for two days. Because lots
of news reports and things people have been saying on social media
just make my heart break over and over again. Because as little as a
blog post of mine will do, I can't bear the thought that people will
just think that what's been happening in Baltimore City this week is
just a group of senseless “animals” acting out about one
incident. These violent riots (and the peaceful protests) are about
so much more than Freddie Gray.
When I was a kid, I wasn't wealthy. We
didn't have nice cars, and they often broke down. We had crippled and
struggling window air conditioner units. At one point our computer
got repossessed. We had debts. I worried for a long time that we
would lose our house. (We didn't.)
I knew what it was like to not be able
to have what I wanted, whether it was the new trendy shoes everyone
else seemed to have, a Sega Genesis, or something slightly more
utilitarian. But, I always had food. I always had clean clothes. I
always had school supplies. We had Christmas and birthday presents.
We got another computer. I had all the things I needed, and many that
I just wanted. Nonetheless, I thought of myself as poor.
I went to Baltimore City Public Schools
for 13 years (though I should say at the outset of this that I did go
to some of the best city public schools). As poor as I thought I was,
I did have a sense that I was better off financially than some of my
peers. But, I never got it, really got it until I was a junior in
high school. There were some peers of mine that in my opinion did not
care about school, and frankly, I looked down on them for it. These
were the kids who didn't routinely do homework, who rarely knew the
answers to questions, and who didn't always show up. I suppose I
thought of them as losers. If I could study, do my homework, and come
to school why couldn't they?
I think I should have gotten it sooner,
but it's hard to see the world of experience outside ourselves. It is
easy to think that everyone is just like us—that everyone will make
the same choices that we have made.
The moment I finally got it was in a
Saturday morning tutoring session. I was one of a group of students
paid to tutor other students on Saturday mornings at my school. I
should have applauded these students for coming on Saturday to try to
prevent themselves from failing classes. They weren't getting paid
$10 an hour and getting a free lunch to come in and do relatively
little work like I was. I was sitting in on a module called “Personal
Development” where we were discussing how the students could
improve study habits. Things got real. These 14 and 15 year old girls
were opening up about how they just didn't have time. They had to
make dinner for their families. They had to take care of their little
brothers and sisters. They didn't have reliable or safe
transportation home, or if they did, it amounted to three different
bus transfers. By the time they were home and ready to study, they
needed to try to get some sleep.
These are by far not the worst stories
from Baltimore City. In fact, these are some of the best and most
inspiring. These kids were coming to school on Saturday to try to
help themselves. They were trying to find a way to make it work
because they wanted to have good lives. They had worked hard to be at
a magnet school and wanted to stay there. I respect these girls to no
end. I didn't need worse or grittier stories for my entire perception
to change as it did that morning. I got rides to school almost
everyday, and they only took twenty minutes. My biggest problem was
being forced by my dad to listen to the 98 Rock morning show. I
didn't have to cook for anybody. I didn't have to take care of
anybody. My biggest obstacle to getting my homework done was turning
off the TV or getting out of an AOL chat room.
After that morning I had my eyes open
much wider. I saw the other hardships some of my peers were facing.
All of us trying to get through the same day, but as emo as I was
about my own middle class life, some of these kids had far more adult
lives than I had. Some were dealing with
the loss of family members to violence. Some were hungrier than the
sustenance the crappy $1.25 school lunch could provide.
And as I refer to this subset of my
peers, I should also say that while my school was majority African
American, I do not refer only to African American peers. These social
cycles are about poverty. I call them social cycles because it can be
very hard to break free—especially when you consider what you see
around you to be normal. When you don't know what life could be like.
When you can't even dream of what it could be like. And as I said
before, I went to a damn good city school. I am proud and inspired by
so many of the girls I went to school with, but even there I saw some
individuals with no real futures. And not because they would be
impossible to attain, but because they didn't believe that futures
were possible. I vividly remember girls saying to me that there was
just no point in applying to college. I'm not saying everyone needs
to go to college, but to not even think of it as a potential reality
for yourself?
On some level, we must realize that we
all have things like this. For years I thought the way men in my life
treated me was acceptable and the best it could be. Now, I know what
unconditional love is like from a significant other, and let me tell
you, I still have trouble accepting it. It's strange and different,
and I'd never even imagined it to be like this. Sometimes a simple
act of caring is enough to make me burst into tears because it's so
unexpected.
Some of us are lucky enough to have a
mentor or an experience where we discover how good things can be and
what we should hope for. Many of the girls I went to school with who
had it much rougher than I did worked impossibly hard and made
wonderful lives for themselves, but the citizens in many areas of
Baltimore are not so lucky, or shall I say “able.” I remember
arguing with a guy freshman year of college who believed that
everyone can just pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps.
The fact is, they can't. How can you climb a steep and rough rope,
when you don't even know it's there? When there's no one there to
throw it down to you?
I'm 30. I've had to work since I was
17. I can't afford to buy a car and have massive debts of my own.
But, no matter how poor I felt, or still feel, my entire worldview is
fundamentally different than many people in my city. I don't believe
I'll ever be wealthy, but I do believe I'll own an okay house with a
small yard and have a car one day. I have a graduate degree and often
consider returning to school. I believe that if I want things like
these, I can work towards them and eventually have them. I do not
live in constant fear of neighborhood violence. In fact, those that
know me know that a close family member of mine was shot in 2013, but
I do not have reason to expect something like that will happen again.
Why am I saying all of this? I am
saying all of this because last night I sat there and watched the
mayor of Baltimore, my mayor, simplify the situation by calling the
rioters “thugs” over and over again. There is so much more
complexity to this situation and the life of our city than “thugs.”
There is a reason this is happening, and it isn't just because of
“senseless violence.” Senseless means something else. Senseless
means “done or happening for no reason.” All of this is
absolutely happening for a reason.
The news keeps saying that the riot
areas look like a war zone. I talked to a friend about this today,
and she said it just looked like Baltimore to her. I couldn't help
but wonder what outside news may have reported before the riots if
they had visited certain Baltimore areas. Baltimore is filled with
vacants. Filled with blocks that have almost no businesses. Anyone
who has just taken the cheap bus to NYC knows what much of the east
side of North Avenue is like. It's funny how in reference to a car
fire on Monday night a news anchor said, "We wouldn't normally
see this in Baltimore." Funny because on Saturday night the same
station said, "Any other night we wouldn't worry about a car on
fire in Baltimore."
For things to change, we have to be
able to talk about the roots of the problems. Explaining why someone
may react a certain way is not the same as condoning it. We cannot
solve the deep seated problems of Baltimore City by minimizing it all
to the word “thugs.” We have to try to understand the motivations
of the rioters. Racial tensions, stark socioeconomic discrepancies, a
lack of trust in the police and in government agencies—these are
things that have been present in Baltimore and are still present in
Baltimore. And even that sentence is a gross oversimplification. I
can't help but point us to the 1968 MLK quote that has been
circulating around the internet:
It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
Or to this editorial article “Why Freddie Gray ran” that encapsulates the tragic side of life in Sandtown-Winchester.
We all play hands with the cards we are
dealt. Sometimes we are in a position to get more cards. Sometimes we
have them taken away. We all act based on the sum of our childhoods,
the people we've encountered, and the experiences we've had. We may
not be all guilty or all innocent of anything, but we are a product
of where we came from—or still are—one way or another. You don't
have to condone rioting. You can be angry at the rioters. I'm not
saying you shouldn't be. But, I don't believe you should judge
them. They can be judged legally for criminal acts if they have
committed them, but can any of us really judge another person? Can
any of us truly understand another human being? We can try, and we
damn well should try, but we are doing everyone a disservice to put
people in boxes of “good” and “evil.” If we do that, we put
them in other boxes: “hopeless” and “future-less.” We are
packing these individuals into boxes that are convenient for us. We
are putting them away in a storage unit and hoping that they stay in
those boxes.
We are forgetting that just like you
and me (and Freddie Gray) we are all human beings. We all should have
the right to life, and to go even further, dare I suggest a right to
live a decent life.
In the end, I'm just as guilty as any
other middle class couch dweller. Maybe I can't buy a car right now,
but I could go out for wine and cheese tonight if I so desired or I
could buy those craft supplies I've been drooling over. I've worked
far less enjoyable jobs in the past, but yesterday I spent an entire
afternoon at work looking at beautiful and rare images of 9th
century art. Sometimes I forget just how much I do have.
I am saddened and angered by the
rhetoric describing these rioters, but, perhaps, more ashamed of
myself for knowing all of this and for doing virtually nothing to
help. I've spent most of my adult life invested in myself and
spending my worry time on my own existential crises or reflecting on
my own intellectual and artistic path. Occasionally, I feel guilty
for not doing more. Then, I sit back down on that couch with one of
the many devices I own and watch BBC shows on Netflix.
If nothing
else, I can do better.
--LJE
