A British reader has asked me about the background of the riots in Baltimore. This is my take:
From the 1960’s the lot of the average African American appeared to be improving. But once globalisation began, so began the the collapse of most of the good things done for the community.
Baltimore used to be an industrial city, Bethlehem Steel being the biggest company, offering the population secure jobs and livable wages. Nearly all that industry has now gone, leaving not just unemployment, but abandoned houses and dereliction, which has severe depressing effects on everyone. The biggest sufferers have been the African Americans. As a prominent black journalist, Eugene Robinsonn, told us at a meeting yesterday, “The rungs of the ladder to climb to the middle class are now missing. There is a massive gap between those who have a job and those who do not. Good new jobs in the new economy require a level of education that simply isn’t provided”. He went on to say that schools in Baltimore are as segregated now as they were in the 1950s, partly owing to the ending of busing.
Apparently, the dead black youth,Freddie Gray, grew up in a house that had heavy deposits of lead in it. When tested as a teenager Freddie had lead in his body that shot off the scale. In short, his environment had driven him crazy.
Some statistics:
– 37% of all adults in the DC area are functionally illiterate. Illiterate parents raise illiterate children. And this is without taking account of the (mostly) single women struggling to bring up their kids in areas where drugs are prevalent, and the young men so often end up in prison for minor drug offenses.
– 43% of all semiliterates live in poverty
– in the worst areas of Baltimore there are no (you read it correctly) grocery stores! At all. Liquor shops, yes. Such food shops as there are sell fast food and non-nutritional junk. Many other types of shop are boarded up.
– there are 60,000 people in the area who never graduated from high school. If kids get to 18 without any qualifications, they are effectively finished – no skills, no computers, no mobility, and limited access to adult education.
For Baltimore, read most ex-industrial cities in the United States. One person said she thought America was becoming tribal: Democrats vs. Repepublicans, police against the underclass, whites vs. blacks, whites vs. Latino immigrants, rich vs. poor, people in financial services vs. almost everyone else, and so on.
And now the TTIP and TTP “trade” deals will make things worse. Don’t fall for the dishonest and weasily words of the economists and politicians hired by big business to talk about the “benefits”. To whom? Not to all those desperately poor people in Baltimore!
The worst thing is that so few people care. I give it to the churches – they do a lot of good work. There are organisations that help people who come out of prison to find jobs, charities that specialise in adult education, organisations that run food banks – mostly non-government efforts. People with consciences give to these groups. But how many poor people slip between the cracks I shudder to speculate. Invent a new drone and Congress funds it immediately.