With Baltimore still on tenterhooks and sympathetic protests popping up in New York, Boston and Washington, the national conversation turned once again to America’s pained history on race relations – and what exactly unleashed the rioting.
From this young blogger came a plea for understanding.
Dear White Facebook Friends: I Need You to Respect What Black America Is Feeling Right Now
Julie Blount – Salon
Dear White America,
It is somewhat strange to address this to you, given that I strongly identify with many aspects of your culture and am half-white myself …
Every comment or post I have read today voicing some version of disdain for the people of Baltimore — “I can’t understand” or “They’re destroying their own community” or “Destruction of Property!” or “Thugs” — tells me that many of you are not listening. I am not asking you to condone or agree with violence. I just need you to listen …
I hear hopelessness
I hear oppression
I hear pain
I hear internalized oppression
I hear despair
I hear anger
I hear poverty
Elsewhere, a columnist wondered how we could ignore a long history of violence against African Americans.
Baltimore Rage is Shocking? Get Real
LZ Granderson – CNN
Some of us keep looking for a new reason why this old problem continues to haunt us because to think otherwise requires effort. It’s a lot easier to retweet a Dr. King meme. It is more convenient to say the violence began when rioters threw bricks at police and not when a city’s Police Department began terrorizing its residents …
Television journalists asking questions that seem to characterize the recent developments as unexplained anger detached from any tangible issue. It is as if they believe the absence of burning crosses translated into peace and harmony.
There isn’t a new reason why Freddie Gray’s death triggered outrage. Just new ways for people to validate apathy and explain away racism.
A less liberal take on race in America suggests that restoring a culture of family in poor black communities would do far more than President Barack Obama’s efforts to infuse them with cash.
Saving Baltimore
The Editorial Board – The Washington Times
The “root cause” of rioting is not merely a shortage of television sets, as the scenes of looting in Baltimore suggest, but the collapse of culture. Raising children in a loving two-parent family gives the young needed security and a sense of self-worth, leading to optimism about the future, and inoculates them from the anger that compels them to smash windows and throw bricks at cops. With 72 percent of black babies born to single mothers, an entire generation of black Americans comes of age without fathers.
Nagging Congress to shovel more money into social programs that accomplish only bigger bureaucracies won’t help. Mr. Obama could do real and lasting good by working to persuade young black Americans to follow his example, to marry and take responsibility for their children. He would be an authentic icon, and a source of pride for everyone.