tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/baltimore-riots-16473/articlesBaltimore riots – The Conversation2016-08-18T02:54:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639852016-08-18T02:54:05Z2016-08-18T02:54:05ZDOJ report on Baltimore echoes centuries-old limits on African-American freedom in the Charm City<p>African-American rights in Baltimore have always been in jeopardy. The recently released <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/us/baltimore-justice-department-report/">report</a> from the Department of Justice on the Baltimore Police Department is sobering, but not surprising.</p>
<p>As a scholar of early African-American <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612025.2012.661158">history in Maryland</a>, I see similarities between laws regarding enslaved and free blacks living in Baltimore prior to the Civil War, and the overpolicing of African-Americans today. African-Americans in antebellum and contemporary Baltimore share the same problem: limits on black freedom.</p>
<h2>Antebellum foundations for unequal treatment</h2>
<p>On the eve of the American Revolution, Maryland was second only to Virginia in the number of people it held in bondage. By the beginning of the 19th century, the number of free blacks began to rise. Baltimore had a significant free black population well before the <a href="http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv">14th Amendment</a> made blacks citizens. According to the 1790 <a href="http://www.censusfinder.com/maryland.htm">U.S. census</a>, 927 free blacks resided in the county that included Baltimore city. By 1830, Baltimore city and the surrounding county was home to some 17,888 free African-Americans.</p>
<p>Historian Barbara Field <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300040326/slavery-and-freedom-middle-ground">notes</a> that the increase of free blacks in Maryland was a direct result of replacing tobacco harvesting, which required a full-time labor source, to wheat. Harvesting wheat did not require a year-round labor supply. Between the change in labor demands and African-Americans protesting their condition, the free black community in Virginia and Maryland grew.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arrival of freedmen and their families at Baltimore, Maryland – an everyday scene.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress/Frank Leslie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was a concern for lawmakers. <a href="http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000204/html/am204--458.html">Laws</a> such as the 1790 Act Related to Freeing Slaves by Will or Testament were designed to extract the maximum amount of labor from the enslaved before they were awarded freedom, or their free black relatives could purchase it for them. This meant enslaved men were freed only when they ceased to be in peak physical condition, and enslaved women were freed after their childbearing years.</p>
<p>Once freed, African-Americans <a href="aomol.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000204/html/am204--269.html">had to show</a> “proof of a sufficient livelihood,” affirming their ability to care for themselves, or otherwise end up in the city jail or re-enslaved. The irony of this proclamation was that once freed, African-Americans found ways to stave off poverty by working in trades similar to the jobs they had while enslaved. If they avoided the county jail, free blacks were subject to curfews and sanctions against traveling. Many counties in Maryland passed laws requiring free blacks to move out of the state for fear they would incite the local enslaved population to rebel.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most alarming attempt to address the problem of black freedom was the <a href="http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/casestudies/mscscountycs.html">development</a> of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and its chapters in antebellum cities such as Baltimore. Under the guise of Christianity and missionary work, the ACS promised enslaved African-Americans all the rights and privileges of freedom, so long as they relocated to Liberia. Organized by white slaveholders, politicians and religious organizations, the ACS offered a solution to both slavery and the rise in free blacks in the United States – resettle blacks outside the country.</p>
<p>Black intellectuals of the time were divided over resettlement campaigns. Abolitionist newspapers <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/2014/02/realities-american-colonization-society/">published</a> countless articles protesting the efforts of the colonization society. Historian Robert Brugger <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/maryland-middle-temperament">notes</a> that a group of free blacks surrounded the gangplanks in the Baltimore harbor in an attempt to stop the forced removal of their friends and family to Liberia.</p>
<p>As these 19th-century examples demonstrate, policing African-American freedom has a long history in Baltimore. African-Americans could escape slavery, but they were not truly free. New laws were continually passed to limit, if not completely dismantle, the very few rights they possessed.</p>
<h2>Baltimore today: DOJ report documents violations of civil rights</h2>
<p>The findings in the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download">DOJ report</a> echo the restrictions on lives of antebellum free blacks in key ways. African-Americans were arrested in greater proportion than their nonblack peers. According to the report: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>BPD made roughly 44 percent of its stops in two small, predominantly African-American districts that contain only 11 percent of the City’s population. Consequently, hundreds of individuals — nearly all of them African American – were stopped on at least 10 separate occasions from 2010–2015. Indeed, seven African-American men were stopped more than 30 times during this period.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>African-Americans were frequently arrested for loitering. If their presence became a problem, whether real or perceived, Baltimore police exercised a zero-tolerance policy when it came to African-Americans resulting in unlawful searches, seizures and arrests. As in the 19th century, the mere presence of African-Americans provided grounds for arrest. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, attempts were made to remove blacks from society by, among other means, sending them to Liberia or forcing them to move away. Today, arresting and detaining African-Americans quarantines them from the rest of society. If the arrest sticks and the individual is prosecuted and found guilty, he is incarcerated. If convicted of a felony, he is not allowed to vote.</p>
<p>African-Americans make up 44 percent of the Baltimore police force and 63 percent of the population of Baltimore city. As the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race-gap-in-americas-police-departments.html">New York Times</a> points out, “Baltimore’s police department has a lower percentage of blacks than the population it serves. But in contrast to other cities that have been wracked by tension and protests over police confrontations with black men, the city’s mayor, its police commissioner, the state’s attorney are all black, giving a somewhat different tenor to clashes between the power structure and its critics.” Indeed, arguments about policing that exclusively point to racism or bias among officers as the root of the problem don’t hold for cities like Baltimore. I believe the problem is also tied to anti-black aspects of the laws they are tasked with enforcing.</p>
<p>The DOJ report provides a critical opportunity to assess and reform disparities in the legal system, especially as we continually bear witness to the almost <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fire-this-time-is-in-milwaukee/2016/08/15/da3f9a3e-632b-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?utm_term=.4bf97e1d3d70">daily death dance</a> between African-Americans and the police. It makes clear that African-American rights are in jeopardy. The key difference between African-Amerians in Baltimore then and now is that blacks are now citizens. They are entitled to, among other things, the right to due process under the law. </p>
<p>However, the DOJ findings make clear that African-Americans in Baltimore are disproportionately harassed, searched, detained and, in the case of Freddie Gray, murdered. The fear is not that the DOJ report has unmasked truths that we prefer to deny. The fear is that there will be a failure to reform the system in light of these findings. Greater than the fear is the reality that policing black citizens will continue to include practices that are eerily reminiscent of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Millward received funding from the American Association of University Women. </span></em></p>The Baltimore Police Department is found to have violated the civil rights of poor blacks. A historian explains why those findings are eerily similar to how the city treated blacks in the 1800s.Jessica Millward, Associate Professor of History, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437392015-06-24T10:08:19Z2015-06-24T10:08:19ZLet’s talk race: a teacher tells students not to be ‘color-blind’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86138/original/image-20150623-19371-2jm7yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you can't see it, does race not exist?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=143507156883316950000&search_tracking_id=AjelgxbkwTX3tWv0bDqE0w&searchterm=eyes%20coverec&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=89337400">Woman image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the recent events featured in the media such as the riots in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/baltimore-police-credible-evidence-of-gang-threat-to-officers/2015/04/27/68aca83a-ecf3-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html">Baltimore</a> that came after the fatal shooting of Freddie Gray, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/us/rachel-dolezal/">Rachel Dolezal</a> stepping down as the Spokane Washington NAACP president, and the tragic shootings in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/17/white-gunman-sought-in-shooting-at-historic-charleston-african-ame-church/">Charleston, South Carolina</a>, public discussions have primarily focused on issues surrounding individual responsibility and mental illness.</p>
<p>I read these conversations with disappointment and frustration. </p>
<p>The dominant approach to understanding racial inequality in the US today is “color-blind racism.” This is the belief that racial inequality can be attributed only to issues considered to be <a href="http://www.miller3group.com/Articles/What_Does_It_Really_Mean.pdf">“race-neutral”</a>. In other words, because racial discrimination is now illegal, everyone is born with an <a href="http://ann.sagepub.com/content/634/1/190.full.pdf">equal opportunity</a> to achieve the “American Dream,” no matter their race.</p>
<p>In comparison to the overt and legal racism prior to the Civil Rights movement, this “new” transformed type of racism is seemingly invisible, making meaningful societal discussions near impossible, and in turn <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442220546/Racism-without-Racists-Color-Blind-Racism-and-the-Persistence-of-Racial-Inequality-in-America-Fourth-Edition">perpetuating</a> racial inequality, which then expresses itself, as we have seen, in these recent incidents. </p>
<h2>Conversations with students</h2>
<p>What about classrooms? Are adequate conversations around race taking place in that space? And how can scholars shape some of the discussions?</p>
<p>A clear example of “color-blind racism” unexpectedly arose my first year as an assistant professor of sociology at Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) in Birmingham, Alabama.</p>
<p>Being a “Yankee,” I was warned in advance that my students at BSC would be more politically and socially conservative than what I was used to (coming from the University of New Hampshire).</p>
<p>However, midway into my first semester, I found that the majority of my students were able to critically engage in potentially controversial topics such as LGBT rights, health care reform and the legalization of marijuana. We also discussed the class inequality between them as middle- or upper-class students living within the gated “hilltop” campus and the surrounding lower social class neighborhood immediately outside of the campus gates.</p>
<p>The real challenge arose when it came to discussing race in the classroom.</p>
<p>I struggled to get my students to address the “elephant in the room” – that the majority of the surrounding lower social class neighborhood comprised racial minorities, whereas the majority of my students and BSC professors, including myself, benefited from “<a href="http://ed-share.educ.msu.edu/scan/ead/renn/mcintosh.pdf">white privilege</a>,” the often unacknowledged advantages with which whites are born, based solely on the color of their skin. </p>
<h2>Challenges of talking about race</h2>
<p>I had incorrectly assumed that teaching in Birmingham, Alabama, with its rich social and <a href="http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781467110679/Civil-Rights-in-Birmingham">cultural history</a> of the Civil Rights movement and racial heterogeneity, would make discussing racial inequality one of the most engaging and meaningful discussions in the course.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">How can students discuss race in classrooms?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/claremontcollegesdigitallibrary/5097239229/in/photolist-8LqFCZ-cEJChm-cEJrdJ-9sPbkW-4aadNf-nR3LCj-nEMQQK-nELLhN-22UAA8-ni3Aga-6hRRXf-cEHtUN-cEJLoJ-9wrdaK-bxHR3Q-9GNHEB-cEHqS1-9wucEC-9wrd9Z-cEJH2A-MdEE2-aM4MWP-qWSLKX-9GRAoW-9P6yte-nzfebX-k63mSD-k64FHd-9wuMSm-cEJ1Zs-8ETDVC-9PPW9U-82MUon-65BrWg-8phpkD-9wrd8D-cEJDC3-9Puh2K-6s7wWN-8ETDSC-noiki2-63trkz-65BWrb-7d9fg1-8aDAXc-ds1Rsy-cEHT61-nNXqJW-kyPYG-9PNMWA">Claremont Colleges Digital LIbrary</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>My students refused to discuss race beyond a superficial level.</p>
<p>I found the majority of my students, primarily from the South, have been “socialized” to not discuss race because “race doesn’t matter” and we are (or should be) a “color-blind” society.</p>
<p>This was illustrated by student responses such as “there is only one race: human” and “only racists see race” when asked in class whether race still matters. The responses were consistently given by students across my four classes. </p>
<p>Conversations with several of my faculty colleagues across disciplines also revealed that this was a common theme.</p>
<p>What I learned was that in order to get students to more effectively discuss issues of race, I needed to first address one of the most dangerous <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442220546/Racism-without-Racists-Color-Blind-Racism-and-the-Persistence-of-Racial-Inequality-in-America-Fourth-Edition">social myths</a> perpetuating <a href="http://ann.sagepub.com/content/634/1/190.full.pdf">racial inequality</a> in today’s society — that we are a “color-blind” society.</p>
<h2>How to teach race</h2>
<p>I have modified my lesson on race to begin, not end, with a discussion of “color-blind racism.” What I have found to be most critical to this discussion is challenging my students to apply their <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-sociological-imagination-9780195133738?cc=us&lang=en&">“sociological imaginations,” </a> which can enable them to look at underlying social issues behind some recent news events. </p>
<p>As good sociologists-in-training, my students are asked to consider the larger social structural concerns (eg, poverty, institutional racism, the criminal justice system) instead of focusing on individuals (eg, Baltimore police officers, Rachael Dolezal, Dylann Roof).</p>
<p>My experiences in the classroom are by no means an isolated incident. Research consistently indicates this “color-blind” ideology <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/new-jim-crow">permeates</a> education, politics, the criminal justice system, the media, etc. </p>
<p>This “color-blind racism” is as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, the overt racism during <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/new-jim-crow">Jim Crow</a>. It is for the most part invisible and easily overlooked in public discussions on social issues and therefore very effectively perpetuates racial inequality. </p>
<p>If the majority of my college students believe it is wrong to even “see” race, how can they be expected to meaningfully discuss larger issues of institutional racism and inequality? How can we as a society expect more meaningful social discussions and solutions? </p>
<p>As scholars, we need to emphasize to our students that race is a real thing, with real consequences. As long as we as a society continue avoiding “seeing” or meaningfully discussing race, we will continue to have Baltimore riots and Charleston shootings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meghan L Mills has received funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Do academics need to change the way they teach race? What is the impact of students having been socialized to believe that “race doesn’t matter”?Meghan L Mills, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Birmingham-Southern College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/377102015-06-19T10:18:03Z2015-06-19T10:18:03ZRacial and caste oppression have many similarities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84609/original/image-20150610-6817-1kav3a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Systems of oppression have much in common.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfataustralianaid/10704037854/in/photolist-hiSZwN-pKU7xq-9Syz5f-6WQkvX-8rToTc-dtMFFE-7TXhS7-347557-juRZ2w-4VaYPb-4XGGLf-ifvfqv-evzE4p-8rE8pc-eiZwbu-9uKAQF-9PjRyc-4RZkK1-cmDTR3-2LgQTD-BR7W-8ENDrh-8AzDYr-6HHBGd-bzofcK-ap6JhZ-ofNdGA-fdMMYY-oryGSy-9xSTCc-o1CxxM-9uKAQR-9uNBSE-pzRTf6-9u6nW6-aPC766-ohh5gw-bGNiwK-rB2BGN-4AJGuE-bGNit2-4XAt5M-8rSDD4-9u9oLu-4Uqp7U-4xcMcF-5HHLcM-9uhk6g-9uhkex-9uhkrX">Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comparisons can be risky, but not impossible.</p>
<p>Consider for a moment India’s Dalits, or “untouchables,” and African Americans. </p>
<p>Racial inequality in America has its parallel in caste inequality in India even though by definition, race and caste are not the same thing. The story of one struggle for social justice can illuminate the pitfalls and prospects of success of another.</p>
<p>As a researcher in applied ethics, human rights and global development studies, I am leading an ongoing research effort that will compare and contrast the nature of exclusion and marginalization faced by African Americans and Dalit Indians in their respective historical and contemporary contexts. </p>
<h2>The Dalit story</h2>
<p>Although the Indian constitution bans discrimination on the basis of caste, the social, religious and cultural practice of “untouchability” continues unabated. </p>
<p>Formerly known as “untouchables,” Dalits are excluded from social and public spaces, prevented from drawing water from public facilities and segregated in schools.</p>
<p>Since the caste system was formed over 2,000 years ago, a noticeable percentage of the <a href="http://idsn.org/india-official-dalit-population-exceeds-200-million/">200 million “Dalits”</a> have been thrust into the lowest occupations of society, such as scavengers and sanitation cleaners, with little upward mobility. </p>
<p>While there has been some progress since India’s independence from the British Empire, the pace of economic growth in mitigating social inequality has been <a href="http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Documents/SIG_WP13-1_InclGrowth.pdf">uneven</a>. </p>
<p>So, in an Indian nation that is rapidly modernizing and urbanizing, opportunities for the Dalits still remain limited. The degradation and the health risks of performing menial tasks are substantial. </p>
<p>Furthermore, with the <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/to-be-a-fundamentalist-hindu/">rise of Hindu fundamentalism </a>in national politics, the continuous expansion of liberty and equality of opportunity is by no means a foregone conclusion. </p>
<h2>Discrimination, exclusion, privilege</h2>
<p>One can draw parallels in different systems of oppression. </p>
<p>Despite 50 years having passed since the Civil Rights movement, the condition of the majority of poor, urban African Americans is <a href="https://www.aclu.org/infographic/school-prison-pipeline-infographic">dire</a>, and chances for survival are diminishing over time while the prison pipeline is increasing.</p>
<p>Let’s look at how both caste and racial discrimination perpetuate hierarchy, privilege, discrimination, marginalization and exclusion. </p>
<p>Data from the last few years show <a href="http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/">27% of African Americans at the poverty line</a>, which is much higher than <a href="http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/">other groups</a>. In India, the <a href="http://newint.org/books/reference/world-development/case-studies/inequality-dalits-in-india/">condition of Dalits</a> has been extremely dire for centuries.</p>
<p>Several African American economists in the US have looked at structural and institutional forms of racial exclusion in terms of wealth and poverty. They have also opened a dialogue with economists in South Asia, where exclusion and inequality <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U5LL8JVqu8QC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Darity+racial+inequality+and+caste&source=bl&ots=9wueZ3x7yP&sig=aHI-c_ePKl6nBGOs1WZ2Wbx92Qo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBWoVChMI1pnt6syIxgIVhCisCh0DlADD#v=onepage&q=Darity%20racial%20inequality%20and%20caste&f=false">relate to caste</a>. </p>
<p>Although some progress was made in the 20th century that allowed greater inclusivity and equity – particularly in higher education – many issues remain despite constitutional bans on caste discrimination. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84612/original/image-20150610-6801-1b1tke8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dalits in India still struggle for their rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/82898203@N08/8650310763/in/photolist-ebp722-4XmxKf-ebuFuG-ebuJ3N-ebuJXG-ebp1ZZ-ebp3En-ebuFPU-ebuDrj-ebp1YD-ebp5fH-ebp33R-ebuKSj-ebp63r-ebuHaQ-ebp3kR-ebuGUE-ebuGbm-ebuKk9-ebuDwd-ebuDRd-ebuDtY-ebp6jK-ebp4Zr-ebp2DH-NU5F9-ebpBKB-qzo3gM-qRJbT5-6a77Xd-4BxFa3-kTFdcz-ebv9HY-ebpKvi-ebpAXV-ebvkfY-ebpCRc-ebv8EQ-ebpC3k-ebpAsz-ebveQ3-ebv9ru-ebvsuQ-ebpN2R-ebpDq6-ebpuHe-ebpMkM-ebvj3U-ebvhjw-ebvh2m">ActionAid India - Campaigns</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In America, cultural and political segregation of the public space continues to occur despite anti-segregation laws. </p>
<p>For example, there are concerns among some Supreme Court justices that redistricting of voting districts can lead to further <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/politics/supreme-court-rejects-alabama-redistricting/">racial inequality</a>. </p>
<p>In India, Dalits in rural villages are forbidden near Hindu temples or disallowed with their shoes on in higher-caste neighborhoods. Mob violence is committed against them with impunity, and a disproportionate number of rapes are committed against <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/rape-of-dalit-women-registers-500-increase-since-2001-rti-reveals/">Dalit women</a>. </p>
<p>In comparison, post-Civil War white mob violence against blacks has morphed into what one could describe as the state-condoned violence of homicides of African Americans by police today. As of June, out of 467 Americans nationwide who had been <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-police-have-killed-americans-in-2015/">killed</a> by cops since the beginning of 2015, 136 were African American. </p>
<h2>How race and caste work</h2>
<p>Looking at exclusion in America forces us to grapple with issues of violence against African Americans, racial inequality and racial injustice at a time that is often deemed “post-racial,” namely, five decades after the Civil Rights movement. </p>
<p>We see a similar pattern in India, wherein the Dalits are asked to believe that the Indian constitution bans discrimination, even though it does not abolish the caste system itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84613/original/image-20150610-6817-1qzwda1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racial tensions continue in America.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenmelkisethian/16581479664/in/photolist-rgfqdq-snFD7z-rrw5LX-rgrTkZ-s6LcdL-rVEmX5-rVNoWv-sdfvwn-smHsf7-bJFHhV-sdfx2B-rTVoyc-rTVtmt-rTVtF6-so91VH-sd752s-rVEkZ3-rVEhN3-rTVu3Z-rgrWj4-rTVsoX-rVFm77-sdcD2K-sdfAYz-rgfpQS-rrjTch-s68Af9-rrweLk-s6JX1j-rrwjr2-rriQsG-s6Ad79-rrac2q-s6JL5v-soaxK6-rruYw4-s4R9zi-sogTox-soaTiW-skqY2W-s4oMUn-snyxnd-snyxDf-rqHH3u-s8dqDo-spXTZ6-snn2bg-sncyZd-s5MMCS-rqxYYX">Stephen Melkisethian</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is after the successes of the African American Civil Rights movement that we have witnessed the birth of the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/fact-sheet/what-school-prison-pipeline">school-to-prison pipeline</a>, state violence against a disproportionate number of African American men in police killings, and the turning back of affirmative action at public universities in some states’ constitutional amendments, such as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/22/justice/scotus-michigan-affirmative-action/">Michigan</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, with right wing conservative political power in India, caste discrimination is intensifying. </p>
<p>For example, Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims are not eligible for reservations, or what we in the US would call affirmative action benefits at universities, because technically “untouchability” exists only in <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-not-in-favour-to-give-sc-reservation-to-christian-and-muslim-dalits-government-2042306">Hinduism</a>, when in social reality it occurs <a href="http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/indias-christian-and-muslim-dalits-say-they-are-more-untouchable-than-hindus-22756">across religions</a> in India. </p>
<p>Historically, both race and caste have been used to divide society in many ways to the unfair advantage of certain groups over others. Again, there are similarities in the construction of how people have been forced into these categories. </p>
<p>Here in America, people are born into a “race,” and America uses race as a defining demographic category in its census. Biological race by nature, for now, is inescapable, even though some would say that “race” is an artificial category that is socially constructed.</p>
<p>Dalits, too, are born into a caste, which is unalterable, as they are told, and it is due to the sins of a previous life that they are paying the price in their current life. Hinduism believes in the transmigration of the soul, in which the soul enters a new body after death. The caste that one enters into depends upon the actions of a previous life. </p>
<h2>The two democracies should learn from each other</h2>
<p>So how can the US and India learn from each other in order to solve some of the most pressing problems for the world’s two largest democracies, both of which consider themselves secular and free? </p>
<p>If nations can cooperate on trade and development, there is no reason that they cannot participate in a global dialogue on minority rights through the lens of their religious, cultural and social heritages. </p>
<p>They must learn to come to grips with the fact that the mere assertion of a democratic society does not necessarily translate in to a free and equal one.</p>
<p>Modern democratic superpowers with sizable national wealth, such as the US and India, also have a dark side, involving what some would consider gross human rights violations. </p>
<p>My work will set out to explore how different democracies can promote tolerance, inclusion and pluralism while combating various forms of discrimination and exclusion based on race and caste. </p>
<p>The question will be how to evaluate the claim that both societies make, as the two largest, most “peaceful and successful” democracies in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajesh Sampath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Racial inequality in America has its parallel in caste inequality in India. What can the world’s two largest democracies learn from each other?Rajesh Sampath, Assistant Professor of the Philosophy of Justice, Rights, and Social Change , Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/422382015-05-29T10:09:56Z2015-05-29T10:09:56ZIs academic freedom a license to provoke without consequences?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83253/original/image-20150528-31293-ey07xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What are the limits to academic freedom?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dumbledad/4988915427/in/photolist-8ARuKe-4PNJ2q-dM4vpz-bvYXmF-8p3KW1-doyTKd-owKvY9-owFvSc-7gRGSM-5S4Yk2-3d1nE8-7wdBHT-aazmSm-huDux5-9aeV4R-dM4uSV-9aijRw-dMa4Fs-dMa54o-dM4uYp-dM4vmD-dM4vd8-dM4v6X-dMa4yG-9aeV4M-dMa4NC-5awyEc-9aeV4P-9aeV4H-8NSYs-d85KMU-9aeV4B-9aeV4z-4cjRiG-dLB8qW-6pZszw-oeSFH9-2dnSh-2dnSg-owXAaH-ofsEcj-oft27J-d85M4o-ghZH8r-4uo2Hn-izfkd3-fUPKBB-bWaHrd-jeyx6B-bTatJc">Tim Regan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Does academic freedom entitle university professors to be as provocative as they wish when expressing their views on issues of the day?</p>
<p>This question has come alive with three recent cases involving professors making politically charged – some would say incendiary – statements on controversial issues.</p>
<h2>Are professors just people with jobs?</h2>
<p>The first case involves Steven Salaita, whose offer of a tenured appointment at the University of Illinois <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/12/u-illinois-board-votes-no-salaita-appointment">was rescinded</a> because of charged comments he made on Twitter last year about Israel and its actions in Gaza.</p>
<p>Second is the case of Saida Grundy, a new professor of sociology and African-American studies at Boston University, who has been <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/12/boston-u-distances-itself-new-professors-comments-about-white-male-students">called out</a> for contentious tweets about race. </p>
<p>Third is the matter of Jerry Hough, a chaired political science professor at Duke who <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/17/duke_university_professor_on_leave_after_racist_online_comments_spark_outrage.html">penned</a> what many saw as a racist diatribe in the comments section of a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/opinion/sunday/how-racism-doomed-baltimore.html">editorial</a> about happenings in Baltimore.</p>
<p>The details of these situations differ, but there are common threads. </p>
<p>Each features a professor in hot water for speech delivered outside the confines of academic employment. Each involves expression that, while being objectionable to some, is constitutionally protected speech. Each has aroused the ire of stakeholders, such as students, colleagues, alumni and other interest groups.</p>
<p>And as a result, each has forced university leaders to wrestle with a three-way collision involving academic freedom, free expression and institutional reputation.</p>
<p>These professors – like all of us in tenure-track academic appointments – are employees with jobs at universities that pay their salaries. </p>
<p>So, one way to view these cases is through the lens of employment. </p>
<h2>Free speech is a complex issue</h2>
<p>Within the larger landscape of worker rights in a free society, the tension between our right to speak as citizens and obligation to our employers as job holders is contested terrain – an issue I explore at length in <a href="http://www.bkconnection.com/books/title/speechless?">my book</a> on the legal, ethical and managerial dimensions of free speech in and around the American workplace.</p>
<p>The legal aspects of this subject are complex: </p>
<p>The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee504/abstract">employment-at-will system</a> of labor law in the US, which in the absence of a contract lets employers and workers terminate the arrangement at any time for any reason, means that private sector workers have virtually no free speech protections against employer wrath. </p>
<p>If your boss doesn’t like your off-work speech, even if it has nothing to do with your job or your employer’s business, you can be fired for it. For instance, consider the Alabama woman who <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040915002031/http:/www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/040912/sticker.shtml">lost her job</a> in 2004 for having a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car in the factory parking lot.</p>
<p>Workers in public sector jobs have greater protections. In situations involving government rather than a private entity as the employer, Supreme Court <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/illlr99&div=38&id=&page=">rulings</a> over several decades have upheld workers’ rights to speak on matters of public concern without risking their jobs.</p>
<p>A handful of states give workers in the private sector some of the free speech protection that government workers have through what are known as “<a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/berkjemp24&div=22&id=&page=">lifestyle discrimination</a>” statutes. These are laws that bar employers from punishing workers for off-work activity, including speech, that is legal and poses no significant threat to an employer’s business.</p>
<p>But these protections for government workers (and private sector workers in a few states) are enforced only up to a point.</p>
<p>When someone fired for his or her speech files a lawsuit, the court <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/27673175">weighs</a> the worker’s right to speak against the employer’s right to a functional and efficient workplace. <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/geolr35&div=34&id=&page=">Analyses</a> of case law indicate that courts are inclined to tilt the balance in favor of employers. </p>
<h2>Returning to our three ‘provocateurs’</h2>
<p>The public-private distinction is relevant to our three recent cases of “professorial provocation.” This is because one of the three – Salaita at Illinois – involves a public university. </p>
<p>After having his job offer rescinded, Salaita filed a <a href="http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-01-29/updated-salaita-files-federal-lawsuit-against-ui.html">federal lawsuit</a> claiming that his rights to free speech and due process had been violated; a judge’s ruling on whether Salaita’s lawsuit can go forward is <a href="http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-05-21/salaita-hearing-canceled-judge-will-issue-opinion-mail.html">expected any day</a>. </p>
<p>That kind of constitutionally based lawsuit isn’t available to Grundy at Boston University or to Hough at Duke since their appointments are at private institutions.</p>
<p>Although Grundy and Hough cannot claim a constitutional infringement on their rights, they can appeal to the principle of <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/12/21/nelson_on_academic_freedom">academic freedom</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83251/original/image-20150528-31293-ktbp6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">While universities are places for ideas and free speech, they do have cautionary caveats.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/60588258@N00/465835694/in/photolist-HawHU-C3dvJ-7djSJy-C3dv2-puVmUo-bwdr1d-6cpQ5s-bK86QV-bwdmzJ-7FpLkh-buaGd5-7N6xxM-Hkfzs-Hkjy6-HaAXr-buaGVJ-bK6JE6-bwdj3y-bwdjhA-6ckV4X-6ckV4P-HafcC-HamqT-Hakm1-HaT59-bwdnib-bK85dp-bwdnBL-bwdkTq-bwdnYS-bwdmVu-bwdf6Q-bK7ZpF-bwdonb-bwdet7-bwdfqA-bK7YFr-bwddi7-bwddKJ-bJyrAa-bwdd1u-bwdqyo-7X4eaC-bwc3AE-HayLi-Haz2T-HaBdi-bvDEmb-bvDDK7-pcNYp1">Brian Turner</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is what distinguishes the occupation of professor from other kinds of employment: universities pledge (in the form of an <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/month124&div=6&id=&page=">implied contract</a>) to respect professors’ free speech rights beyond what typical private sector job holders can expect, when they make academic freedom a foundational principle. </p>
<h2>How free is freedom?</h2>
<p>Universities are happy to ordain and celebrate the lofty ideals of academic freedom, but they are also quick to couple them with cautionary caveats.</p>
<p>At Duke (where Hough is), the <a href="http://provost.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/FHB_App_C.pdf">faculty handbook</a> cedes to professors the right “to speak in his or her capacity as a citizen without institutional censorship or discipline.” Duke warns, however, that the right to “espouse an unpopular cause” carries with it “a responsibility not to involve the university.”</p>
<p>Making a similar pledge, the <a href="http://www.bu.edu/handbook/ethics/academic-freedom/">handbook</a> at Boston University (where Grundy is) adds that a professor’s right to speak as a citizen carries “special obligations” to be accurate, exercise restraint and respect others’ opinions.</p>
<p>With reasonable-sounding but rather vague conditions like these, universities (both public and private) have reserved the ability to impose boundaries on “outrageous expression” that the professor might assume is protected by academic freedom. </p>
<h2>Balancing freedom and outrage</h2>
<p>Having crafted faculty employment policies as manifestos of mutual obligation, universities coping with professors who speak scandalously find themselves in the role of an arbiter of the boundary between freedom and responsibility.<br>
And so it was that in blocking Salaita’s appointment, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees <a href="https://illinois.edu/emailer/newsletter/66664.html">decided</a> that he lacks the requisite “professional fitness to serve on the faculty.” </p>
<p>The trustees probably figure they can fend off Salaita’s lawsuit – a not unreasonable expectation, to judge by a new <a href="http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr_online/vol90/iss3/4/#.VU0unS3ToVI.facebook">legal analysis</a> showing that courts tend to side with university claims that a professor’s speech disrupts its academic mission.</p>
<p>Weighing the balance differently, Duke <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/17/duke_university_professor_on_leave_after_racist_online_comments_spark_outrage.html">asserted</a> that Hough’s comments are “noxious, offensive and have no place in civil discourse” but saw the remedy as encouraging others in the community to speak out when the university’s “ideals are challenged or undermined.”</p>
<p>Boston University acted similarly, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/1%202/boston-u-distances-itself-new-professors-comments-about-white-male-students">respecting</a> the professor’s “right to hold and express personal opinions” while adding “we’re offended by such statements.”</p>
<p>The question of when a professor’s provocation becomes actionable cause for termination is a hornet’s nest of subjectivity around the meaning of words like “offensive” or “bigoted” or “harmful” or “restraint.” A university that chooses to act against the professor – as Illinois did against Salaita – puts itself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain what these terms mean and where lines are drawn.</p>
<p>Instead of appeasing offended stakeholders by drawing lines in shifting sand, a more enlightened approach prioritizes a free exchange of ideas over the “dubious judgment” of a free-speaking professor.</p>
<p>That’s the path Duke and Boston University are following: condemn the objectionable remarks while preserving the professor’s freedom to make them, leaving a verdict to the court of public opinion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Barry serves on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.</span></em></p>Recent cases of tweets by a Boston University professor about racism and others have raised questions about what might be the limits to academic freedom.Bruce Barry, Professor of Management and Sociology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/399062015-05-28T10:07:39Z2015-05-28T10:07:39ZWith harsher disciplinary measures, school systems fail black kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83014/original/image-20150526-24751-jfz3vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black students are more likely to get suspended for minor violations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcgeorgeblsa/5605655056/in/photolist-9xmrX7-9xisuM-9xirTz-jzzjUF-jzzk4D-jzBsbE-jzABBK-8eb8XF-8eb9gT-8eepkU-8eb8SB-8eepuN-8eb8Jp-8eepKU-8eepd7-8eepzu-8eepDu-p9cFFs-5zGgmE-9q4kzu-9X1aUf-6yfGAt-5w9zeC-jzCpwb-jzAByP-jzzjjn-jzAB1V-jzAAXZ-jzzjFe-jzAAKp-jzCq5f-jzABSz-jzCq2E-jzzjJk-jzAB9a-jzBrx5-jzzknV-jzAAMP-jzCqaW-jzBrVj-jzAC34-jzCqKo-jzCqk5-jzzk1T-jzCpBw-jzzjUk-jzCqeo-jzCpQC-jzCqqA-jzCpB1">McGeorge BLSA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although it has been over 60 years since the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483">Brown v Board of Education</a> decision, black students are still more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions for minor violations of the code of conduct. As a result, they are more likely to <a href="http://csgjusticecenter.org/youth/school-discipline-consensus-report/">drop out of school</a> or enter the juvenile justice system. </p>
<p>Black students constituted 32%-42% of those <a href="http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf">suspended</a> during the 2011-12 school year, even though they represented 16% of the student population. </p>
<p>As racial tensions resurface in the aftermath of the conflicts and riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, we need to consider whether some of these issues have their origins in the manner in which children of color are treated in our schools. </p>
<p>As a clinical professor of law at the Rutgers University Law School’s Education and Health Law Clinic, I provide legal representation to parents and their children in cases where they are being denied an appropriate education or are suspended from school. </p>
<p>This includes filing legal complaints, attending meetings and assessing the appropriateness of a student’s educational program. At the clinic, my colleagues and I have seen firsthand the disparities in the treatment and resources provided by schools. And often, I have seen that suspension of young black students begins as early as kindergarten. </p>
<h2>Educational inequities for black kids</h2>
<p>Our educational system continues to fail children of color. </p>
<p><a href="http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/racial-inequity-in-special-education">Research shows</a> that black males are disproportionately more likely to be placed in special education and classified as mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed. </p>
<p>They are also <a href="http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/racial-inequity-in-special-education">more likely</a> to be placed in segregated placements, more likely to be educated in poorly performing schools and more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system for infractions that occur in school. </p>
<p>They are also the least likely to be provided the positive supports and the assistance that they need in order to succeed. </p>
<p>None of this is new.</p>
<p>Children of color have historically been subjected to educational inequities. After the landmark decision of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483">Brown v Board of Education</a> in 1954, where the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to maintain segregated schools, practices and policies were developed to maintain segregated settings. </p>
<p>States in the South refused to comply with Brown, while other parts of the country developed practices such as IQ testing and tracking students into specific programs that often kept children of color in <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/early-republic-and-antebellum-history/jim-crow-moves-north-battle-over-northern-school-segregation-18651954?format=HB">different classes</a> from their white counterparts. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.childrensdefense.org/?referrer=https://www.google.com/">Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)</a>, headed by <a href="http://www.childrensdefense.org/about/leadership/marian-wright-edelman/">Marian Wright Edelman</a>, was one of the first organizations to look at the disparities in access to education. In its groundbreaking report in 1975, <a href="http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/archives/digital-library/school-suspensions-are-they-helping-children.html">“School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children?,” </a> the CDF analyzed the reports submitted to the <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html">Office of Civil Rights</a>.</p>
<p>Although black students accounted for 27.1% of the students enrolled in the school districts reporting to the Office of Civil Rights in the 1972-73 school year, the report found that they made up 42.3% of the racially identified suspensions. </p>
<p>At the high school level, black students were suspended at more than three times the rate of white students: 12.5% versus 4.1%.</p>
<h2>Persistent patterns of suspensions</h2>
<p>These inequities in suspensions and removal from school continue to persist. </p>
<p>In recent times, the term “<a href="https://www.aclu.org/what-school-prison-pipeline">school-to-prison pipeline</a>” is often used to describe systemic practices that ultimately lead students of color into the criminal justice system. These policies often cause the suspension or removal and sometimes the arrest of students from school for nonviolent or minor violations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83018/original/image-20150526-24740-lr4zss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arrested students fall behind the class, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/megstewart/4708081840/in/photolist-4NEq3X-4NJBt3-4NJBjW-4NJAX1-4NEpQe-4NEmpZ-4NEnQg-4NJBeY-4NJEbG-4NJB81-4NEmxg-4NEpoH-4NEpDF-4NEp8x-4NEmZr-4NJBWs-4NJAqj-4NJE8U-8aYW2e-kLQEU-kLQDb-bpZbAb-4fgeGF-kLQHz-8b39GQ-8b37zS-9zg5L1-CWpuh-9AupEb-2BYecv-8DMEuR-F9aAy-4mxUwa-9AQLZQ-3dKGdW-wWy8-kLPMZ-wWEz-8BMPvR-kLQDV-kLPdD-6ueSc2-Kgsj2-7Zn5HM-92Hgey-92HfLQ-92EeJp-92HgbL-92E8UB-92Hg8J">Meg Stewart</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED541735">vast majority</a> of suspensions are not for serious or violent offenses. Most are for minor infractions such as tardiness, dress code violations or disruptive behavior. </p>
<h2>Why suspension matters</h2>
<p>Students who are suspended for substantial periods <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu_statement_for_sjc_subcomm_hearing_on_the_school_to_prison_pipeline_12_2012.pdf">lose valuable instruction</a> time and fall behind in school. </p>
<p>The unfairness of these practices increases gaps in learning and eventually makes it difficult for black kids to keep up in school. <a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED541735">Researchers</a> have found that the use of harsh punishment for minor offenses has a negative impact on children, including increasing the chances of dropping out of school. </p>
<p>The US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in its 2014 <a href="http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf">Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)</a> on discipline provides a stark example of how the educational system continues to fail children of color. </p>
<p>For the 2011-12 school year, for out-of-school suspensions by race/ethnicity and gender, black students on average were suspended or expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. </p>
<p>At the preschool level, although black children represented 18% of enrolled students, they represented 48% of the students suspended more than once. </p>
<p>Although black students represented 16% of the student population, they <a href="http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf">accounted</a> for 27% of the students who were referred to law enforcement and 31% of the students who were arrested. </p>
<h2>Prejudices against students with disabilities</h2>
<p>Students of color with disabilities are also <a href="http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf">disproportionately suspended</a> from school compared to their white counterparts. They are twice as likely to be suspended than their non-disabled peers. And they are referred to law enforcement at greater rates. </p>
<p>Although students in special education represent 12% of enrollment, they <a href="http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf">constitute</a> one-quarter of students arrested and charged with juvenile offenses.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cstatute%2C">Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)</a> outlines specific protections for parents and their disabled children and requires that school districts provide an appropriate education and services such as counseling, social skills and other supports to meet their unique needs. However, the needs of these children are often not met. </p>
<p>Moreover, there are many protections that apply before a disabled student could be considered for suspension or removal for substantial periods of time. Often, these protections are ignored, and the services that should be provided are not. </p>
<h2>Change is needed</h2>
<p>Suspension of students for minor infractions is certainly not the solution. We don’t have to look far to see the consequences of policies that take students out of school and place them in vulnerable, nonproductive settings. </p>
<p>The cost - a life of poverty or incarceration – further continues to perpetuate a cycle of failure. </p>
<p>Myriad systems have worked against poor children of color to deprive them of the educational opportunities that their white counterparts have taken for granted. Poverty, violence, inadequate housing and other systemic inequities place these children in a pipeline for failure. Most of us would not be able to endure the burden, if placed in their small shoes. </p>
<p>A great deal of change is needed to combat these pervasive educational inequities. The US Departments Of Education and Justice have begun to take some important steps by issuing <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201401-title-vi.html">guidelines</a> to school districts to reduce the numbers of students who are being removed or suspended from school and encouraging schools to find alternatives to suspensions. </p>
<p>These are important steps, but much work remains to be done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esther Canty-Barnes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Black students get suspended or expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. The cost: they fall behind in school, and the cycle of poverty and failure is perpetuated.Esther Canty-Barnes, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Education and Health Law Clinic, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/417632015-05-21T03:50:21Z2015-05-21T03:50:21ZReviewing Baltimore through Serial, The Wire and race riots<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82357/original/image-20150520-17654-1srq6lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The current climate is inviting us to conceive of Baltimore as an example of Italian legal philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s 'state of exception'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Taggart</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the American imaginary, Baltimore has come to signify a space in which the law routinely fails to protect and represent its denizens. </p>
<p>We know this from TV shows such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/">The Wire </a> (2002-2008) and that show’s “war on drugs”, as waged by law enforcement against the city’s most disenfranchised.</p>
<p>We remember <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Race-Class-Power-Organizing-Baltimore/dp/1498511619">the destruction</a> of predominantly black communities to make way for Johns Hopkins University over the last decade.</p>
<p>We know that Baltimore was notorious for its “<a href="http://qz.com/393128/white-flight-decimated-baltimore-businesses-long-before-rioters-showed-up/">white flight</a>,” and the <a href="http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/2007/5/1/100-years-the-riots-of-1968?p=2007/5/100-years-the-riots-of-1968">riots of 1968</a> following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.</p>
<p>And we can look to the work of political geographer <a href="http://www.thewhitereview.org/interviews/interview-with-david-harvey/">David Harvey</a> to get a sense of the city’s uneven urban development and its wave of foreclosures in the 1990s. </p>
<p>But in the wake of <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-ae-quadriplegic-boy-baltimore-riots-20150507-story.html#page=1">the Baltimore riots</a> in recent weeks, I’d like to reconsider the hugely successful 2014 podcast <a href="http://serialpodcast.org/">Serial</a>, by National Public Radio. </p>
<p>Set in Baltimore, Serial was a journalistic exploration by <a href="http://time.com/3823276/sarah-koenig-2015-time-100/">Sarah Koenig</a> of the 1999 investigation and trial of high school student <a href="http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/17/serial-op-ed">Adnan Masud Syed</a>, found guilty of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. </p>
<p>Syed was convicted to a life sentence and is currently serving time in Maryland State Prison. Earlier this week, however, the Maryland Court Of Special Appeals passed <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/18/serial-asia-mcclain_n_7307756.html">a ruling in Syed’s favour</a> that effectively grants him a new evidentiary hearing.</p>
<p>Similar to The Wire, Serial purports to demystify the law through its unwavering commitment to “realism,” unravelling the legal fiction of “due” process. </p>
<p>Week by week it exposed, or so it seemed, an evidentiary process gone awry, details perjured testimony after perjured testimony, speculates on leads that weren’t followed or considered, and probes into the gaping holes in the narrative and timeline of the alleged murder.</p>
<p>Koenig and her two producers adopted an utterly disarming conversational tone. Listeners – of whom <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/business/media/serial-podcastings-first-breakout-hit-sets-stage-for-more.html?_r=0">there were millions</a> – were promptly swept up in the mystery of the case, feeling, perhaps, deputised. </p>
<p>Koenig and co interviewed Adnan and Hae’s friends, family, and lawyers, played recordings from the trial and police interviews. For the most part, the remarkably entertaining stream of voices made it unclear to the listener when Koenig and co were wearing their “responsible journalism” hats, their “legal” hats, and when the women are just being human: confused, bemused, goofy, gossipy.</p>
<p>Presenting those roles in a way that was entangled and simultaneous suggests that the narratives they created and recreated moved through, enacted and embodied (and modified through their own embodiment) had, or ought to have had, some bearing on the official legal narrative. </p>
<p>As we listened to these women work through their frustration at not just the indecipherability of the scant, often contradictory “facts,” but, more importantly, the ways in which these “facts” found expression and containment in the prosecution’s narrative, we were struck with a sense of profound injustice. </p>
<p>That was – at best – irresponsible on the part of the production. The feeling of injustice is very different from its narrow legal construction, especially in respect of procedure (and there is, in fact, comparatively little proof to warrant an appeal). </p>
<p>True Crime, as a genre, begs for visibility: we want to see the evidence, or at least interact with the tactility of words on a page as verifiable source material: transcripts, interviews, newspaper articles. </p>
<p>We want to read the letters and diaries, and get a sense of the case’s spatiality. </p>
<p>Instead, in Serial, we heard Koenig’s mellifluous voice, and envisioned each character as filtered through a diffuse pop cultural consciousness: Jay was both “Dennis Rodman” and “Scooby Doo,” Adnan had big brown cartoon eyes “like a dairy cow,” and Nisha was a “chipmunk.” </p>
<p>While Koenig continued to emphasise place and proximity, DNA and physical evidence, denying the listener direct access to this material seemed to encourage the listener to conflate the affective response that comes from listening (falling in love with Adnan is not uncommon!) and the legal narratives that could have acquitted Adnan or secured a conviction. </p>
<p>Despite itself, Serial examined a racialised time, place and case, but did so via a medium that forces its listener to displace the materiality of these concerns, thereby depoliticising the case, and relocalising Adnan’s story as some kind of imaginative quest for justice. </p>
<p>Admittedly Koenig spent a couple of minutes here and there on the relationship between race, class and policing. In Episode 7, for example, she rather half-heartedly suggested that racial profiling was a “concern” at trial. </p>
<p>When she did spend a few seconds wondering aloud whether the police could have done more, she never questioned their integrity or professionalism (they were “cautious and methodical”) – or, more significantly, the historical function of police as gatekeepers of hierarchical order in the polis. </p>
<p>This is even more astonishing, because, post-The Wire, Baltimore has become a metonym for police corruption.</p>
<p>There is, furthermore, something deeply problematic in Serial’s suggestion that the law had failed Adnan: Serial separated Adnan’s case from the political, social, racial realities of Baltimore, chiefly through the podcast medium, and instead focused on the quest for legal justice as mediated through quirky and charismatic personalities. Law in America becomes, once again, commodified spectacle. </p>
<p>This refocus on the ever-regenerative quest for justice is in fact deeply conservative, complicit with those forces that continue to affirm a picture of American sovereignty and federalism even in the face of the continued exercise of arbitrary state power against the people of Baltimore. </p>
<p>Serial’s narrative attempted to lay bare the law’s most troubling flaws but, importantly, upheld the rule of law by preventing the kind of radical scrutiny that would see the law’s wholesale suspension in Baltimore. </p>
<p>If the current climate is inviting us to conceive of Baltimore not as a place where the law doesn’t work but, more radically, as an example of Italian legal philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s “<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3534874.html">state of exception</a>,” then Serial reminded us of the persisting power of mainstream hegemonic thought in respect of rule of law. It must apply equally to all men, and, if it doesn’t then it is, rather than a fiction to be re-written, a work in progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Shahinyan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The current climate is inviting us to conceive of Baltimore not as a place where the law doesn’t work but, more radically, as an example of Italian legal philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception”.Diana Shahinyan, Sessional Tutor, Department of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/417342015-05-15T13:31:55Z2015-05-15T13:31:55ZThere are more Baltimores: America’s legacy of hollowed-out cities<p>Now that the dust has settled and the media have moved onto the next crisis, we can ponder what the Baltimore riots tell us about broader and deeper issues in the US. </p>
<p>Using a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VGKWiK85qYEC&pg=PA3&dq=Stress+Testing+The+USA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6PRQVb_LC8OnggSX2oPYDQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Stress%20Testing%20The%20USA&f=false">stress testing approach</a> I developed for other major social events helps reveal the many forces at play. Among them are decades of biased economic policies, class differences as well as racism, structural problems in metropolitan America, the consequences of aggressive policing and the geography of multiple deprivations.</p>
<h2>Long time coming</h2>
<p>The fundamental problems faced by Baltimore and other industrial cities are a result of decades of economic change stemming from <a href="http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/schott-09-oct-2013.pdf">policies that promoted deindustrialization</a> and job losses for the <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/03/how-globalization-begets-inequality">semi-skilled and unskilled</a>. </p>
<p>In 1950, Baltimore had a population of 950,000 and, like may cities in the US, a vibrant manufacturing base providing jobs and economic security. The magnet of jobs attracted black migrants from the South. Since the mid-1970s, though, there has been a steady loss of manufacturing jobs due to offshoring, relocation to suburbs in non-union areas of the US and increased productivity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81586/original/image-20150513-2470-binwf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A closed former tire plant in Denver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gtcooper25/7659192168/in/photolist-cEPmZo-a9StBd-5hTfry-6yrFcG-a9RVGY-3pcsa9-7ZSQUo-aTsEjg-a9Lf7v-a9QmiA-9CaauY-9C9EWq-9C9ZKE-9C9E3E-9Ca2Ub-5hT8nG-a9MeBR-a9PvfH-6ywswH-a9SAsb-9C6Vwi-9C6Wj4-a9QfNq-cYgQ4y-9C9SJy-9C7d2H-9Cafmd-5hTeWE-a9QNLA-a9MViR-b1t6KH-8X39LX-9C75zT-aDS4cL-5hNNuD-a9MRBZ-9Ca3vA-9C79H8-9Ca7TE-5hNFgc-9C6NJX-9C9Ka5-9C6PUz-9C6Qk8-9C72BF-9C7aMT-9C78G2-9C7akV-9Cahn7-9C6HJi">cooper gary/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is a trend across the US and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-28/why-factory-jobs-are-shrinking-everywhere">across the world</a> but in Baltimore, as in so many industrial cities in the US, there were few employment alternatives or attempts at retraining. The result is pockets of poverty in neighborhoods across the country where there are concentrations of the unskilled and limited opportunities for retraining older workers or education for younger people.</p>
<p>It is ironic that at the same time that President Obama was sympathizing with the plight of Baltimore, he was also promoting a free trade agenda. Even more ironic, he made the announcement at the headquarters of Nike, a company that last made a pair of shoes <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/trade_environment/wheeling/hnike.html">in the US in 1984</a> and <a href="http://www.unc.edu/%7Eandrewsr/ints092/vandu.html">makes all of its apparel</a> in the cheap labor areas of <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7480688/ns/business-us_business/t/nike-reveals-overseas-factory-names-locations/">East and Southeast Asia</a>.</p>
<p>There are benefits to free trade, but we need a honest assessment of their redistributional consequences and a much greater commitment to job training and help for those displaced when manufacturing jobs are lost.</p>
<p>And while the Baltimore riots focus attention on race, we also need to consider the issue of class. It is so much easier to talk about race in the US than class, and so the the debate is easily racialized while the wider issue of restricted opportunities for the semi- and unskilled, black as well as white and brown, is ignored. </p>
<p>There is a squeeze on the semi- and unskilled, with the squeeze all that much tighter on the minority groups. The events in Baltimore, often seen through only the prism of race, are also freighted with concerns of class. The sociologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Julius_Wilson">William Julius Wilson</a> showed that the disappearance of work is the <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo13375516.html">central cause of social disorganization</a> in the inner city.</p>
<h2>Geo-economic disconnect</h2>
<p>There is also the balkanization of metropolitan America by which declining central cities are cut off from the economic benefits of suburban growth. </p>
<p>Baltimore’s population declined from almost a million in 1950 to just over 622,000 in 2013. The wider Baltimore metropolitan area, which includes Baltimore and surrounding suburban counties, has grown from 1.1 to 2.7 million in 2010, with the <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-02.pdf">fourth largest median income in the US</a>. I examined this hollowing out of central city cores in my book, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vhc9YTPkYwYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=alabaster+cities&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uvZQVdGgD4irgwSdlIHwBw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=alabaster%20cities&f=false">Alabaster Cities</a>, and a series of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00330124.2013.765297">recent</a> <a href="http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijpr/2012/207532/abs/">papers</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81582/original/image-20150513-2472-dhwfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graffiti in New Orleans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/editor/462921072/">Bart Everson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>County governments, not the city, reap all the benefits of this increased property and income taxes. There is a fiscal disparity between central city and suburbs, with the city pressed hard to meet the mounting social needs of an increasingly impoverished population with a diminishing tax base. </p>
<p>This fiscal squeeze promotes, in Baltimore as in other similar cities, an emphasis on flagship downtown developments such as football stadia, ballparks, race car events and convention centers. These benefit downtown business interests but fail to do much for the stubborn poverty in the inner city.</p>
<p>Cities concentrate on attracting middle- and upper-income groups because they provide revenue. And across urban America, we sees pockets of gentrification and gleaming downtown towers beside these persistent pockets of poverty. Yet hamstrung by job loss, declining revenue and population loss, many cities across the US still have the heavy lift of making up for decades of federal neglect and lack of a coherent and well-funded urban policy program.</p>
<h2>Policing in America</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/policing">policing</a> of the cities in the US is dominated by what amounts to a war against low-income minority neighborhoods. In 1980, the US had a prison population of 500,000, but by 2013 this increased to <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10330.html">2.5 million</a> as more young men, especially young men of color, were caught up in an expanding web of criminal incarceration as minor infractions became felonies. The narratives of tough on crime, <a href="http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/">broken windows theory</a>, war on drugs and militarization have all escalated into an aggressive policing and a fractured trust between residents and police.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81587/original/image-20150513-2464-rqv9ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police sharpshooter at Ferguson protests.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Police_sharpshooter_at_Ferguson_protests.jpg/1024px-Police_sharpshooter_at_Ferguson_protests.jpg">Jamelle Bouie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To compound problems, these neighborhoods also suffer from multiple deprivations that include abandoned dwellings that are sites of fires, disease, criminal activity and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-has-more-than-16000-vacant-houses-why-cant-the-homeless-move-in/2015/05/12/3fd6b068-f7ed-11e4-9030-b4732caefe81_story.html">unhealthy environments</a>. Elevated <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slow-poisoning-of-freddie-gray-and-the-hidden-violence-against-black-communities-41072">lead levels</a> in inner city Baltimore make it difficult for children to learn and concentrate. So it is not just limited employment and educational opportunities but also a complex web of multiple deprivation that effectively traps people.</p>
<p>There are many Baltimores. Within the city boundaries, there are old established elite areas such as Roland Park and more recently gentrified areas such as Federal Hill. The Baltimore of the riots was only part of the city, a swath of inner city neighborhoods impacted by job loss, poor education and aggressive policing. </p>
<p>But there are other Baltimores outside of Maryland. They include Akron, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Toledo. It is not just an inner city problem. Along with Bernadette Hanlon and Tom Vicino, I have documented the problems of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aP14AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Cities+and+Suburbs+Hanlon&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UPdQVdTCBZP_ggT694GYBA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Cities%20and%20Suburbs%20Hanlon&f=false">inner ring of suburbs</a>.</p>
<p>There are also the bleak areas in the cracks of the metropolis: the trailer parks and suburban rental units that house those pushed out of the city by gentrification and redevelopment. Baltimores of economic neglect, massive job loss, aggressive policing and multiple deprivations are found throughout metropolitan regions across the country. They are the places of despair that house the voiceless of the US political system, the marginalized of the US economy and those left behind in the commodification of US society. </p>
<p>The remarks of Martin Luther King Jr made in 1966 still have <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mlk-a-riot-is-the-language-of-the-unheard/">resonance</a>: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>For complete coverage of Baltimore riots, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/baltimore-riots">see here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>America is a country with pockets of poverty with neighborhoods filled with unskilled workers with limited opportunities.John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409382015-05-05T08:32:25Z2015-05-05T08:32:25ZThe dreams deferred by Baltimore’s mortgage crises set the stage for unrest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80303/original/image-20150504-8376-7uohy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The subprime mortgage scandals hit Baltimore hard. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-56658289/stock-photo-modern-house-with-crooked-foreclosure-sign-in-suburbs.html?src=u9iUxKUWPmC-iHUXPXmdWA-1-19">Steve Heap/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the steps of the city courthouse, a monument to equality and the rule of law, Baltimore residents have learned how dreams can be brutally deferred. </p>
<p>There, the property of the city’s poor and working families has been, by order of the court, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_UIOWxNr0Q">auctioned </a>to the highest bidder. </p>
<p>When examining the tensions that erupted in Baltimore in the last two weeks, the consequences of losing homes should not be minimized as a factor in the sense of outrage and injustice.</p>
<p>Foreclosures in the wake of the subprime mortgage scandal of 2008 have been the end game in predatory lending schemes that plundered the single modest asset held by many black Baltimoreans: their homes. </p>
<p>In a 2012 settlement reached with one lender, <a href="http://www.wbaltv.com/money/Baltimore-residents-to-get-2-5M-from-Wells-Fargo-settlement/15502466">Wells Fargo</a>, some 1,000 black and Latino residents of Baltimore received $2.5 million <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/business/wells-fargo-to-settle-mortgage-discrimination-charges.html?_r=0">in restitution </a>for having been charged higher fees and interest rates than those assessed to their counterparts in predominantly white communities. The University of Baltimore’s Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance <a href="http://foreclosures.bniajfi.org/filings-ratified-sales.php">research</a> has found that, between 2008 and 2009, foreclosure filings in Baltimore increased by over 38 percent. Between 2009 and 2012, more than 14,000 such proceedings were brought against the city’s homeowners.</p>
<h2>Past as prologue: What has happened on the steps of the halls of justice</h2>
<p>Could the columned memorial that overlooks Monument Square talk, it would tell how too much of what happens on the courthouse steps today is not new. </p>
<p>The courthouse’s 19th century records evidence how, for more then 150 years, justice has been denied those seeking that most of American of dreams: to own a home.</p>
<p>Two centuries ago, Maryland was a slave state. Still, by the 1850s there were fewer enslaved people living in Baltimore, no more than 1,000. Instead, the city was home to the largest community of free African Americans in the nation. Some 25,000 black Baltimoreans made their homes in what was the nation’s third largest city.</p>
<p>Activities at the courthouse suggest how their lives were framed by grim facts. Many watched as their loved ones and neighbors were auctioned off as human chattel, before the abolition of slavery finally ended such sales. My own research into the period’s court dockets and newspapers found how Baltimore’s judges sentenced free black men and women to enslavement, selling them to bidders who gathered at the courthouse door. It was nothing out of the ordinary when, for example, a city sheriff sold William Manorkey and Ellen Sey out of the state as slaves after each was convicted of larceny in July 1858. </p>
<p>In the decades before the Civil War, home ownership was rare among black Baltimoreans, as reflected in US Census data. Wages were too low and work too unsteady to enable most families to purchase even a small alley house. </p>
<h2>The story of Jonathan Trusty resonates through the decades</h2>
<p>Jonathan Trusty defied the odds. The record of his story can be found in filings from the Baltimore City Courthouse, held in the State Archives in Annapolis. The 55-year-old dockworker amassed just enough to buy “a two-story and attic Brick dwelling, with a Back Building” on Bethel Street. The tiny property was home to Trusty, his wife, their eight children and two grandchildren. </p>
<p>In 1854, Trusty fell on hard times. It is hard to determine what precisely happened. His petition for debt relief suggests that Trusty slowly incurred a bundle of small obligations, a total of $133.87½ to 36 creditors. He aimed to use a state bankruptcy law to set things straight. The court would inventory his property and satisfy creditors to the extent possible. Trusty had but one asset, his home.</p>
<p>Trusty’s creditors were an organized group that acted together to ensure his home was sold. There is the distinct sense from the records that they pressed Trusty to file for insolvency. And they kept pressure on the court. A court-appointed trustee took control of Trusty’s house and land. An auction was set for the afternoon of January 14, 1855, just six weeks after his initial filing. That day, the family’s Bethel Street home sold for $460, more than enough to make Trusty’s creditors whole. Proceedings in the city courthouse wiped out Trusty’s debts and restored some fraction of his reputation. (I will be telling the story of Trusty in my book, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum American, now under contract with Cambridge University Press.)</p>
<p>But the loss of his family home certainly felt less than just. Trusty’s story reminds us that today’s Baltimore is shaped, in part, by nearly two centuries of policy and custom that have kept too many black residents on the city’s economic margins.</p>
<p>Today, the organized actions of creditors still animate the Baltimore City courthouse as many African-American families lose their main assets – their homes – through predatory lending practices that end in foreclosures.</p>
<p>This drama still begins with notices published in local newspapers, such as the <a href="http://publicnotices.thedailyrecord.com">Daily Record</a>, and on the internet.</p>
<p>At the announced day and time, an auctioneer positions himself at the top of the courthouse steps. At his feet sit milk crates filled with files. In his arms is a clipboard stacked with documents. Sometimes a small crowd gathers around. Other times, only an interested few. The song of the auctioneer – staccato words strung together in a distinct cadence – ends as the word “sold” punctuates the refrain.</p>
<p>Homes are for sale on the courthouse steps. Insolvent debtors, today’s defaulted mortgage holders, can watch as their homes are sold to the highest bidder. Dreams are deferred. In April we watched them explode.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martha S. Jones receives funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, and the American Historical Association. </span></em></p>Predatory lending and the subprime mortgage crises as well as a history of economic injustice fueled the Baltimore protests.Martha S. Jones, Associate professor of history and Afroamerican and African Studies; Affiliated Faculty of Law, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410722015-05-02T13:11:58Z2015-05-02T13:11:58ZThe slow poisoning of Freddie Gray and the hidden violence against black communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80128/original/image-20150501-23838-1iv6d65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesting in West Baltimore.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/87films/17125640489/in/photolist-s6kogB-s6kok4-snBGzL-snJMX4-rqYaYe-rqYQPR-snJM9a-s6coZq-rqYafv-soTLoE-sp2gpR-rsfnun-s6N5bW-sp2fr8-rqMwMb-skuNay-snMLHP-rqYQR4-s6dy35-socNT9-soTNEJ-rrmUtS-s7sSzE-soTNkf-socHm7-soTKBE-sm5fB5-rgqoXt-socJMy-s52Y2x-rqLSkb-s6jGg6-sku765-s4rWQT-snJMEa-s6cp2u-s4rWux-s4rW6r-sku7CN-s4rWCD-s6korM-s6a7QA-snJMk2-snJMre-skuN6W-snJMXK-snM6Sx-s6dyd5-rqLRYQ-s6jGv4">Arash Azizzada/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The life of Freddie Gray, and of so many others, was endangered many times over by numerous forms of systemic racism before it was finally taken in the custody of police – an event that has sparked protests in Baltimore this week. Among these forms of endangerment was the lead that poisoned Gray as a child.</p>
<p>Reports indicate that Freddie Gray, like too many children – especially children of color and those in poverty – experienced significant <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">exposure to lead as a child</a>. </p>
<p>In 2008, Gray’s family filed a lawsuit against Stanley Rochkind, the owner of a home they rented for four years, arguing their children’s exposure to lead “played a significant part in their educational, behavioral and medical problems,” according to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/04/27/3651505/freddie-gray-and-childhood-lead-exposure/">reports</a>. </p>
<p>In six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996, Freddie Gray and his siblings had lead levels between 11 micrograms per deciliter and 19 micrograms per deciliter, according to an <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/freddie-gray-and-sisters-suffered-lead-poisoning-family-said-in-2008-lawsuit/ar-AAbB3l3">article</a> citing court documents. </p>
<p>Those levels of lead in Gray’s blood far exceeded the upper limit of five micrograms per deciliter deemed safe by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). </p>
<p>Extensive research has <a href="http://www.nchh.org/Portals/0/Contents/Childhood_Lead_Exposure.pdf">demonstrated</a> that childhood lead exposure can cause life-long and very serious developmental, cognitive, medical, and psychological issues. </p>
<p>These harmful effects can happen from the womb, even at low levels of exposure. Researchers point out that exposure to lead and other environmental toxins can have <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/">significant effects</a> on the developing brains of babies, even at levels far lower than those that would be toxic to adults. </p>
<p>So as we examine the problems of systemic racism, economic injustice, and state misconduct, we should be careful not to leave out hidden forms of violence, including environmental injustice.</p>
<h2>Invisible violence</h2>
<p>Exposure to environmental toxins is extremely widespread. </p>
<p>Children’s health advocates <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/philippe-grandjean/">Philippe Grandjean</a> and <a href="http://www.mountsinai.org/profiles/philip-j-landrigan">Philip Landrigan</a> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/">told the Atlantic</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Our very great concern… is that children worldwide are being exposed to unrecognized toxic chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, truncating future achievements and damaging societies.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peeling lead paint or lead dust causes developmental and cognitive problems in children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/16324">CDC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This poisonous lead exposure, and the possible developmental harm it causes, is just one example of the invisible violence inflicted on so many individuals through absorption of environmental toxins and through other harmful and unequal environmental conditions.</p>
<p>Environmental issues are not often described in terms of violence, at least not violence against humans. But the environmental injustice that slowly poisons poor and minority individuals and deprives them of access to healthy food and healthy living environments in the US and globally is, in my view, most certainly a form of violence. </p>
<p>Rob Nixon, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, calls this type of harm to vulnerable populations “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072343">slow violence</a>.” </p>
<p>Environmental injustice may seem like a secondary issue in the face of massive police brutality, poverty, and civil uprising, and I don’t suggest that it should preempt conversations about other forms of systemic racism. </p>
<p>But as we talk about the <a href="http://rhetoricraceandreligion.blogspot.com/2013/07/zimmermantrial-persistent-devaluation.html">devaluing of black lives and black bodies</a> that has taken place in Baltimore and across the country and the world, we cannot ignore the ways that this manifests in a subtle and constant disregard for the health of marginalized communities.</p>
<h2>‘Food deserts’</h2>
<p>Lead poisoning may sound like a small issue or one that is primarily in the past, but this is not the case. It is a far-too <a href="http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/home/lead_poisoning.html">common event</a> in many regions in the US. </p>
<p>Combined with this are conditions in which black and poor individuals often have <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">limited access</a> to <a href="http://archive.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/Planning/BaltimoreFoodPolicyInitiative/FoodDeserts.aspx">fresh food</a> and <a href="http://www.csd.org.uk/uploadedfiles/files/value_of_green_space_report.pdf">green space</a>. </p>
<p>These communities also experience <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollution-racial-disparities">disproportionate proximity</a> to garbage incinerators, factories, and other sources of toxic emissions, according to a number of studies from <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094431">academics</a>, <a href="http://www.ejnet.org/ej/">advocacy groups</a> and <a href="http://archive.gao.gov/d48t13/121648.pdf">government agencies</a>. </p>
<p>Freddie Gray serves as an example of the issue of food deserts as well; he lived in a community with limited access to fresh food (see the map <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">here</a> from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), as do <a href="http://archive.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/Planning/BaltimoreFoodPolicyInitiative/FoodDeserts.aspx">one in five residents</a> of Baltimore City and one in four school-aged children in Baltimore. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Red areas indicate ‘food deserts’ in Baltimore, areas where the distance to a supermarket is more than a quarter mile and the median income is below the poverty level and other factors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.csd.org.uk/uploadedfiles/files/value_of_green_space_report.pdf">Research</a> also indicates that “in areas where residents are almost entirely white, there is 11 times more green space than areas where more than 40% of residents are black, Asian or minority ethnic.” And while class and income level are factors in these types of environmental injustice, race remains a major factor <a href="http://astro.temple.edu/%7Ejmennis/Courses/GUS_0150/readings/downey98.pdf">even when isolated from class</a>.</p>
<p>Outside the US, we see these same phenomena playing out among many poor and non-white populations. And this inequity is exaggerated even further when we consider that those populations most affected by climate change are likely to be in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/27/climate-change-poor-countries-ipcc">poor countries</a> with predominantly black and brown people. </p>
<p>Indeed, many have <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/192801/what-does-blacklivesmatter-have-do-climate-change">argued</a> that the delay among wealthy nations to significantly curb climate change is motivated by a lack of interest in or respect for the lives of people of color. </p>
<h2>Environmental racism</h2>
<p>Issues of systemic racism like widespread poverty and police brutality deserve much more attention than white America has given them. </p>
<p>I don’t wish to draw any attention away from these issues, or from a full examination of police misconduct in cases like Gray’s and many others. </p>
<p>But to fully demand any justice for Freddie Gray and other victims of systemic violence, we have to reject all forms of systemic racism, including the subtle but devastating forms of <a href="http://www.ejnet.org/ej/">environmental racism</a>.</p>
<p>Freddie Gray’s life ended violently and tragically in the custody of police. This tragedy, and so many others like it, must be answered for. But the tragedies of Gray’s life started long before this, not only with underfunded schools, income inequality, and myriad egregious denials of institutional support for his community, but also with the slow theft of his potential caused by his exposure to toxins like lead. </p>
<p>This country is denying huge numbers of black and brown children their chance to achieve untold levels of cognitive potential by quietly poisoning them. We then compound this denial by providing deeply unequal educational opportunities. And, finally, we disregard their civil rights as well. </p>
<p>Addressing any one piece of this picture while leaving the others in place guarantees continued injustice.</p>
<p>The call that #blacklivesmatter means that black bodies and minds matter. It means that it matters when black individuals are killed by police, and it also means that it matters when black individuals are slowly and invisibly stripped of their health.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>For more coverage on the Freddy Gray and the Baltimore riots, see <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/baltimore-riots">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rita Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Freddie Gray had high levels of lead as a child, one of the environmental injustices suffered by poor and minority groups.Rita Turner, Lecturer in American Studies, Sustainability, and EcoJustice, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409142015-05-01T15:49:33Z2015-05-01T15:49:33ZFrom Tottenham to Baltimore, policing crisis starts race to the bottom for justice<p>West Baltimore, 8.39 am April 12: Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, stood on the street talking with friends. Police officers approached on bicycles and made “eye contact” with Gray, who then attempted to leave. The police chased him and video footage shot on neighbours’ mobile phones shows police holding Gray face-down on the pavement. One witness described how an officer pressed a knee into Gray’s neck as he was handcuffed, while another bent his legs upwards: “<a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-video-moore-20150423-story.html">They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami</a>”.</p>
<p>By the time the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-mysterious-death-of-freddie-gray/391119/">police van</a> arrived with Gray at the Western District police station some 45 minutes later “he could not talk and he could not breathe”, according to a police officer <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html#page=1">quoted in the Baltimore Sun report</a>. It was only then that police called medics who transferred him to hospital. Doctors determined that Gray had three fractured vertebrae and a damaged larynx, his spinal cord 80% severed at his neck. Gray died of his injuries a week later on April 19.</p>
<p>“No Justice, No Peace” has echoed through the streets as thousands of people have protested Gray’s death. Protest marches on April 25 and walk-outs of students on April 27 were followed by what some call rioting, others unrest or rebellion. Officials and mainstream news coverage have decried property destruction, including burning of police cars, and theft. </p>
<p>Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, declared that “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/apr/28/baltimore-freddie-gray-riots-live-updates">violence will not be tolerated</a>” and the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, called city residents “lawless gangs of thugs roaming the streets” before declaring a state of emergency, suspending habeas corpus, implementing a 10pm curfew, and deploying National Guard troops.</p>
<h2>Crisis over policing</h2>
<p>Gray’s death at the hands of the police was the latest to provoke protest. Natalie Finegar, the deputy district public defender <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/25/freddie-gray-death-triggers-frustration-baltimore-police">said that</a> it was a “daily occurrence” for her clients to describe some sort of mishandling by the police. These range from “jump outs” where officers spring from patrol cars and shake down a suspect, to serious assaults. The city of Baltimore has paid out more than <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-state-damage-cap-20150330-story.html">US$5.7m in undue force lawsuits</a> between 2008 and 2011.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/29/you_can_replace_property_you_cant">Baltimore resident Kane Mayfield</a> the conflict has: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>been mis-characterised pretty much by mainstream sensationalists who come down here to soak up the angel dust of civil unrest and sell it to white America. It’s fun. I get it. You know? Look at them. Black rage. It’s nice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But property destruction is not equivalent to death – particularly in a context where so many black people are killed and harmed by police with near impunity. It is telling that there are no comprehensive data on homicides by police in the US. A partial snapshot from <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/">recent FBI data</a> reveals a white police officer killed a black person in a “justifiable homicide” about twice a week between 2005-2012.</p>
<p>The protests communicate a legitimation crisis over policing in the United States. A cycle of renewed dissent against state racial violence has become increasingly visible since July 2013, following the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html">acquittal of George Zimmerman</a> for the murder of Trayvon Martin. “Black Lives Matter”, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”, “I Can’t Breathe” and “Shut It Down” have become protest slogans after the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City.</p>
<h2>Stop-and-search</h2>
<p>Across the Atlantic, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/10/mark-duggan-family-rallying-cry-no-peace-no-justice">“No Justice, No Peace</a>” was also the cry of protesters gathered to hear a verdict of “lawful killing” in the case of the police shooting of Mark Duggan in London, 2011. </p>
<p>Duggan’s death sparked the most extensive riots in recent British history. As with recent events in the US, the English summer riots of 2011 raised serious concerns about policing within inner-city communities. The findings of the 2011 Guardian-LSE research project, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/dec/14/reading-the-riots-investigating-england-s-summer-of-disorder-full-report">Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s summer of disorder</a>, suggested that the riots were motivated by a sense of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/video/2011/dec/05/reading-riots-video">“poverty, injustice and a visceral hatred of the police”</a>. Some 73% of people they interviewed said they had been stopped and searched by the police at least once in the previous year.</p>
<p>Time and again, anger over perceived misuse of “stop-and-search” has been one of the causes of rioting in Britain. In 1981, riots in Brixton sparked three months of rioting by black, Asian and white youths across most of the country’s inner-cities. The Brixton uprising was triggered by <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4854556.stm">Operation Swamp 81</a>, which saw the police employ ancient vagrancy legislation, called “sus laws” (<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1689103">suspected person</a>) laws’, in a mass stop-and-search operation. </p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/3631579.stm">The Scarman Report</a> into the causes of the 1981 riots stated that the black population of Brixton had been subject to “disproportionate and indiscriminate” policing. Sus laws were repealed yet stop-and-search substantially increased.</p>
<p>An estimated 1m stop and searches are carried out in the UK each year and in 2009-2010, according to the <a href="http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/publication/briefing-paper-5-race-disproportionality-stops-and-searches-under-section-60-criminal">Equality and Human Rights Commission</a>: “Black people were stopped 23.5 times more frequently than white people and Asian people 4.5 times more frequently. </p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27224887">a revised code of conduct</a> on stop-and-search was introduced; recent figures show <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-2012-to-2013/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-2012-to-2013">a 12% reduction</a>, but more <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/203873/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality">radical reform</a> is required.</p>
<h2>Race to the bottom</h2>
<p>Stop-and-search is a day-to-day expression of violent relationships between police and communities. People interviewed by <a href="http://www.stop-watch.org/">StopWatch</a> detail the enduring stigma affected by these policing practices. Police harassment of black citizens communicates authoritative messages about the place of ethnic minorities in society.</p>
<p>Racial discrimination <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/oct/11/how-fair-is-britain-data">intersects with other inequalities</a>: poverty, rising economic inequality (between the richest and the poorest and between ethnic groups), joblessness (in 2012 the unemployment rate for black youths in the UK was 55.9%, double that of their white peers), high levels of incarceration, inadequate housing, unequal access to education and healthcare.</p>
<p>Fifty years since the civil rights movement and the ostensible end of state-sanctioned discrimination, austerity and welfare retrenchment has created even deeper divides. A recent special issue of Feminist Review on the politics of austerity details the multiple ways in which ”<a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v109/n1/full/fr201459a.html?hc_location=ufi">divides of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and class</a>“ are intensifying. The UK and US are relying on the same forms of policing to resolve the resulting economic and political conflicts. Racial and economic inequality fuelled the riots in London 2011 and the same thing has sparked the unrest we see in Baltimore and other US cities today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imogen Tyler receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and her research has previously been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Her views are her own.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenna Loyd is affiliated with Critical Resistance, a member-run grassroots movement which aims to end the Prison Industrial Complex.</span></em></p>Provocative, violent and discriminatory policing has sparked riots in both the UK and America.Imogen Tyler, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster UniversityJenna Loyd, Assistant professor, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410102015-04-29T19:12:04Z2015-04-29T19:12:04ZThe media and Baltimore: covering the dramatic versus the representative<p>Does the news media make bad situations worse?</p>
<p>President Obama said as much in his comments about the uprising in Baltimore triggered by the latest death of a black man in police custody.</p>
<p>“One burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again,” the president <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/politics/obama-baltimore-violent-protests/">said</a>, “and thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way, I think, have been lost in the discussion.”</p>
<p>Obama’s remarks nip at the man-bites-dog logic of journalism. I was introduced to this way of thinking the first time I went to a house fire as a reporter-with-camera.</p>
<p>“Was there flame?” my editor asked me when I got back to the newsroom. When I told her there wasn’t, her face fell.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"593403108035788801"}"></div></p>
<p>If you’re looking for front-page art, flame is more interesting than smoke. Violent protest is more interesting than peaceful protest. Fatalities are more interesting than injuries. </p>
<p>And when it comes to deadly interactions between the police and urban black men, the media has had a lot of material in the past year. </p>
<h2>Drama and tension</h2>
<p>Penn Staters still seethe when they recall the image of an <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1110/Penn-State-riot-Students-react-to-Joe-Paterno-firing">overturned television van</a> that dominated coverage of student reaction to the firing of Joe Paterno a few days after Jerry Sandusky, his former assistant, was charged with sexually abusing children in 2011.</p>
<p>Visually, this was the most dramatic moment from that November night. But the most dramatic moment is rarely the most representative moment.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"593304099593986049"}"></div></p>
<p>Numerically, a relative handful of Penn State students turned out to protest the unceremonious dismissal of their beloved football coach – maybe 2,000 out of a population of 45,000. And only a handful of those 2,000 did anything destructive. Yet the takeaway from the news coverage was that Penn State students were blindly loyal to Paterno – even in the face of evidence that he may have played a role in shielding a child molester.</p>
<p>Unfair.</p>
<p>But if I were editing a newspaper back then, I, too, would have put the flipped news truck on the front page. </p>
<h2>Outliers</h2>
<p>This being the start of commencement season, I also think of how many news features focus on the atypical grad – say, the middle-aged janitor who cleans the bathrooms in the very building where the ceremony will be held.</p>
<p>It makes a kind of sense, right? In a sea of 22-year-olds, the guy who is old enough to be the father of a 22-year-old stands out as unusual and therefore interesting. But he is not representative.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"593134415452049408"}"></div></p>
<p>Another example: Every holiday season, look for a news outlet to do a story about Jews and Christmas. Some recent headlines: “How to Celebrate Christmas like a Jew” (<a href="http://nypost.com/2014/12/24/the-jewish-guide-to-christmas-from-movies-to-chinese-takeout/">New York Post</a>); “Jews Have Fun with Christmas (<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/ci_19605185">Denver Post</a>)”; “At One Jewish Home, Making Room for Santa” (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/us/20santa.html">New York Times</a>).</p>
<p>If you don’t know that this story, like middle-aged college graduates, has become a news cliché, you might think this is a fresh angle: We know what Christians do on Christmas; what do Jews do on Christmas?</p>
<p>Here, too, the dominant experience is shunned in favor of the outlier experience. </p>
<h2>Abetting</h2>
<p>A corollary to the complaint that the news media sensationalizes conflict is that the news media incites conflict. On the night of Joe Paterno’s firing, some of my students swear they saw TV reporters exhorting the crowd to get crazier. (Local police got wind of it but found no evidence that incitement had occurred.)</p>
<p>But even when we don’t incite, we abet. Drawing again on my own experience as a reporter, I recall arriving at a demonstration – I don’t remember what the issue was – and finding the protesters sitting on the curb, their signs lying facedown in the gutter.</p>
<p>When the protesters saw me, camera around my neck, pulling my reporter’s notebook out of my back pocket, they stood, hoisted their signs and began marching and chanting: Showtime!</p>
<p>After all, what’s a protest without an audience? Martin Luther King knew better than anyone the value of Northern newspaper readers and TV viewers seeing Southern cops brutalizing civil rights marchers.</p>
<h2>Awkward position</h2>
<p>I don’t have the sense that Baltimore’s violent protesters were calculated or orchestrated. The anger seems more spontaneous than that. When President Obama and other critics invoke a continuous loop of televised violence, it might have less to do with the media overplaying violent protest and underplaying peaceful protest than with the salience of the violent images themselves.</p>
<p>In other words, if you’re shown a couple of minutes of violence and a couple of minutes of nonviolence, you’re likelier to remember the violent moments and perhaps believe that the news media has hyped the one and ignored the other.</p>
<p>Still, events like those in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere put journalism in an awkward position. A core mission is to call attention to social ills in the self-evident belief that the public cannot act unless it knows. Is Baltimore burning? Roll tape.</p>
<p>But in calling attention to unrest we may foment more unrest while demoralizing everyone else.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Frank does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The news media are a major presence in the Baltimore riots. Are they providing an accurate picture of what’s going on?Russell Frank, Associate Professor of Communications, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409902015-04-29T18:06:45Z2015-04-29T18:06:45ZBaltimore’s toxic slum housing and its part in the violent death of Freddie Gray<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79791/original/image-20150429-6236-1tl0ajh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The house in which Freddie Gray grew up in the Baltimore neighbourhood of Druid Heights.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">Kim Hairston, Baltimore Su</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The unexplained death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, after his arrest on April 12 has spawned two days of intense riots in Baltimore following his funeral on April 27. </p>
<p>Gray, who was carrying a switchblade, was arrested on suspicion of drug activity on the grounds of the Gilmor Homes social housing development in Baltimore’s notorious Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood. </p>
<p>A video surfaced of Gray’s arrest that showed him screaming in pain as a police officer pressed his knee against his neck; later in the video several police officers dragged a listless and unresponsive Gray into a police wagon as on-lookers shouted that Gray was clearly in need of medical attention. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m7TZaLpHJhU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>What happened <a href="http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/freddie-gray/">in the 45 minutes after his 8.39am arrest</a> has sparked protest. After being loaded into the police wagon, Gray was not fastened into a stationary position with a seat belt. While the Baltimore Police Department has conceded that its officers <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3054694/Baltimore-police-admit-Freddie-Gray-got-medical-attention-van-ride-commissioner-won-t-resign-death.html">failed to follow proper procedure</a>, many suspect malicious intent; the city police department is renowned for its use of the intimidation tactic of “rough riding”, or failing to secure suspects in transport in order to cause discomfort and instill fear. </p>
<p>The practice of rough riding can be particularly dangerous and suspects are usually handcuffed, which prevents suspects from bracing themselves from injury. At some point during transit, Gray suffered a medical emergency. Gray’s spine was severed severely from his neck and he sustained three fractured vertebrae. Although Gray was rushed to the University of Maryland Medical Center, he died seven days later on April 19.</p>
<p>While protests began peacefully on April 27, they quickly descended into rioting, and a state of emergency has now been declared in Maryland. By April 28, 235 arrests had been made (including 34 juveniles), 144 vehicles had been burned along with 15 buildings and 20 police officers wounded. More than 400 Maryland state troopers and 1,700 Maryland national guardsmen were deployed to restore order to the city, which is under a strict curfew from 10pm to 5am. </p>
<p>Even the city’s storied baseball club, the Orioles, has been affected by the riots; two games against the Chicago White Sox were postponed. Put simply, Baltimore is <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-riot-aftermath-20150429-story.html#navtype=outfit">under a level of duress</a> that is disconcerting for such a large city.</p>
<p>Yet while the riots are attributed as a reaction to the death of Gray (similar to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ferguson-riots">events in Ferguson</a>), the truth is much more complicated. Indeed, there are many dissimilarities between Baltimore and Ferguson. While Ferguson had little black political representation and a police force that didn’t reflect local demographics, Baltimore has a black mayor and several black city councillors – and while the police force is majority white, nearly 45% of officers are black. </p>
<p>So, if black Baltimoreans have made great strides in <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121667/black-cops-black-mayors-didnt-save-baltimore-police-abuse">achieving political power in the city</a> (in contrast to Ferguson), what then explains such acrimonious rioting? I believe that the historical legacy of the city’s institutionalised racial housing segregation covenants and their impact on slum housing in the city have contributed to the systemic poverty and geographic isolation of the city’s majority black population. </p>
<p>In fact, there is a direct causal relationship between Gray’s death and the environmental condition of Baltimore’s slum housing.</p>
<h2>How they built Baltimore’s ghettos</h2>
<p>Ever since 1910, when a black lawyer attempted to purchase a home in Baltimore’s affluent Edmonson Village, the city relied on what came to be known as “<a href="http://sundaymagazine.org/2010/12/baltimore-tries-drastic-plan-of-race-segregation/">housing covenants</a>”. These covenants were legal ordinances enacted by the city to prevent black encroachment on white residential neighbourhoods. </p>
<p>Regardless of the level of black population growth, the covenants prevent black neighbourhood expansion – by the 1940s black people constituted more than a third of the city’s population but occupied only a fifth of urban space. While several Supreme Court cases invalidated Baltimore’s housing covenants, the covenants continued to be <em>de facto</em> law into the early 1970s, as Baltimore politicians and real-estate interests colluded to restrict the growth of black neighbourhoods. This process resulted in black Baltimoreans crowding into already sub-standard slum housing districts. </p>
<p>Although white flight eased tensions over neighbourhood expansion that began in the 1960s, the housing that was left was in particularly poor shape. Baltimore has been a majority black city since the mid-1970s, but the legacy of its racial housing policies continue to affect public health in the city to this day. One of the most striking examples of how housing policy has damaged black health is the example of lead paint poisoning.</p>
<h2>Lead poisoning</h2>
<p>Lead-infused paint was <a href="http://www.peoples-law.org/lead-paint-law-maryland">commonly used in Baltimore’s working class row-houses</a> built in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of Baltimore’s private housing stock derives from this period. After several epidemics of lead-paint poisoning and lead-induced meningitis in Baltimore’s children in the 1920s and 1930s, the Baltimore City Health Department attempted to ban the use of lead-based paint in Baltimore homes. </p>
<p>The BCHD found that lead paint poisoning was particularly acute among children, who were apt to eat sweet-tasting lead paint chips that peeled off the wall. Lead-paint poisoning in children was found to induce neurological problems, and children with lead-paint poisoning suffered in school. Despite the dangers of lead-paint, the lobbying efforts of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/30/obituaries/felix-wormser-86-dies-a-consultant-on-mining.html">Felix Wormser</a> and the Lead Industry Association ensured that lead paint remained a staple of Baltimore housing construction and refurbishment. </p>
<p>It was not until Richard Nixon signed the <a href="http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a066187.pdf">Lead Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act (LBPPPA)</a> in 1971 was there an effective legal tool to combat the continued use of lead paint. But tens of thousands of Baltimore row-houses remained encrusted with lead paint. Coincidentally, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">Gray grew up in one such toxic row-house</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poisonous legacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Langsdale Library</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gray spent the first years of his life at 1459 North Carey Street, in the impoverished Druid Heights neighbourhood, less than ten minutes’ walk from the Gilmor Homes projects where he was apprehended. While the Gilmor Homes development suffers its fair share of social problems, Gray would have had a much better chance of surviving his scuffle with the police had he had the benefit of social housing tenancy. Literally. </p>
<p>Gray’s mother Gloria Darden filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s against the landlord of her row-house, Pikesville resident <a href="http://www.mde.state.md.us/programs/PressRoom/Pages/143.aspx">Stanley Rochkind</a>, in protest of his failure to remove lead paint from the home, for which Darded paid US$300 a month. All three of Darden’s children, older daughter Carolina and twins Freddie and Fredericka, tested with abnormally high levels of lead in their blood (technically, any amount of lead in the blood is hazardous). </p>
<p>As a child, Gray had his blood tested six times between 1992 and 1996. On one occasion, he tested as having 19 micrograms per decilitre (mg/dL) of lead in his blood; the state of Maryland permits lead levels lower than 10 mg/dL. </p>
<p>While the trial was set for late 2009, it was postponed by the state to make room for four other lead paint poisoning suits: all direct against Rochkind. The case eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. </p>
<p>Additionally, Gray received treatment as a youth at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Baltimore hospital that treats children with illnesses of the brain, spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. His medical treatment did not prevent the onset of negative health effects, however. In addition to being born two months premature, Gray was diagnosed with ADHD and later dropped out of high school after failing several grades. He started using heroin, had been arrested 24 times before his final arrest and had served time in prison for a drug possession charge. </p>
<h2>All-too common</h2>
<p>Yet what makes Gray’s story so tragic is not its uniqueness, but rather its commonness.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of slum houses in Baltimore are encrusted with poisonous lead paint. Furthermore, lead paint is just as pervasive in abandoned houses, and this lead contributes to an environment deleterious to public health. </p>
<p>In the Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood where Gray was apprehended, 30% of private stock houses are either vacant or abandoned. Some 7% of young children in the neighbourhood have elevated lead levels in their blood. The connection between Gray’s death and lead paint might seem far-fetched if it weren’t so blatant. </p>
<p>While it is possible that Gray might have lived a longer, healthier life if he had lived in Gilmor Homes rather than a lead-laden row-house, the fact remains that Baltimore’s history of institutionalised racial segregation has contributed to the dereliction of the city’s row-housing slum districts. </p>
<p>Given that so many people are compelled to live in these unhealthy homes due to a lack of supply of adequate social housing – it is not surprising that Gray’s death has incited indignation. While riots cannot be condoned, their root causes must be considered if they are to be prevented in the future. </p>
<p>Gray’s death tipped Baltimore into turmoil, but his death is not the cause of the rioting. Rather, the city’s municipal legacy of racial segregation and its failure to provide healthy, affordable housing for its working-class Black population have cultivated feelings of anger and hopelessness in much of the city’s young people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Sharrer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Racial segregation and poisonous living conditions played a large part in determining the young man’s fate.Nicholas Sharrer, Post-Graduate Researcher, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409262015-04-28T21:35:41Z2015-04-28T21:35:41ZBaltimore riots: the fire this time and the fire last time and the time between<p><em>Updated editor’s note: Protests erupted Monday into violence in Baltimore following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after being taken into police custody. We asked scholars to comment on the implications of the riots, which occurred 47 years after Baltimore exploded after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The topic has proved so compelling, additional scholars have added their voices to our initial article.</em></p>
<h2>‘Us vs them’ constructs need to be ‘us with them’</h2>
<p><strong>Chad Posick, Georgia Southern University</strong></p>
<p>Just a cursory glance at some of the popular commentary in the media about the riots in Baltimore shows a great divide in the public on <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/27/baltimore-riots-photos/26488707/">opinions</a> regarding the reasons for and outcomes of the recent riots. </p>
<p>Some condemn protesters for being violent <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/baltimore-rioters-thugs-criminals/story?id=30642107">criminals</a> who are destroying their own neighborhoods. Others point the blame at overzealous, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/science-of-racism-prejudice">racist</a> cops who use excessive force. Some have called for an increase in riotous action to defeat the police while others call for more national guardsmen and police officers to quell protests. </p>
<p>In essence, this all leads to macro-scale violence escalation and a widening of the us vs them mindset. </p>
<p>We need to transform this into an “us <em>with</em> them” mindset in order to de-escalate violence. There are already examples of this.</p>
<p>In Ferguson, police took off riot gear and <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/ferguson-protest-thursday.html">joined</a> peaceful protestors. </p>
<p>In New York, police are already expected to get more training in <a href="http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2014/12/23/de-escalation-techniques-help-cops-calm-scene/20811031/">de-escalation</a> techniques as recent incidents have illuminated the need for more training. <a href="http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/content/role-empathy-crime-policing-and-justice">Our research</a> shows that when the police show empathy trust and perceptions of effectiveness increase.</p>
<p>Moreover, programs like <a href="http://www.campgooddays.org/programs-project-tips">Project TIPS </a>(Trust, Information, Programs, and Services) in Rochester, NY, highlight how communities can voice their concerns and work with police to improve communities while a related project brings police and teens together so that the community can understand viewpoints of law enforcement. </p>
<p>The spark that flamed the Baltimore riots is the same one kindling many potential riots across the United States. Pointless finger-pointing is ineffective, what is effective <a href="https://theconversation.com/empathy-on-the-street-how-understanding-between-police-and-communities-makes-us-safer-40041">are strategies to bring people together </a> to improve community safety.</p>
<h2>In America, democracy is not a universal experience</h2>
<p><strong>Briallen Hopper and Vesla Weaver, Yale University</strong></p>
<p>Americans often assume that US citizenship automatically guarantees certain universal rights and freedoms: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the freedom to work, to vote, to assemble, to walk down the street unmolested by state authorities. </p>
<p>But places like West Baltimore demonstrate the limits of this universal citizenship. </p>
<p>Americans may have a single Constitution, but we experience vastly different modes of governance and relationships to authority, and not all of us feel like we are living in a democracy. Some of us live in enclaves that feel more like <a href="http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/">an authoritarian regime</a>. </p>
<p>Due to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">government policies or the lack of them</a>, many of the mundane daily activities of life – getting a driver’s license, getting a job, taking the bus, taking out a non-predatory loan, visiting a doctor, voting – can be burdensome, prohibitive, or unavailable. Too often, residents of these neighborhoods know that when they are in situations of family crisis, illness, or emergency, or even when they are simply minding their own business, government authorities will arrive and make the situation worse.</p>
<p>This experience of both <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/12/violence-racialized-failure-american-state-guest-post-lisa-m-miller">state failure</a> and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/what-policing-justice-in-baltimore-requires/391598/">harsh treatment</a> is not simply a matter of economic inequality or lack of access to resources. Instead, it speaks to a fundamental difference in the way the government – from police to schools to the welfare system – orients itself towards its residents. </p>
<p>People who live just a few miles away from Freddie Gray’s neighborhood experience a government that is comparatively helpful, generous, and protective: a government that gives tax breaks, protects property, and keeps the cobblestone streets in tip-top condition for <a href="http://baltimore.org/neighborhoods-maps">tourists</a>. </p>
<p>But many residents of Baltimore have a government that treats them as suspects or supplicants, not citizens. Consider that Gray’s neighborhood was home to the <a href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/origin/md/report.html">highest rates of incarceration</a> in the entire state. And in neighborhoods like his, even people who “play by the rules” like 87-year-old grandmother <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/">Venus Green</a>, who had her shoulder broken by a policeman in her own home, still experience the harms of being governed in punitive ways. </p>
<p>This undemocratic experience of American government understandably causes apathy, avoidance, and despair, hardly the building blocks of collective action and resistance. But against these expectations, the Baltimore residents of under-served, over-policed neighborhoods have been <a href="http://blackwestchester.com/2015/04/27/10000-peacefully-protest-bmore/">coming together in common cause</a>.</p>
<p>And for this reason, while we see in the Baltimore uprising many sources of sorrow, we also find in it a cause for hope. The protests are a call for this country to reimagine the orientation of the government toward low-income people of color, so that democracy can become a lived reality for all Americans.</p>
<h2>The root causes of Baltimore riots</h2>
<p><strong>John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County</strong> </p>
<p>As Baltimore burns and images of violence and mayhem fill our screens, many people are asking why? Why does the death of one young man cause a city to go up in flames?</p>
<p>Any event has multiple causes, but there are at least three background factors that we should bear in mind. </p>
<p>The first is the recent momentum of the police brutality narrative: since Ferguson in 2014 we have become witness to mounting evidence of police brutality. A US Department of Justice <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf">report</a> on the Ferguson police department revealed routine rights violations and racial bias. It is not unique. In April in South Carolina, a white police officer shot an unarmed black man eight times in the back, killing him for a minor traffic violation. The images of police violence and community perceptions of cover-up have become increasingly common, with each case reinforcing the sense of injustice.</p>
<p>The second is the lack of trust between police and minority black populations. Despite more black officers and more blacks in senior positions, there is still a gulf between blacks and police departments that community policing measures have failed to bridge. This turns into a chasm between poor blacks and the police because of the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/publications/under-siege-life-low-income-latinos-south/2-racial-profiling">“active” </a>policing of low-income areas. </p>
<p>The legacy of policies of the <a href="http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=bjalp">tough on crime</a> approach, the <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war">war on drugs</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-militarization-is-a-legacy-of-cold-war-paranoia-32251">militarization of police</a> constitutes a police insurgency against low-income black communities. Young black men are stopped more frequently and jailed more often and longer than white counterparts for similar activities. In Baltimore, <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet">one in three males</a> can expect to spend some time in jail during their lifetime.</p>
<p>The third element is the stifled economic opportunities and limited social mobility of many inner-city residents. Rising inequality in the US has meant a small minority has done well, the middle class is squeezed and those of lower income are trapped in funnels of failure. For young people caught in a web of multiple deprivations, street violence is commonplace. </p>
<p>One of the sites of the rioting in Baltimore is in the blighted neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester, which was also the scene of rioting in 1968. Over 37 years later little progress has been made in a community that is 96% black and where <a href="http://bniajfi.org/community/Sandtown-Winchester_Harlem%20Park/">47% of children</a> live below the poverty level, more than double the national average. Some have moved out and some have moved on, but for those left, Martin Luther King’s Dream is still just a dream.</p>
<p>I fear that that the violent images will lead to only a very limited law-and-order debate. Street violence is unacceptable but the tragedy is that minority areas are not just places of criminal activity, they are sites of victimization. </p>
<p>A law-and-order debate should be focus on reducing violence against low-income minority residents who are the primary victims of violent crime in Baltimore and across the nation. This country needs to address structural issues of poverty and economic opportunity as well as immediate concerns of how we make the streets safer for all our citizens.</p>
<h2>Re-Development and the uprisings</h2>
<p><strong>Kate Drabinski, University of Maryland, Baltimore County</strong></p>
<p>Today, the news media will look over the aftermath of yesterday’s uprising in Baltimore and take stock of the burned remains of cars and storefronts. Reporters will also see the shells of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/baltimore-has-decided-some-neighborhoods-just-arent-worth-saving-2012-2">46,000 empty lots and vacant homes</a> lining the neighborhoods that were riven by unrest. </p>
<p>However, the media and its audience must be careful not to think that the burned-out look of so much of the city is the result of this recent unrest, or even of the <a href="http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/2007/5/100-years-the-riots-of-1968">uprisings of 1968</a>, which followed the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w_MIJGkO1zY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1968 riots in Baltimore.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Baltimore’s blight is the result of decades of disinvestment, from the <a href="http://allenbrizee.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/blockbusting.pdf">blockbusting and white flight</a> of the 1950s, the <a href="https://indyreader.org/content/history-housing-policy-and-segregation-baltimore">urban renewal policies</a> of the 1960s, and the evacuation of the largely poor and black neighborhoods of East Baltimore to make way <a href="http://www.icic.org/connection/blog-entry/blog-ask-the-expert-answering-the-lingering-ebdi-questions">for the expansion of Johns Hopkins University</a> taking place today. Development has long been uneven in Baltimore, and black folks and their neighborhoods have consistently been left out of that development.</p>
<p>What we are seeing today could only have occurred against this backdrop of planned uneven development. One of the dangers of seeing the riot as an <em>event</em> is precisely this danger of losing historical perspective about the ways the neighborhoods burning on television are the very ones that have been cut off from the growth of the city’s downtown core. </p>
<p>When asking what can be done, it is important to get to the root, to ask and see how these neighborhoods have been constituted as the ones that will burn, figuratively and literally. </p>
<h2>Going beyond the burning</h2>
<p><strong>Michael Sierra-Arevalo, Yale University</strong></p>
<p>When the sun rose Tuesday, the toll of Monday’s riots in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody were laid bare: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/apr/28/baltimore-freddie-gray-riots-live-updates">20 Baltimore police officers injured</a>, the charred skeletons of cars and looted businesses, and over <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-baltimore-riots-what-we-know-20150428-story.html">200 arrests</a>. </p>
<p>However, the cost of the Freddie Gray riots cannot be measured in dollars and lives alone. For communities and police alike, the death of Freddie Gray and the violence that swept through the streets of Baltimore cut deeper than burned businesses or hurled cinder blocks.</p>
<p>For minority residents, the death of Freddie Gray is proof par excellence that the protests after the deaths of <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/week-outrage-protests-full-list-michael-brown-eric-garner-demonstration-sites-state-1751517">Mike Brown, Eric Gardner</a>, <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/day_of_protests_over_tamir_ric.html">Tamir Rice</a>, and too many <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/south-carolina-protests-over-walter-scott-s-death-1.2169937">more</a> have been futile. It’s proof that the battles of the Baltimore <a href="http://archives.ubalt.edu/bsr/index.html">riots of 1968 </a>are still being waged, and that police and the powers that be still see and treat protests and protestors as problems to be controlled.</p>
<p>For police, Monday’s violence is angering. They see people willfully destroying their communities and attacking police officers. What they do not see is powerless, unheard victims of centuries of racism, segregation, and inequality.</p>
<p>For both sides, the last few days in Baltimore are only the most recent in a long and tumultuous <a href="http://anteropietila.com">history</a> of mutual distrust and fear between police and communities of color. To make matters worse, when the smoke clears and the glass has been swept up, neither side is likely to have changed their mind about the other. </p>
<p>The road to reconciliation must begin in the same streets now marred by violent unrest. Just as distrust and fear have been born out of decades of interactions between police and citizens, it is through one interaction at a time that we can begin to heal the wounds that scar the public and police. </p>
<p>Recent developments like the federally funded <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-national-effort-build-trust-between-law-enforcement-and">National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice</a>harness the power of <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1527&context=fss_papers">procedural justice</a> and <a href="http://nnscommunities.org/old-site-files/RACE_AND_RECONCILIATION_FINAL.pdf">racial reconciliation</a>to build trust and establish the legitimacy of law. </p>
<p>In lieu of the truncheon, these strategies leverage respect and honesty to built trust that can <a href="https://theconversation.com/civilizing-the-fractured-relationship-between-police-and-minority-communities-40061">enhance the safety of citizens and police alike</a>. </p>
<p>It is not an easy road, and much work remains to be done, but the fires and blood in Baltimore make it all too clear that the time to dedicate ourselves to building trust between the police and the public is now. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79655/original/image-20150428-3080-1110byi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">School kids from The Wire, Season 4.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheWireS4.jpg">Promotion photo, The Wire</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Baltimore’s abandoned school children</h2>
<p><strong>Kimberly R. Moffitt, University of Maryland,Baltimore County</strong></p>
<p>In its fourth season, the television drama The Wire, set in Baltimore, offered us a glimpse of the systemic tragedy of a public education system. </p>
<p>And yet the critically acclaimed series missed an important element of its expose. </p>
<p>While we gazed upon the limited academic opportunities within the schools and the disparate lives of the children who attend them, not once did we experience the pent-up frustration and bitterness of these young people – and the trauma that is inflicted upon them. Instead, we came to understand the politics and policies behind a system that failed to educate the children and made them pawns, rather than players in their own destiny. </p>
<p>The recent rioting and looting in Baltimore included participation by some school-aged children. The festering sore of inequality and inequity remains unhealed and unresolved.</p>
<p>The closing of Baltimore City Schools on Tuesday was a decision that considered the safety of our children who mostly navigate the city on public transportation rather than school buses. (The city ceased running its own transportation system exclusively years ago in an effort to reduce costs). </p>
<p>However, we also missed an opportunity to create spaces in public, safe places (ie schools) where youth could express their continued frustrations and strive toward healing. </p>
<p>In urban centers like Baltimore, mental health professionals are key personnel who assist youth in need. But inadequate resources and budget deficits jeopardize these services. </p>
<p>While grant opportunities and federal funding are available to school districts across the country for Common Core standards and test preparation, such emphasis is not extended to urban centers whose students experience subpar living conditions and psychological trauma as a result of abject poverty, drugs, crime, and violence affecting their communities, and in turn, their <a href="http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/reports/2013/rwjf404627">mental health</a>. This is despite the fact that such conditions assuredly impact the academic ability of students. </p>
<p>Additionally, even when the data confirm that school buildings are deemed the best place to reach students in need, school psychologists, for example, are <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/squeeze.aspx">ever fewer</a> in number. And those psychologists that do work in schools spend considerable time fulfilling federal special education mandates such as creation of individualized education programs (IEPs) for students with disabilities, leaving them little time to address the social and psychological development of children. </p>
<p>Now we are faced with the next generation of marginalized youth who demand to be heard, even as they are seen as counterproductive by those who continue to ignore their physical, academic, and psychological needs to be successful in an educational setting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimberly Moffitt is affiliated with Five Smooth Stones Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys Public Charter School.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Sierra-Arevalo works with Project Longevity, a violence reduction strategy that is supported by the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He also consults with the NNSC in their violence reduction efforts throughout the United States. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vesla Weaver receives funding from the Russell Sage Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Briallen Hopper, Chad Posick, John Rennie Short, and Kate Drabinski do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A panel of scholars comments on the origins and the implications of the violence in Baltimore.Kimberly Moffitt, Associate Professor of American Studies and Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Language, Literacy and Culture PhD. program., University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyBriallen Hopper, Lecturer in English , Yale UniversityChad Posick, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice , Georgia Southern UniversityJohn Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyKate Drabinski, Lecturer of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL) program, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyMichael Sierra-Arévalo, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology , Yale UniversityVesla Weaver, Assistant Professor of African-American Studies and Political Science, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409062015-04-28T17:38:44Z2015-04-28T17:38:44ZWhat led to the Baltimore riots?<p>Baltimore is dealing with the aftermath of a night of disorder that saw at least 15 police officers injured and 27 arrests following the funeral of Freddie Gray, an African American who died a week after being arrested. An overnight curfew has been imposed and up to 5,000 National Guard troops could be on the streets, with their commander claiming: “We will be out in massive force.”</p>
<p>But even if these militarised deployments quell the disorder (and if the riots in Ferguson last year are anything to go by, they could well <a href="http://theconversation.com/militarised-policing-is-not-the-answer-to-fergusons-problems-30676">escalate the situation</a>), they will not address the reasons why such disorder can begin and spread. </p>
<p>Studies of crowd disorder by psychologists in the UK point out that urban riots are actually quite rare in countries such as Britain and the US and that when they do happen, it’s often because of a complex mix of events that operate within a wider social context. Specific outbreaks of disorder are usually triggered by a clash in views of legitimacy between opposing sides (such as protesters and the police). </p>
<p>I would therefore argue that crowd disorder is clearly not inevitable after controversial deaths at the hands of the police and that when it does occur it is vital to explore how such incidents are dealt with in their aftermath. There is a danger that expecting and preparing for trouble in such situations could create a chain of events that makes such disorder more likely. </p>
<h2>Self-fulfilling prophecies</h2>
<p>It is necessary to explore specific events leading up to each instance of disorder to gain a greater understanding of how they can occur. A quick look at the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/27/baltimore-police-protesters-violence-freddie-gray">timeline</a> of events illustrates just how complex they are. </p>
<p>Gray was arrested on April 12, fell into a coma on April 14 (after suffering a severe spinal injury during his arrest) and died on April 19. The protests initially began on April 18 outside the local police station, but then spread to Baltimore City Hall – 12 people were arrested at protests outside the baseball stadium on April 25. </p>
<p>But the disorder did not start until after the funeral on April 27, eight days after Gray died – and two weeks since the initial incident, suggesting that there may be other factors at play here that can help explain events. </p>
<p>For instance, there was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/28/national-guard-arrives-in-baltimore-after-day-and-night-rioting-following/">speculation</a> that Baltimore police claimed to have received intelligence that local gangs had put previous differences to one side in order to kill police officers. </p>
<p>However, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/27/baltimore-police-protesters-violence-freddie-gray">other sources</a> also claim that a group of high school students were left in the area after the funeral because of public transport being cancelled. The same sources suggested that the disorder first began when this group made their way to a shopping mall – the local transportation hub – and were confronted by police in riot gear. The students began throwing water bottles and rocks at the officers who then responded with tear gas and pepper spray – and the disorder later spread across Baltimore. </p>
<p>Time may tell as to the precise accuracy of these accounts, but to my mind, they illustrate how differing perceptions of such events can create a cycle of escalating disorder. </p>
<p>Local police commanders may well have felt justified in deploying their officers in protective clothing (riot gear) because they had serious reason to believe that there was a threat to their safety. But that deployment could well have been perceived as a threatening move by the high school students, who not only felt their transport options home had been cut off but that their path had been blocked by police in an overtly intimidating way. </p>
<h2>Sparking disorder</h2>
<p>So it could be that it was this clash of views between the two sides that created the initial confrontation, from which wider disorder developed and spread to other parts of Baltimore, resulting in widespread looting and buildings being set alight. <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mobs-Englishmen-Myths-realities-riots-ebook/dp/B006654U9U">Studies of urban disorder in the UK</a> have found that similar processes were the initial spark for disorder. </p>
<p>For instance, the 2011 riots in England initially began in Tottenham, London after a protest outside the local police station (in response to the police shooting of Mark Duggan) was charged by the police, and the disorder then quickly spread across London and other English cities over the following five days. </p>
<p>While there is <a href="http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-killed-police/19423">controversy</a> over the actual figures of how many African American males die at the hands of the police in the US, it is widely accepted that they are disproportionately more likely to come into contact with the police, and this too often ends in tragedy. Clearly, these figures need to be read in the context of the deep social, political and economic inequalities that so many African Americans suffer from in the US today.</p>
<p>However, if we just focused on this broad context, we might ask ourselves why the shockingly high number of deaths doesn’t result in much more disorder in American cities and so this is why specific trigger events need to be explored as well. </p>
<p>Often those who study crowds are accused of being apologists for riots when they try to explain such events. However, if we don’t properly explore and address both the micro and macro reasons for why disorder occurs, we shouldn’t be surprised if such disorder continues to happen and spread further afield. Furthermore, if we assume that disorder is inevitable in such situations, we reduce the chances of being able to objectively explore such events and change policing tactics that may make such disorder more likely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Cocking does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Better handling of peaceful protests at the death of Freddie Gray might have prevented the riots.Chris Cocking, Researcher into crowd behaviour, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409172015-04-28T16:31:04Z2015-04-28T16:31:04ZBaltimore burning: death of African American in police custody lit old tinderbox<p>It was only a matter of time before Baltimore erupted into racial violence. The city epitomises urban deprivation and under-development. In decline since World War II, when its population peaked at just under a million people, the city now has 600,000 residents, two-thirds of who are African Americans.</p>
<p>Unemployment is around 9%, but it is <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-04-09/news/bs-ed-box-ban-baltimore-20140409_1_baltimore-city-council-unemployment-rate-greater-baltimore-committee">twice that in the city’s black commmunity</a> and the city has a history of troubled race relations <a href="http://www.prrac.org/pdf/riots_and_rebirth.pdf">going back more than 100 years</a> to the development of segregated housing developments which effectively “ghettoised” Baltimore’s African-American communities in poorly serviced and cramped communities. </p>
<p>Now Baltimore is the focus of violence as protests at the death, in police custody, of a young African-American man <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/27/baltimore-police-protesters-violence-freddie-gray">Freddie Gray</a> who died on April 19 of spinal injuries after being arrested and found in posession of a knife.</p>
<p>Gray’s death is just the latest in a recent spate of high-profile incidents involving white police officers and young black men. While Gray’s death is not quite so clear-cut as that of Walter Scott, whose death was captured on video after he was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/12/walter-scott-shooting-officer-michael-slager-audio-recording">shot in the back</a> by Officer Michael Slager, it continues to raise questions about policing of black-majority communities in the United States. </p>
<p>Gray’s arrest was videoed, and he was evidently alive and well when put in the police van, but within a short time he had suffered such severe injuries that he died in hospital. He was arrested by white police officers.</p>
<p>Baltimore is far from the only American city to have a problem with racialised policing. Indeed most American cities have exactly this problem, where black neighbourhoods, usually the most economically depressed and disadvantaged, are perceived to be more closely and severely policed than affluent white areas. In many locations police forces are disproportionately white, even when the wider community is majority black or Hispanic. This reinforces the impression that police forces are there to control and contain the non-white communities.</p>
<p>In reality, Baltimore’s police force has more black officers than many comparable cities – though still a minority – and both the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/240268-baltimore-police-commissioner-take-control-of-your-kids">city’s police commissioner</a> and <a href="http://mayor.baltimorecity.gov/">the mayor</a> are also black. One might imagine that the black community would look on these figures of black authority with pride and that it would help to reduce the tension between the police and the black community. In reality, for some at least, black officers are seen to be collaborators in the system of racial oppression, modern-day “Uncle Toms” who by repeating the mantra of calm, peaceful protest, are only perpetuating a social system that marginalises the most oppressed.</p>
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<h2>Violent resistance</h2>
<p>One question I always pose to students learning about the American Revolution is: “When is violent resistance justified?” Americans used a variety of tactics to resist British authority in the years before revolutionary war broke out, including economic boycotts and intimidation – but eventually they determined on armed resistance as the only way to achieve their goals. The same thought processes are going through the minds of rioters in Baltimore. </p>
<p>The deaths of young black men at the hands of the police are <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white">so common</a> that it seems to some that nothing is being done to prevent them. How many peaceful marches have there been? What has happened as a result? There are laws in place to prevent excessive force being used by the police but the chances of an officer being charged with any crime without overwhelming evidence are slim.</p>
<h2>Gun culture</h2>
<p>The pervasiveness of guns in American culture, staunchly defended by many politicians, does not help matters. Police do face armed criminals who are prepared to shoot at them, so they carry their own weapons and use them. The standard defence to any accusation of officers using inappropriate lethal force is that they “felt in fear of their life”. This argument is difficult to counter – officers should be able to do their job without risking their lives. </p>
<p>But the <a href="https://theconversation.com/militarised-policing-is-not-the-answer-to-fergusons-problems-30676">militarisation of police forces</a> has also proceeded apace with ex-army surplus equipment now routinely being deployed on the streets of American cities. This militarisation ramps up the stakes with criminals. Instead of being armed with handguns or shotguns, criminals use assault weapons or sub-machine guns, and face-off against police using armoured vehicles recently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>American police may be trigger-happy, they killed more than 600 people last year – but they also have a deeper racial problem that will not be solved overnight. There is a deep-seated fear of what is perceived as the armed and violent black man, something that goes back to slavery times – and the white response has always been equally violent. </p>
<p>Slave men were horribly abused in order to show others that resistance was not to be tolerated. Once slavery ended, lynchings became the main method of exerting white control over black men. The guilt or innocence of each victim was not as important as the wider message sent to the black community. </p>
<p>The killing of unarmed young black men by white police officers continues this assertion racial control in America.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Lockley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite having a black police commissioner and mayor, Baltimore has become the latest focus of African-American anger at racist policing.Tim Lockley, Reader in American history, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.