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Why the CVS Burned
Slate ^ | May 1 2015 | Louis Hyman

Posted on 05/03/2015 4:55:05 PM PDT by Second Amendment First

The rioting in Baltimore wasn’t hooliganism. It was a protest against the depredations of the ghetto economy.

Most people can sympathize with the anger on display this week in the streets of Baltimore. It’s relatively easy to feel compassion for people who’ve suffered police brutality and abject poverty, even if you’ve never experienced either. Looting and burning is harder to understand, since torching a CVS store would hardly seem to have anything to do with protesting the actions of the Baltimore Police Department. President Obama decried the Baltimore riots as “senseless violence and destruction.” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake also despaired at the destruction. “We worked so hard to get a company like CVS to invest in this neighborhood,” she said, “this is the only place that so many people have to pick up their prescriptions.” Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood?

The reason, I think, is likely the same reason that poor black Americans in cities across the country burned “their own” neighborhoods in the late 1960s: They did not experience those places as their own. Then, like now, police brutality was a precipitating cause of the violence, but it was the long-term experience of the indignities of the ghetto that gave shape to the riots. Then, like now, commentators compared the rioters to animals who had run wild and needed discipline. Rioting, to these bystanders, was not proper political protest but the criminal actions of poor people who merely wanted to grab what they could for free. This narrative, which I heard throughout my childhood growing up in Baltimore in the 1980s, put the blame not on the depredations of the ghetto, but on the character of its residents. It completely misapprehends the political economy of our poorest neighborhoods.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Maryland
KEYWORDS: baltimore; blackkk; demagogicparty; elijahcummings; louishyman; maryland; memebuilding; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; slate
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To: Second Amendment First

TOTAL UNABASHED PURE 100% USDA BOVINE EXCREMENT!!!

I have been in slums outside of major cities in south and central America. The locals never burn their neighborhoods. THUGS in USA burn their own neighborhoods and now have an entire media complex that blames the stores the THUGS burned for getting burned. talk about blaming the victim.


21 posted on 05/03/2015 5:04:30 PM PDT by Organic Panic
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To: Gasshog

This isn’t Stormfront.

Black Americans aren’t “colored.”


22 posted on 05/03/2015 5:04:52 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (ANYBODY BUT FRICKING JEB AND HILLARY)
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To: Second Amendment First

We won’t know till we find out who started the fire. I bet it will not be a local resident of Baltimore and probably not Maryland.


23 posted on 05/03/2015 5:05:36 PM PDT by ThomasThomas ("YOUR BADGE! SHOW HIM YOUR BADGE!")
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To: Doc91678

The Oxy wasn’t in danger, it’s behind a screen they could never get through. Diapers and booze, maybe candy and electronics would have been vulnerable.


24 posted on 05/03/2015 5:05:44 PM PDT by steve8714 (Election day in Ferguson. What could possibly go wrong?)
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To: Second Amendment First

first off, it was criminal hooliganism

second, to the extent it was a “protest of the black economy” ... the author can now ask... in just what way.... this violent “protest” has improved the econommy

know anyone who wants to invest capital and hire labor in Baltimore now?


25 posted on 05/03/2015 5:06:05 PM PDT by faithhopecharity (“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people g)
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To: Second Amendment First

“The rioting in Baltimore wasn’t hooliganism. It was a protest against the depredations of the ghetto economy.”

Why are you stupid, Louis?


26 posted on 05/03/2015 5:06:07 PM PDT by lowbridge
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To: Second Amendment First

Because it was there.


27 posted on 05/03/2015 5:07:01 PM PDT by cripplecreek ("For by wise guidance you can wage your war")
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

That’s right, they’re African Americans. /s


28 posted on 05/03/2015 5:07:19 PM PDT by TigersEye (STONE COLD ZOMBIE SCOURGE)
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To: Second Amendment First

Who needs a drug store anyway? I’m sure they can do perfectly fine without one.


29 posted on 05/03/2015 5:08:19 PM PDT by kaehurowing
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To: Second Amendment First
The ghetto subculture never made sense to me. They fight gentrification in their neighborhoods, as though they prefer to live in a blighted area saturated with check-cashing joints, pawn shops and crack houses.
30 posted on 05/03/2015 5:09:05 PM PDT by SamAdams76
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To: Second Amendment First

I think he means the political economy of Democrat enclaves. There’s no capitalism there. It’s a normal communism.

And the author’s name is Hyman.


31 posted on 05/03/2015 5:09:49 PM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Second Amendment First

“It’s relatively easy to feel compassion for people who’ve suffered police brutality and abject poverty, even if you’ve never experienced either.”
He proves that’s not so, at least for him.

He has a script he’s been taught that blinds him to understanding. He’s even sure that he doesn’t have to even try to understand. He can explain it all with the script.


32 posted on 05/03/2015 5:11:11 PM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat/RINO Party!)
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To: Second Amendment First

“They did not experience those places as their own.”

Funny thing is, when I go into a grocery store or drug store, I have never experienced it as my own. In fact, the thought never occurs to me. It is a contract; they provide goods and services and I pay for it. If I don’t like it, I avoid the business. I know it is not my own.That is why customers will be removed if they cause trouble. Rioters are not removed because that would be racism. If I were to cause trouble, I would be removed. See how simple it all is?
However, the cost to the people in that neighborhood will go up, and only a minority of them rioted. It will cause more anger, true, but it will probably be directed at the wrong people.


33 posted on 05/03/2015 5:11:36 PM PDT by odawg
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To: Second Amendment First

AS I understand, CVS was heavily lobbied to build that location. I doubt CVS management will make the same mistake twice.


34 posted on 05/03/2015 5:12:46 PM PDT by Poison Pill
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

‘Black Americans aren’t “colored.”’

Neither are they ‘black’. They’re negroes.
A race, like caucasians.


35 posted on 05/03/2015 5:14:18 PM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat/RINO Party!)
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To: Second Amendment First
Hyman

"It can be one of the oldest English surnames, and if so is locational, or if Ashkenasic it originates from the Hebrew word "khayim" meaning life." http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Hyman

36 posted on 05/03/2015 5:15:06 PM PDT by PAR35
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To: RedMDer

Or that poor woman who lost her job at CVS when it burned and then her home when the thugs burned that, too.


37 posted on 05/03/2015 5:17:10 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: kaehurowing

Right, now the thugs can sell their own drugs without competition from CVS.


38 posted on 05/03/2015 5:17:14 PM PDT by batterycommander (Drop five zero, fire for effect..)
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To: Second Amendment First
I guess they never heard of combat pay.

Priceless!

39 posted on 05/03/2015 5:18:38 PM PDT by BwanaNdege
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To: Second Amendment First
With all due respect, assistant professor Louis Hyman of Cornell University is full of Bravo Sierra. I have seen businesses struggle to survive and lose in these so called “ghetto” neighborhoods.

Case in point: a neighborhood on our city's southwest side went from predominantly generational Italian to black in the 1950s and 1960s. Crime went up: burglaries, retail theft, muggings, prostitution, drugs. Unemployment went up. Business moved out and so did the Italians. They were replaced by lowlife trash that perpetuated the death spiral. Now the same pattern is repeating, but this time the blacks are being crowded out by Latinos and Hispanics. These people are trying to improve the damage done over the years by the feral sunburned Amish Mafia, but far too many businesses will not come back because the causes of why formed businesses left still remain. It is the people that corrupt these neighborhoods and then play the pity party card. Sorry folks, but this is the result of fouling the nest where you live. It is that simple.

40 posted on 05/03/2015 5:19:38 PM PDT by MasterGunner01
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