Posted on 05/09/2015 7:18:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In the summer of 1996 I got off a long flight at Baltimore to begin a PhD at Johns Hopkins University. My roommates-to-be were two Indian students who had rented a car to pick me up were somewhat unfamiliar with the roads. So, having taken a wrong turn off the highway, we found ourselves in West Baltimore, not far from Mondawmin Mall where two weeks ago rioting began in the wake of the custodial death of Freddie Gray. Out of the backseat I saw shabbily dressed people sitting on plastic chairs or on the stoops of their rowhouses. These houses were faced with a material that I later learned was called Formstone, a cheap composite that Baltimore's infamous son, filmmaker John Waters, once called the "polyester of brick." "We're in a bad neighbourhood," one of my roommates remarked while the other scanned the map for a way out. It took a while for us to find our way out, enough time for me to notice that all of these people — tired-looking older people walking with limps, sullen faced younger folk standing around like they had nowhere to go — were black. "White people are scared of coming here," I was informed. "And you should also stay out of these kinds of neighbourhoods, get mugged."
Formstone, patented in the 1920s and infamous for promoting and hiding seepage on the walls it covered, was also very much in evidence in Hamden, a neighbourhood not far from the University campus where the less affluent white people lived amongst car workshops and bars that sold two-dollar beers in cans, in houses outside which cheap garden ornaments — like the pink flamingos made famous by John Waters' camp classic of the same name — proclaimed the cultural and economic status of their occupants. In the first weeks of my stay in Baltimore I was advised to not go to these neighbourhoods either. I may not get mugged but with my skin colour I could get beaten up, I was told.
Baltimore was, I learned quickly enough, a divided city.
North of the University were the neighbourhoods of Roland Park and Guilford with their million-dollar homes and their manicured gardens. A modernist highrise apartment block, built by none other than Mies van der Rohe, was its architectural pride and you could see it right on Charles Street as you drove up north to Towson through the affluent Rodgers Forge neighbourhood which was later to produce the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, Michael Phelps. East of Guilford was York Road across which lay more bad neighbourhoods, the black ones. All the through streets within Guilford were blocked on the York Road side. No one could drive in through there which made it easier, I guess, to pretend that no one lived across there.
Baltimore was divided, not just between black and white, but also between poor and rich.
This was all supposed to change, we were told in the late 1990s. Large companies were beginning to open offices downtown. Money was coming back into the city, the bad times were over. And money did come back into the city. There was construction everywhere downtown. But when the new buildings began to take shape we saw that they were all parking lots. The new jobs were coming, but the people who would do them would live in the suburbs. They would come into the city during the day, park their cars, go to work, have a drink or two in the bars around downtown and drive home. Some jobs were also created for those who lived in the city: they cleaned up the offices late at night.
Why are people rioting on the streets of an American city? Why doesn't the government of the richest country in the world help them? Possibly the answer is that there are two Americas: one is college-educated and upwardly mobile, the other is under-skilled and stuck with no place to go. And governments are often peopled by Americans from the first of these two Americas who don't understand what the people in the second America want. To illustrate this, here's an anecdote, a gentle but violent one:
Somewhere in the early 2000s the City of Baltimore, under the stewardship of Mayor O'Malley — who may challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination this year — decided that they needed to raise the spirit of Baltimore. Chicago has recently installed painted wooden cows all around the city and the public had responded very positively. So the City of Baltimore decided to do something similar. Baltimore's best known produce is crabs but, possibly because crabs are difficult to sculpt, they decided to install woodenfish all over the city. It was a reprehensible idea and when one such fish appeared on the intersection where I lived — an intersection where cars had been broken into on three of four corners, the fourth being a no-parking zone — I was very upset. After a few days of mulling it over I decided to write a note and paste it on the fish: This is offensive, remove it. Later that day on my way back home I saw that someone had hacked the head off the fish with a chainsaw. Now that, I say, full of pride for the place that I considered home for six years, is the spirit of Baltimore.
I guess he’s just saying the Baltimore kind of sucks.
I’m only remarking though, because this is the first
Baltimore article I’ve scanned that mentions John Waters, so thumbs up from me for a sentimental favorite.
Is Baltimore government "peopled" by Americans from the first of these two Americas? I guess if the current mayor and states attorney who are "peopling" the current government are members of the first group, then the answer is, yes.
I know one thing,he did not get his PhD in cohesive writing that makes a point.
Bagchi comes from Delhi. He’s sure got some nerve judging Baltimore by who knows what standard.
OMGosh .. I didn’t realize it had been 50 years.
NO WONDER IT’S SUCH A MESS IN BALTIMORE.
Ummm ... M’Kay Amitabha .... thanks for sharing ..... NOT!
Or, even Queen Nancy!
I didn’t know about the painted wooden cows.
Amitabha, what you’ve just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent screed, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this thread is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Baba Rum Rutie is a big cricket hero in India.
Yes, that wonderful country of India...home of dead critters in the Ganges and people living cheek by jowl in the worst sort of poverty. We sure need advice on an equitable society from India, Where Caste Is King.
I didn't know they were wooden - I thought they were paper-mâché - but they were kind of fun for a while.
So...why does that cow have horns like a bull? A GayBaconLettuceandTomato cow?
WTH? I’m confused trying to read this..
Strange isn’t it? It’s as though his mind blocks off the streets like the neighborhoods along York road. It’s easier to pretend he hasn’t seen a true caste system in India and jumped out to the suburb of America himself.
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