Posted on 05/03/2015 4:55:05 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
The rioting in Baltimore wasnt 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. Its relatively easy to feel compassion for people whove suffered police brutality and abject poverty, even if youve 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 ...
Liberal insanity...white guilt masquerading as thoughtful exposition.
This is what progressivism produces....drivel and blather trying to pander to those who would rob him blind
Sure they are. I see them refer to themselves as people of color frequently.
Yes, without “stable breeding populations” the concept of race is losing it’s utility.
Also the localization of races led to cultural distinctions that could be made between them.
Nowadays the concept is pretty much of use to just Democrat politicians and, very occasionally, to doctors.
Is this the new excuse because “racist white cops” fell apart?
It’s interesting that a very high percentage of commenters refused to swallow the professor’s bullsh.t theory about the goals of the rioters. Maybe even the readers of lib mags like Slate are beginning to see the light. Sometimes a thug is just a thug.
You left out Coolidge.
Great post !
Well, I guess I'm not most people. I do not understand the source of the anger. These people have been given incredible opportunities but will not take advantage of them. To bad, so sad.
Its relatively easy to feel compassion for people whove suffered police brutality and abject poverty, even if youve never experienced either.
I have experienced neither. I worked to put my own way through college. I studied and graduated at the top of my class. I got married and stayed married (35 years and going). Sorry, I have little compassion for those suffering from their own undoing.
Hmmm, Dr. Hyman doesn’t use the “Dr.” In his name.
Uh, Dr. Hyman, as a Harvard grad, and being 38, it goes without saying you think you know everything.
Freepers won’t read long posts so let me just say you don’t (know everything).
But, I can’t help but tell you that down here in Texas we have a million “sayings”. And one of them reminds me of you. It goes “ you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make em drink”. In the political affairs of our country, Liberals like you have proved this “saying” valid beyond all doubt.
A white liberal elite fantasy...
Everything cost more in the ghetto because black 'leaders' fight to keep big stores like Walmart out... not saying they're on the take or anything - but they're on the take.
It didn't hurt any that CVS had some bad-ass drugs behind the pharmacy counter and in the drug safe.
It doesn't appear that there was any of the "good stuff" left to catch fire.
Same thing happened in NYC during the sixties riots-drug stores, liquor stores and furniture stores just happened to catch fire-after they were looted.
Mr. Hyman,
The abuse suffered by black folks comes at the hands of the democrat party. When the blacks finally wake up there will be hell to pay.
Nevertheless, a store can only do so much before it can no longer afford to do business in a certain area. Then it comes down to cutting further losses and shutting the doors for good. Notice that once the local inhabitants drive their local stores out, no stores are willing to come back? There is a reason and everyone knows why but they cannot say the truth. The truth isn't PC.
Scr3w Louis Hyman and Slate.
“I have been in slums outside of major cities in south and central America. “
And those are DESPERATE! America has the wealthiest, fattest poor people on Earth! But what has historically been the basis of Baltimore’s economy? The great-grandfathers of today’s rioters must have been productively employed...is the town a casualty of US industries’ mad dash to China?
Errata: “I do NOT think is it wise to spend so much on those brands of clothes.” I was thinking faster than I type.
Long ago, I had a friend (divorced with one boy and one girl). The girl was really a clothes horse — she wanted top of the line, brand name clothes. Bluntly, these name brand clothes did not wear well or she out grew them due to a growth spurt. I told my friend: when you throw the brand name clothes way, cut of the labels. Go buy good, well made clothes from what she thinks are “off brands” and then sew on these old logo tags. Your daughter and her little friends are fixated by the brand tags; they probably won't even notice the clothes themselves.
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