How and why is Baltimore so troubled? Is there any solution or is it terminally doomed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

No. Baltimore is a pit. It’s a stinky pit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

No. Baltimore is a pit. It’s a stinky pit.

+1. PP lives in McLean/Bethesda/kalorama and has no idea what they are talking about. She would freak the f*ck out driving by Lexington market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

[Anonymous]

There is a movement in Baltimore called ceasefire. They try to go 24 hours without “killing anyone”. They usually fail. Terrible gun violence. High teen pregnancy. High illiteracy. High poverty. High homeless population. Opioids and meth are serious issues. High truency. The schools are horrible shape, no AC. Some have no heat. One had no running water for almost a week.

Most people you meet from Baltimore are from Baltimore County. Baltimore City is a horrible place. The Mayor stole from the city just a few weeks ago and it was hardly even news because...Baltimore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Nice hypothetical. But millions of dollars have gone to the city on these programs. You literally don’t know what the F you are talking about. I lived there for 20 years. So sit on your comfy couch in whatever burb you live in and shut up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Are you comparing black inner city youth to aboriginal tribes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Yeah, sure. It’s all just racism.

You didn't notice?

All those blm rioters destroying Baltimore were whites and Asians wearing blackface to confuse the police.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Are you comparing black inner city youth to aboriginal tribes?

Why not? If anything, they are probably more together than many of the people of Baltimore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can understand how flyover places like St Louis and Detroit are sort of doomed due to economics and migration patterns. But Baltimore is East Coast, ocean front, proximity to D.C., Acela line, international airport, wealthy/educated state, decent weather (compared to Chicago, NYC, Boston), all the bygone era legacy universities, arts, etc.

Seems so bizarre. Is there any way to fix Baltimore?

It’s been run by Democrats for decades, who have run it into the ground. Until they changes, and someone gets the crime under control, it’s not a good bet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White flight killed Baltimore. I’ve been to a lot of mid Atlantic cities and it’s the most extraordinarily segregated. Whites took off to Baltimore and Howard Counties and let the city die.

(Whites leave) White flight! Racism! Bad!
(Whites stay) Gentrification! Racism! Bad!

Gentrification is not necessarily bad IMO, if its done with SOME respect by new people for the existing residents, and if rapid displacement can be avoided. Given the amount of vacant housing and land in Baltimore, I don't think the latter is a huge problem.

BTW I wonder how well you actually know Baltimore? A lot of gentrification there has taken place in what had been working class white neighborhoods.

Very true, Canton, Locust Point, Hampden all formerly where the white dock and factory workers lived.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Are you comparing black inner city youth to aboriginal tribes?

In the sense that all other efforts by the government don't seem to be fixing the problem, yes.

There's even a sort of precedent for it in the US - look at the KIPP schools. They have an almost all black community, selected randomly via lottery (from parents who desire better for their kids and therefore enter them in the lottery), and they have an incredible graduation rate and most of them end up doing very well. Their #1 focus is not academics but character development. They know that without learning to respect themselves and others, work hard, and other related traits, all efforts to teach academics will fail. To achieve this, they have extended school days, including Saturdays, many extracurriculars, etc, basically keeping the kids in the school environment as long as possible, and they do not tolerate behaviors that would (need to) be tolerated at a typical school. They can do these things because they are a charter school and at least to some degree independently governed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We briefly considered moving there. We’re in SoCal so not really aware of local impressions. We were attracted to proximity to DC, Europe, etc, and house prices. We started researching it more, figured out the area was mostly black and that didn’t bother us. But then we looked at crime stats and stories and decided no way. We don’t even want to pass through there, let alone live there. I think they’d need to clean it up a lot to make it attractive to the people who would ultimately improve the area. A catch 22, I know.

Maybe they need to give a REALLY sweet deal to a big tech company or something.

You sound totally and utterly clueless. There are actually a ton of NY expats in Baltimore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can understand how flyover places like St Louis and Detroit are sort of doomed due to economics and migration patterns. But Baltimore is East Coast, ocean front, proximity to D.C., Acela line, international airport, wealthy/educated state, decent weather (compared to Chicago, NYC, Boston), all the bygone era legacy universities, arts, etc.

Seems so bizarre. Is there any way to fix Baltimore?

It’s been run by Democrats for decades, who have run it into the ground. Until they changes, and someone gets the crime under control, it’s not a good bet

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Nice hypothetical. But millions of dollars have gone to the city on these programs. You literally don’t know what the F you are talking about. I lived there for 20 years. So sit on your comfy couch in whatever burb you live in and shut up.

And what have those millions of dollars achieved? I think you're just proving the point.

[Anonymous]

Less than five percent of the people in this thread actually lives in Baltimore city right now, and most apparently have not stepped foot in the city ever. Baltimore city suffers from a loss of business community, a corrupt city hall, and a corrupt police force. Governor Hogan has ignored the city for the past five years., a huge mistake because when big companies leave Baltimore, the usually leave the state entirely. Having lived in both cities, DC was just a big a mess before the financial control board took over from Barry.