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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

Eh. Most of the poor urban Baltimore neighorhoods used to be solid white neighborhoods and even not that long ago. 1950 Baltimore was 80% white. I find all this blame on redlining and other racist real estate policies of the 1920s-1950s just an excuse for what the real problem is: a dysfunctional urban poor population that has no motivation or desire to change their lot. All the ones who could get out left a long time ago. But no one wants to face the simple truth: poor Baltimore is responsible for 99% of their own problems. They'd rather blame everything and everyone else. [/quote]

I understand where your sentiment is coming from, but please read the PP's long post about trauma informed care. Once you begin to understand why there appears to be no motivation for change, you can start to become a part of the change. A traumatized person is frozen. A repeatedly traumatized person is shut down. The people who succeed without intervention are those who are wired to process and literally shake off the trauma. Most people cannot do that without intervention.

Trauma truly is the root of most of our social problems. We need to focus both on stopping the sources of trauma (poverty, hunger, drugs, guns, violent crime, abuse) and healing the trauma in individuals we can reach, which includes those in schools, health care facilities, prisons, the military, and even in the workforce. Truama of any kind does change the brain, but it can be healed.[/quote]

Whenever I hear people try to argue this, I immediately think of all the people who grew up poor and who did leave. They got out. In Baltimore, when people blame institutionalized racism, they also seem to forget that the majority of African Americans in the Baltimore region are not poor. They're middle class living in the suburbs or the middle class part of the city. So the argument doesn't work for me. I also think of all the white people who left dying mill towns while others stayed behind and didn't change their lives and slid into opoids and petty crime. As far as I can tell, it's more excuses piling on top of more excuses.

It's not as if the poor in Baltimore (mostly black but some whites too) aren't exposed to the possibilities of life and the what ifs. It's right there, in front of them. They just chose not to take the steps to improve their lives. And it's not that difficult either. Finish school, don't get pregnant, you're halfway there already. But you'd rather blame "trauma"  than personal self-destructive habits and decisions. It's more and more excuses. [/quote]

That some people can escape a bad situation does not mean its not hard.  Some people can overcome hard things, others not so much. Some are just luckier than others.  Some took a drug and got addicted, some took the same drug in the same dosage and did not. Some got a good teacher in a bad school system, some didn't   Some had a father imprisoned for petty theft - some their father did the same illegal act, didn't get caught and was around to help raise them.   Don't pick those apart, they are just examples of how luck can play out in someone's life.

But when we see poverty leading family breakdown and personal dysfunction (in general, not in every particular case) , in different times and different places, for people of different races, we should consider the possibility that poverty and similar social circumstances DO cause the dysfunction. [/quote]

And what's your solution?

We've poured billions and billions and untold billions over the decades into poverty programs.

At this point in time there's really not much else we can do beyond curbing civil liberties. Crime in Baltimore would easily disappear, to everyone's benefit, if we turned it into a de facto military state with army garrisons and checkpoints everywhere and armed patrols. But that ain't happening, ain't it?

I'm not convinced there's much one can do. So many of the entrenched poor refuse the help that is on hand. They refuse to leave their neighborhoods or towns or cities for opportunities elsewhere. Even Section 8 won't help them. They have access to free education but crap all over it. They won't change their behavior and mannerism, because we as a society no longer tell them to in fear of being branded racist or whatever.

In short, there's no real meaningful change for the entrenched poor until the liberal do-gooders look squarely at themselves first. [/quote]

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