I don’t usually like to comment on things unless I have time to write an exhaustive, thorough, well thought out treatment of the topic (which is a terrible quality in a blogger, but not a bad one in a thoughtful person, I suppose). But I can’t help but comment on one of the responses I keep hearing to events in Baltimore (and to Ferguson, and on and on).
When chaos erupts as it has in Baltimore, I often hear people say they “don’t understand” why people would act that way. Of course you don’t understand. If you’ve never been made to feel unworthy because the state can’t even bother to give you a good education, you don’t understand. If you never been picked up for a minor offense, pressured into pleading guilty, and then been unable to find a job because of your record, you don’t understand. If you didn’t grow up hungry, you don’t understand. People in suburbs don’t not-riot because they are superior but because they are comfortable.
If you don’t understand, instead of being smug, you should be grateful.
Image: Police in riot gear in Ferguson By Jamelle Bouie [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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I have been all those things and I still don’t understand the reaction we’re seeing in Baltimore.
what a smug, self righteous liberal reaction.
Meg,
Amen, amen and amen. For more words on the same subject see the Twitter comment posted by Baltimore Orioles owner, John Angelos. Perhaps the most thoughtful statement out there about what happened. I hope such voices continue speaking.
Karen Seay