UB Criminologist: 'Let's Get Past Bashing Baltimore'
January 9, 2015
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The following op-ed by Jeffrey Ian Ross, professor in the University of Baltimore's School of Criminal Justice, is reprinted with permission by The Daily Record. It was originally published on Jan. 8, 2015.
'Always talking trash about Baltimore'
During the past two decades that I have worked on criminal justice issues in Baltimore, I have noticed a subtle but alarming trend.
There is a small cadre of opinion makers and journalists who specialize in laying bare the city's problems and then declaring that nothing will ever get any better. When they’re not suggesting that all hope is lost, then they're celebrating the cute weirdness and idiosyncrasies that make Baltimore—well, Baltimore. While this can be entertaining, it often romanticizes and canonizes the broken streets and unsafe conditions.
There's no denying that the city has some serious issues and that the people they describe do exist. And yes, there are examples of crooked, self-serving individuals and systems here. But this relentless trashing of Baltimore’s reputation has to change. It’s a big town, and there ought to be room for more than one narrative.
From The Corner to Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire, to the 12 O'Clock Boys documentary and the recent work of D. Watkins in Salon and Sarah Koenig on This American Life, there is a consistent undertone about the majority of the characters and personalities featured in these stories: These are the people that society—Baltimore society—left behind. And were it not for their circumstances, if they lived somewhere other than in Charm City, their quality of life would have been acceptable to them and to us. The message is that the downtrodden are mostly victims, and Baltimore gave them their victimhood. Now, nothing can be done to improve their lives.
This is negligent and offensive on its face. But go a bit deeper, and you run into a tough question: Says who?
If you don't live or work in Baltimore, it's easy to accept the descriptions advanced by these purveyors of local culture as fact, because they claim to have observed it or to have lived it. There is no new insight, no knitting together of seemingly disparate observations into a cohesive whole that can make us see it all in a new light. No, the experts have spoken. This is how life is—and how it will be—in murderous, brutal, incompetent and uncaring Baltimore.
But take notice: As soon as that informational transaction is complete, those of us with the power to change things subconsciously permit those who have the public's ear to control the conversation. In fact, what should be a dialogue becomes a monologue. They speak, and people in Baltimore, across the country and beyond listen. Ultimately, it’s like passing sentence on the city.
It's not just what is said, but how it's said that leads to the blanket perception of "Harm City" or "The City That Bleeds." How many ways can you describe poverty or the ineffectiveness of the public and private sectors to address seemingly long-standing and intractable problems? It becomes like a car alarm: We hear it, but we don’t do much about it.
Maybe it's intended to be helpful, but it's not helping at all. And despite the many trend lines—like the drop in violent crime or the rise in the number of city children who are prepared to start school—that show Baltimore moving in a positive direction, you’d never know it by this professional class of critics.
Why do a handful of writers and personalities get to create the virtually official history of the dispossessed or the cops with the tragic flaws or the fall from grace of the city's dreamers and philanthropists? How have these negative judgments gained such strength in the public discourse?
A generation or two into the habit of Baltimore bashing, few of us question these descriptions or call them out as caricatures, conspiracies and parodies. We fear being labeled Pollyannas or elitists.
That doesn't make the bashing OK. And when nobody is brave enough to ask why it's happening, then it's time to take a serious look at ourselves. Do we want to believe that when it comes to Baltimore, we must accept that the city is worthless? Is it true that it’s really about selling newspapers and TV shows? I'll ask it like this: Are we that gullible?
It's easy to collect stories of despair. But it takes more resources, more guts to find the small victories. For every low-level drug dealer caught in the crossfire, there is a single mother who graduates from college and finds a good job. For every addict, there is someone who became a rehabilitation counselor. For every ex-convict, there is now an honest and successful business owner. They beat the odds.
And it's not just the success stories and stories of transformation that matter. There are also the change agents and the parts that they play: a teacher, a guidance counselor, a coach, a pastor or a grandparent who served as a mentor or spiritual guide.
It's not because they aren't real that these people aren’t the focus. It's just that they run counter to the narrative. They are good—but the city is all bad.
People who are curious about Baltimore deserve to know that the city is about more than one thing. Yes, there is crime and degradation. But there also is real transformation—the changing of a life, the cleaning up of a street or neighborhood. There are about 621,342 stories out there. Many of them are happy and hopeful.
Let's take a hard look at this negativity, its effects and the skewed truth it reveals. Let's encourage the telling of other narratives, other truths. Let's insist on understanding Baltimore's reality, while also grasping its aspirations, its positivity and its strengths. The whole picture is too vast, and too human, to be beaten down by a critical few who never will see it any other way.
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D., is a criminologist. He is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Street Crime in America. His website is jeffreyianross.com.