Part 2: Healing the Divide Between Baltimore City and Baltimore County (… With a Simple Conversation)
By Doni Glover
Truth is, before we go looking at what white folks have been doing and how they have been treating African Americans, the thinking person – at some point – has to look at what black folks are doing and how we are treating each other.
Since integration, we have moved freely from the city to the county. In the process, we now have a couple of generations of county blacks who are less familiar with where their parents and grandparents were raised.
Even more, some of us in the county look down on the city. We point the finger and perpetuate the stigma that only bad things come out of Baltimore City. And that is simply not true.
When the police pull over people on Pennsylvania and Laurens, I can tell you that they are not just city residents. We see people in the ‘hood’ every single day who hail from not just Baltimore County, but Carroll and Harford counties as well. No, they are not all black either. The police are always pulling over white folks cruising through the ‘hood’ looking for dope.
Tell you something else, many drug dealers who operate in the city actually live in the county. My point is that whether the issue is the preponderance of group homes in Randallstown or prostitution or illegal drugs, what affects one affects the other. What happens in the city is reflected in the county, and vice versa.
Look at the gang problem in every jurisdiction in Maryland. Unfortunately, Baltimore County cannot escape the gang dilemma because gangs are everywhere. What’s particularly interesting to me is how much county gangsters have to work to get the same level of respect as their city cousins. It’s like the county kids have to do more to earn rank.
Nonetheless, the simple solution is first understanding the inter-relationship of the city and the county and how, regardless of what we might think, our issues are very similar. And if our issues are similar, then it would behoove us to work together on the solutions.
Communication is a critical key. Whether it relates to business or family, I think the sharing of information and resources helps everybody. And that is a major reason why I accepted this assignment to be a part of the Northwest Voice family. Even though Bmorenews keeps me extremely busy, there was no way I would miss this opportunity to be a part of the solution dialogue.
I need my family members in Randallstown and Owings Mills, for instance, to be aware of the prescription drug era that was magnified exponentially during the Freddie Gray riots. Black youth who are 18 to 25 years of age are being bombarded with the Percocet culture. Listen to a lot of the new age hip hop, and the topic of pills and syrup (Robitussin) is a common theme.
And it is not just in Maryland; it is a national pandemic. Kids are rapping about these intoxicants in a way not done before. Historically, artists were ashamed of addiction. Now, it’s almost worn as a badge of honor.
Times are changing. So, we must adapt and must insist on having these and other pointed conversations with ourselves, our children and our community. Then, we must expand the dialogue across jurisdictions and beyond the state line.
If we don’t, if we continue to bury our heads in the sand – we will lose yet another generation of African Americans. Whether we live in the county or the city, our issues have a lot of commonalities. Sure, the city may have more black single-mother households, but best believe the county has its share, too.
With a host similar of challenges, including under-education, it becomes all too clear that we don’t need anything else dividing us. Instead, we need to use every possible opportunity to work together, to build bridges, and to begin the healing process. A lot of people are hurting out here and I don’t think we can afford to ignore that pain any longer. And for me, that all begins with a simple conversation.
Doni Glover is the publisher of www.bmorenews.com, host of The Doni Glover Show on Radio One Baltimore’s WOLB 1010 AM (Tuesdays, 10-11 a.m.), and a television political analyst. The founder of the ORIGINAL Black Wall Street SERIES *NYC *MD *DC *ATL *NOLA, Glover is also the author of “Unapologetically Black: Doni Glover Autobiography.”
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