This is what I thought when I first heard the news of the Freddy Gray killing in Baltimore. One more African American killed by police. But this time it happened in the city of my birth, and I am surprised--though shouldn't be--how much a difference that makes in my perception as, to my dismay, events escalated. #Black Lives Matter. I was proud of the peaceful protests, until, all of a sudden, they weren't. Yes, when I lived in Baltimiore 'um' years ago, the city was becoming gentrified. The Inner Harbor opened. I knew that this just meant that the Black Ghetto (one of the kindest words this border state's whites call it) was being pushed out of sight and out of mind. What I would learn to call my white privilege life as a graduate student in an esoteric field at a well-known city university was not terribly disturbed by the cognitive dissonance that though I grew up in a family where my father said some of the most horrible racist epithets possible and I knew they were wrong, nevertheless while living in the city as a young promising student I was not distressed by de fact segregation, because it was better than the separate water fountains. Why is the situation in Baltimore so different in my eyes now than, say, Ferguson? My brother became a Baltimore City police officer ten years after I moved from Baltimore to California in pursuit of my privileged life. More below the sort of Baltimore Orioles' typescript.
I knew my brother was in harm's way constantly, but he never talked about it, except in pejorative terms of the streets' citizens. Why was I never shocked? He must have gone through a brutally rude awakening as a white boy from Baltimore's very white suburbs. I always thought I could barely imagine the things he must have seen, and felt sad as he became progressively hardened. I do not know what he might have done on those streets. He is his father's son. And if Baltimore's African American communities had lost their trust of the police as they have in every inner city in America, I wondered what role my brother may have played in the increasing polarization until killing or at least having contempt of Blacks was the new normal without anyone even noticing, except, of course, African American males. It is difficult to know whether the violence is exaggerated in the media when there were so many peaceful protests, if the looters and vandals were a minority when as of this writing the mayor has called a curfew, national guard are on alert, and state police have already joined the local force. They are militarized faceless Imperial Storm Troopers staring down what could be small crowds, but I kept watching for my brother's face behind the shields. I posted a prayer as my status on Facebook: I would like everyone to pray for the protesters of the Freddy Gray killing, that they may learn civil disobedience. No one is served by violence and looting, especially the police officers in harm's way, and I ask that they be as restrained as possible in reacting to violence. I do not know whether my brother is on this duty. I thought he had been transferred, but please pray for him because he undoubtedly knows officers who are involved, amd he is a part of police culture. Please hold the entire city and its neighborhoods in prayer. It is the city of my birth. "How good it is when brothers and sisters can be together in harmony." " Blessed are the peacemakers...blessed are those that mourn."