Does it make you upset that Baltimore is a BLACK City??! (employment, live)

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by IMVU

I agree. This is the problem and why Baltimore isn't rapidly moving to become the better city everyone wants it to be. It's because the residents aren't focusing and trying to fix the problems, instead they'd rather bash "their" city on a forum about how it's infested with blacks and filled with crime. It's sad

Bashing the city of Baltimore doesn't help Baltimore in any way. There are also those within the city of Baltimore who aren't doing their part either. There are people who are trying. However, it's an uphill battle for those who try. As an outsider looking in, this is what I see in Baltimore. There is alot of history in Baltimore, alot of interesting architecture, the Inner Harbor. And then I think about alot of the violence, poverty, racial tensions, and how it's hurting Baltimore's reputation.

I read about the Upton neighborhood. I didn't know that it was once home to an affluent Black population during the early part of the 20th century. Today, there are more affluent Blacks in America than in the early 20th century, more middle class Blacks today than in the early 20th century. However, Upton is a very poor neighborhood with there are alot of abandoned buildings.

Cities throughout the USA have gone through de-industrialization. Baltimore is no exception. However, I look at it like this. If Baltimore is to improve in a big way, it will require people to work for it, and for people to focus more on trying to make things better. It isn't that there aren't people doing that, but more work needs to be done. I look at Detroit the same way. Alot of history, some interesting things, but alot of work is needed to help the city come back.

I have also had to consider this. In order for people to build and rebuild, one has to feel invested in their city, one must feel and believe that they have a stake in making their city better. While there are people who feel that way, there are many that don't feel this way.

[UOENOI]

No, it doesn't.

[upinflamezzz]

3) As someone who is a law abiding citizen, I will have a big problem with being profiled, period. Those statistics do not represent anything I've done, so I do not believe I deserved to be profiled, period.

Any living thing that has a high rate of killing someone should be profiled. That includes black people of a certain age group. I profile them just like I do unchained dogs. Stop committing crimes = stop being profiled.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by upinflamezzz

Any living thing that has a high rate of killing someone should be profiled. That includes black people of a certain age group. I profile them just like I do unchained dogs. Stop committing crimes = stop being profiled.

That's a cop out on your part. What do Black criminals have to do with Black people who aren't breaking the law. Your "stop committing crimes=stop being profiled" is a cop out to the Black people who aren't committing crimes in the first place. Go take your message to the Black persons who are breaking the law. Don't come at me with that cop out. I'm not the one breaking the law. And there are many Black people regardless of age not breaking the law, so telling them "don't break the law" is a stupid idea considering they aren't breaking the law in the first place. Come up with something better than that.

[IMVU]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

That's a cop out on your part. What do Black criminals have to do with Black people who aren't breaking the law. Your "stop committing crimes=stop being profiled" is a cop out to the Black people who aren't committing crimes in the first place. Go take your message to the Black persons who are breaking the law. Don't come at me with that cop out. I'm not the one breaking the law. And there are many Black people regardless of age not breaking the law, so telling them "don't break the law" is a stupid idea considering they aren't breaking the law in the first place. Come up with something better than that.

I AGREE. Blacks as a whole is being stereotyped as being this "tough criminal". NOT all African Americans are causing a stir, well in Baltimore city specifically (although the majority of them are). Only the mindless will tend to say something such as "stop committing crimes=stop being profiled".

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by IMVU

I AGREE. Blacks as a whole is being stereotyped as being this "tough criminal". NOT all African Americans are causing a stir, well in Baltimore city specifically (although the majority of them are). Only the mindless will tend to say something such as "stop committing crimes=stop being profiled".

I have to call something into serious account. Do you know for a fact that the majority of Blacks in Baltimore are committing crimes?

I do agree with you though that the "stop committing crimes-stop being profiled" is mindless, especially when said to individuals who aren't committing crimes in the first place. It stereotypes individuals who did nothing to be labeled as criminals.

[Calvert Hall '62]

QUOTE: Black people compose 12% of the population in the U.S.
US Statistics
In 1999, according to U.S. Dept. of Justice statistics, there were about 197,679 black-on-white violent crimes compared to about 8,198 white-on-black violent crimes (single-offender victimizations involving completed, as opposed to mere threatened, violence)– more than 20 times as many—and even more remarkably there were about 20,003 black-on-white rapes or sexual assaults (single-offender victimizations), while the number of white-on-black rapes or sexual assaults was somewhere between between 0 and 33. Black-on-white rapes or sexual assaults were at least 600 times as common as the reverse.

Originally Posted by green_mariner

1) These are old statistics.

Are you saying that the interracial crime picture has improved in the past 15 years? I'd like to see the data. All of us want to cling to something optimistic; something to feel positive about.

[ameme234]

Most questions people will give a political answers; blaming someone..
Even if that question deals with puppies or sex, it has something to do with a left wing, right wing, democrat, republican, conservative, liberal; whatever.
It gets nowhere.

[tcave360]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

That's a cop out on your part. What do Black criminals have to do with Black people who aren't breaking the law. Your "stop committing crimes=stop being profiled" is a cop out to the Black people who aren't committing crimes in the first place. Go take your message to the Black persons who are breaking the law. Don't come at me with that cop out. I'm not the one breaking the law. And there are many Black people regardless of age not breaking the law, so telling them "don't break the law" is a stupid idea considering they aren't breaking the law in the first place. Come up with something better than that.

Nah, he's the kind of person who feels safe behind the computer screen and say anything that he wants without fear of retribution from angry black people because we're all criminals in his eyes with the embedded instinct to kill all whiteys.....Us blacks have committed the greatest crimes in American and world history...Oh, but he's not a racist in the slightest!!

[Infinite_heights77]

What behaviors are you talking about???!! Some of the same maladjusted behavior, hedonism and foulness in poverty-stricken families and individuals; I've seen in well-to-do, so called middle-class families.

Originally Posted by Tinawina

That's not an apples to apples comparison.

What you need to do is compare the behavior of whites who live in generational poverty to the behavior of blacks who live in generational poverty. That's probably why she brought up Appalachia.

There is poverty among people who believe they can and will get out of it (or their children will)... that is what was often the mindset of recent immigrants (or transplants from other parts of the country) who lived in the "poor" areas of early Baltimore. Not to mention that the poverty rate wasn't nearly as high then. That breeds different behaviors than what we are talking about here.

But generational poverty breeds hopelessness, and that brings forth the behaviors we often see today. In fact, many of those same behaviors pop up among the poor and hopeless across the globe, regardless of race or nationality.