Book #6 of 2018

Reveals the dastardly machinations of an array of sordid operators who exacerbated and profited from racial divisions in Baltimore City and County. Political machines, bookies, loan sharks, hustlers, lawyers, accountants, future City Councilmen and even a future Vice President of the United States--all had a stake in stoking racial divisions for profit whether fiscal or electoral (or both). There was a lot of indignant embarrassment among residents of Baltimore County recently when Dallas Dance went down for corruption and covering it up. But read Pietila on the routine and profound corruption of Baltimore County leadership at all levels--on a level that even the City couldn't match at the time--up into the 70's and Dance seems a quaint and unworthy throwback to those good old days of truly astounding graft. It was the district where Spirow Agnew launched his political career after all...though most of the corruption was centered in the old Democratic Party machine.

The cast of characters is astonishing. Many are crooks and charlatans who have a genuine drive to desegretate the City by moving Black families into Jewish or white enclaves, but who profit heavily on "blockbusting" techniques while challenging redlined disctricts. Moral ambiguity abounds as some villains prove more empathetic than others.

But there is also plenty of downright acid racism and appalling degrees of hate, often saturating all local civic and public institutions, be they fiscal, secular, religious, cultural, or educational. This history is shameful but deeply fascinating in a city with a long history of economic, cultural, religious and racial diversity. Baltimore, as site of the first bloodshed of the Civil War, and as the hometown and burial place of John Wilkes Booth, serves as an interesting microcosm of the evolution of the civil rights movement and of racial attitudes and relations over the past 150 years.

The book is most entertaining as a rich historical record of race relations and realities in Baltimore from the industrial revolution on. Pietila tells good stories and evokes place and character well. It was fun to read his sympathetic and engaging accounts of people I knew little or nothing about and neighborhoods I know quite well. I recommend Not in My Neighborhood strongly as an indispensible work of popular history by someone with obvious expertise about the city,its past, and its national significance.

"White" Heritage

A couple days ago Baltimore removed four statues honoring Confederates in the middle of the night. Last night a statue of Supreme Court Justice Roger "Dred Scott Decision" Taney was removed from its perch on the State House lawn.

As a student of History, as a teacher of History, I sympathize with those who say that removing these statues is white-washing or scrubbing History from the public sphere. We should be cautious in deciding which historical figures to celebrate on our public lands, and should be judicious when it comes to removing those previously honored. But while I might sympathize with them, I totally disagree with their conclusion. These statues SHOULD be removed and placed in museums or in Confederate cemeteries or on private lands where individuals so inclined can maintain them for posterity.

We don't have statues celebrating John Wilkes Booth all over the place for a reason, after all. And if you celebrate Jackson and Lee and their ilk--men who fought valiantly for a racist, cruel, and feudal society--you might as well celebrate John Wilkes Booth, who fired the final shot of the Civil War, and who was just as virulent a racist and traitor as the others.

As a "white" man, I can choose which representatives of my "heritage" to honor, or who represents my idea or ideal "heritage" as a "white" man. I can honor John Brown, who yanked a family of slavers out of their beds and had his sons and other members of his Free Soil militia dismember them with broadswords. I can honor Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy or Charles Manson. I can honor Hitler or Stalin as part of my "white" heritage. I can honor racists who were on the wrong side of History and claim them as my "heritage." Or, I can honor those who fought against racism and for justice and equality. Or, as a "white" man, I can choose to honor and have as personal heroes members of ALL races--and I can say all races are human and therefore my humanity is no different from theirs, and my heritage is shared with those who are Black, Red, Yellow, Brown, etc.

Mayor Landrieu explains the history of these statues well--these were not monuments "honoring" brave men who were part of "white" heritage. They were propaganda designed to create a false past, part of a white-washing campaign to make bigotry and vile racism into "states' rights," to make the North the aggressors and the South heroic defenders of an honorable tradition. If you read the reasons for secession as announced by the Southern States, and if you read the documents created by the founders of the Confederacy, this bullshit falls apart right quick. But this propaganda was also directed at African Americans: we might have lost the conflict, but things ain't changed for y'all, and don't forget it!

Stop pretending otherwise. If you celebrate these "heroes," then you believe what they stood for, which is a hateful, violent, racist ideology. And yes, it's hard to accept that you are a hateful racist, or that you were taught something that is hateful and racist was honorable and just. But facts are facts. Removing these statues does not scrub our History, it stops celebrating criminality and treason. As a citizen you have the right to celebrate whomever you choose, and on your private property you can fly the stars and bars or a swastika or whatever other emblem you believe represents your heritage or ideology--but you can't force the rest of us to celebrate it.

And I write this as someone who can see why Lee and Jackson are regarded as heroes--it's hard not to admire the way they were able to defeat much larger and better-equipped Union forces again and again through pluck and ingenuity. And I understand that their ties were to their home State more than to the Union, and that each man had complexities and ambiguities as all do. But the side they fought for was morally repugnant, and remains so.

Stonewall Jackson's great-great grandsons agree: Video.

A final note: White Pride is often a code word for White Supremacy.

Catharsis

A couple years back I read an interesting article in Harper's about some dude who was using ancient Greek tragedies to help soldiers with PTSD and addicts and communities of color following tragedies.

Last night we had the opportunity to see one here in Baltimore. Antigone in Ferguson was necessary medicine for a community still suffering following the Uprising. Paul Giamatti went deep and when I used the restroom at the end of the show he was in there bawling following his powerhouse performance. The discussion afterward was potent and honest, though a few speakers took too much time tooting their own horns. The panelists were wise and compassionate (even towards a poor young soul whose heart was in the right place but whose exasperation and "exhaustion" at having these conversations over and over was handled with care). And local activists and artists like Sonja Sohn and Adam Jackson and Kwame Rose and D. Watkins were in-house.

(sidenote: When we left the auditorium Rose and Sohn were outside. I thanked Mr. Rose for opening eloquently for Bernie Sanders at a rally at Royal Farm Arena last year, and Sohn yelled "Yes, if it had been Bernie we wouldn't be dealing with ANY of this BULLSHIT." We'd met Sohn at a Heather Mizeur event at Black Olive 2 years back).

What we need in the US is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, much like South Africa had after Apartheid. We need to bare our souls and concerns and guilts and fears in public, focused on ways to heal--otherwise we'll continue refighting the same battles. Because it is unlikely our dysfunctional public institutions will give us the opportunity to air grievances and mea culpas, the arts can help. Kudos to Bryan Doerries and his team for bringing Antigone in Ferguson to B'more.

The Wash, Rinse, and Repeat Cycle of Violence

David Cole, at NYR Daily:

But in this instance, it is the “war” on crime itself that is most to blame. More than any other nation in the world, we turn to the state-sanctioned compulsion of the criminal justice system to “solve” social problems, including mental illness, drug addiction, poverty, homelessness, and lack of opportunity. Our “first responders” are too often the police, bearing handcuffs and guns rather than public assistance or life support. We arrest and incarcerate our fellow citizens at the highest per capita rate in the world. And those targeted are disproportionately black and Hispanic men living in poverty-stricken inner-city neighborhoods. We can’t seem to find the resources to invest in those neighborhoods to support adequate schools, job training programs, after-care for children let out of school before their parents come home, or economic development. But we are more than willing to pay enormous sums for more police to patrol the neighborhoods and prisons to house inmates taken from these communities. Our prisons in turn are ruled by violence and the threat thereof, from both guards and fellow inmates.

Cole goes on to conclude: "As Americans we have been far too complacent in the face of state-sanctioned violence. As long as the guns are pointed at others, we turn our heads and look away. But until we begin to demand alternatives to state violence, the killing will not cease."

It's a point that others have made before. Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine connected the manufacture of nuclear missiles in Columbine and Clinton's bombings of Kosovo and Sudan to the mindset of people who shoot up schools or malls. Noam Chomsky has been saying for years that the best way for the US to end terrorism is to stop participating in it against others.

So read Cole's piece and meditate on it, then go read:

I thought I knew a lot about the history of our drug prohibition. But here are more valuable pieces to the puzzle beyond the Reefer Madness, chemical-company funded and racist Chamber of Commerce shenanigans which resulted in marijuana criminalization in the US. And the book is entertaining as hell on top of being contrarian and smart.

The Streets of Baltimore

Our City is burning. I have been up on the roof several times today. I watched the smoke from burned cars curl up and drift in slender tendrils just three blocks west of our house. Then a CVS was looted and burned at the same spot. CNN, MSNBC, and even Al-Jazeera were filming live a couple blocks away from our tiny back yard. The experience is surreal. I've thought a lot about saying something, but all I can manage is this: Today many white people felt terrified that they would be pulled from their cars and beaten (or worse) as they fled the City after work. And for no reason other than the color of their skin. If rumors prove true there were some cases of this today. I in no way condone the violence. I abhor it. But those white people who felt genuine terror need to remember the taste of that fear...being pulled from your car at any moment and beaten or worse for no other reason than the color of your skin...and imagine feeling that fear every day of your life. And imagine knowing your father, grandfather, and uncles all had endured it, and seeing no hope for your son to escape it. Wouldn't you want to burn shit down too?

What goes around

Man, I was watching that Don Imus show on MSNBC. Sure are a bunch of fucked-up looking crackers, like refugees from a Cormac McCarthy novel. Imus resembles the Crypt Keeper in a cowboy hat. How many bags of plasma does he require to keep going every day? Bernard McGuirk is one pasty-assed piece of weak-looking shit. That cueball haircut is about as becoming as Brittney's shaved snatch, and he looks like Mr. Greenjeans dead three decades and exhumed. Charles could be the villain in a Hong Kong action movie from the 70s. That sports guy Chris Carlin makes the Michelin Man look svelte.

Some of Imus's guests are even wussier than Imus and crew: Tom "Imus is misunderstood" Oliphant looks like H.P. Lovecraft in a bow tie. Howard "you can't say that anymore" Fineman is frumpier than Droopy Dogg, and has girly noodle arms.

I'd like to see the Scarlet Knights women's basketball team beat the shit out of all these fucking losers. THAT would be great television.