There should be voices singing laments, old songs for a new burning time.
There should be drums pounding, feet marching, by the hundreds of thousands. Black feet, white feet, all the colors in between beating the pavement together, if justice truly mattered. There are some, but you don't hear about them on the nightly news. There isn't a focus on the drum beats of twenty thousand feet hitting the pavement of Baltimore's streets, pounding out the old rhythm for justice when the same old, same old, becomes far too much to bear.
You don't hear about drunk white baseball fans sitting outside Baltimore bars last Saturday as protestors marched by. You don't hear about the well worn racist names being hurled at people marching for justice. You don't hear about the bottles and bar stools that went flying. Only black people are outside agitators. Not some good old boys and girls from suburbia.
Of course some protestors fought back. Other protestors tried to break it up. But all protestors are too blame, right? No one should ever lose their temper, no matter what the provocation. Just keep on taking it with a smile, a nod, a - Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, Ma'am.
Only white people get to yell epithets. Only white people get to throw bottles. Only white people get to throw anything at all - curses, bottles, stools, laws, indignation, silence, dismissal - at people of color marching for an end to legalized violence being written upon their bodies.
Tens of thousands of feet marched for days because a man was left screaming, broken, and finally dead by Baltimore's finest. Just one more instance of screaming, breaking, and death in Baltimore. Just one more instance of cover up and denial across this country. Just one more reason for fear and despair growing stronger in communities large and small.
Then Monday night, Baltimore supposedly began to burn.
But, Baltimore has been burning for a long time. It has been devoured by flames of poverty that white America doesn't even notice. It has been burned by injustice that is never rectified. Baltimore's people of color have been consumed by generations of white indifference.
Black infants in Baltimore are almost nine times more likely to die before age 1 than White infants. AIDS cases are nearly five times more common in the African-American community.
“Only six miles separate the Baltimore neighborhoods of Roland Park and Hollins Market,” interim Hopkins provost Jonathan Bagger said last year. “[B]ut there is a 20-year difference in the average life expectancy.”
That inequality is staggering when you consider that one of the best health systems in the world — Johns Hopkins Health System — is based in Baltimore. And many of the nation’s top government health care officials live in or commute to Baltimore, to work at the Medicare and Medicaid office.
Yet Baltimore’s infant mortality is on par with Moldova and Belize.
Babies have been dying in the ignored fires of racism.
A grandmother's bones were broken.
A pregnant woman was violently thrown to the ground. Millions of dollars were paid out to numerous victims of police brutality. And almost none of us noticed!
Our outrage is reserved for "looters" who left stores with Tide, toilet paper, and diapers. You'd think those people were worse than the Wall Street pillagers who brought the country to its knees. You'd think the people in Baltimore were worse than the politicians who allowed Wall Street to suck the life out of all our dreams. How awful those rioters were. Look at them - stealing Tide, toilet paper, and diapers for their babies. Nothing excuses such behavior. Not their babies dying. Not their grandmothers and wives being assaulted. Not the grinding poverty. Not the breaking, the screaming, and dying. Not the lack of justice, for any of it.
How dare they throw bricks. How dare they do anything but die quietly.
After all, we've stolen their dignity, self worth, hope. All they have left are the bones of their dreams - despair, emptiness, and rage. Let young men and women throw those bones, and we shall call it violence.