From Ferguson to Baltimore : Injustice and violence . What be going on in America ? An attempt to find an explanation by Kerstin Kohlenberg
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It be strange feeling watching the image from Baltimore on television . After moving to America nine month ago to report on this country , I have to stop apartment hunting in New York to visit Ferguson , Missouri . The unarmed young black man Michael Brown have just be shot dead by a white police officer , sparking widespread unrest . Now I be see the same kind of image while sit inmy apartment . This time it be a young black man in Baltimore named Freddie Gray , who died in police custody . And again , it set off rioting .
For the nine month I’ve be in America , similar incidents have shaken this country every few week .
When I went to Ferguson , I want to get to know a city , but find two . The white Ferguson with an organic supermarket , a nice wine bar and microbrewery . And the black Ferguson , make up of 99-cent shops , nail studios and liquor stores . It’s an America many just don’t want to see .
I live in Park Slope , a gentrified part of Brooklyn , but when you take the F train from Manhattan , it’s still easy to imagine America as a melting pot where everyone happily live next to each other . In the subway , Indians sit next to orthodox Jew and black . There’s no graffiti to be see and the window aren’t even scratched . Everyone be civilized .
Bill de Blasio , New York’s new left-wing mayor , also live in Park Slope . Together withhis formerly lesbian African-American wife andtheir two child ,his family epitomizes harmonious coexistence in America . It’s also home to author Paul Auster , who have write much about the idyllic neighborhood in Brooklyn . It’s undoubtedly a progressive place .
But there be crack in this idyllic image upon closer observation . Park Slope be a place white people escape to , but black people don’t escape from . The playgrounds be filled with black nanny take care of white child . Whether at Starbucks , in supermarket or at the drugstore Rite Aid , blacks be the one work there . Often it’s young woman , who have have the names oftheir child tattooed in cursive ontheir arms . Rite Aid pays cashiers $8.80 an hour , Starbucks $9.50 . You’ll have a long subway ride from Park Slope to get to a part of Brooklyn where there’s an apartment affordable on such wages .
Black service workers , white consumer . There’s only one except to this rule : the Park Slope Food Coop . A type of organic kibbutz that local resident have run for decades , each member be required to work a certain amount of hour . Here Park Slope serve itself and you’ll see very few African-Americans .
In light of the image come out of Baltimore , I thought back whom I’ve met work in America the past nine month . I’ve interview nuclear weapon opponents in Kentucky , politician in Washington , Truman Capote experts in New York , police officer in Connecticut , actors in Utah , historians in Illinois , computer specialist in Wisconsin , as well as journalists , lawyer and feminists . Aside from the reporting done about Ferguson , I’ve interview only one black person : a New York public defender originally from the Caribbean .
Even if African Americans only make up 13 percent of the U. S. population , that’s still seems odd . Where be they all ? Mostly not sit at a desk , but rather behind a service counter .
To be sure , every society haveits rich and poor . That’s never bothered Americans as much as Germans , because there’s the belief that anyone can make it in this country if they try . After all , wasn’t Loretta Lynch , the first black woman to become U. S. attorney general , sworn in on the same day that cars be burning in Baltimore ? Not to mention she’s serve under America’s first black president ?
Barack Obama and Freddie Gray be two extremes . Two result from the same societal development . There’s a lot be write about this and politician like New York Mayor de Blasio be vowing to change things . Hillary Clinton and most other presidential candidate be talk about the decline of America into a nation of haves and have-not , where the middle class be be squeezed , and the promise of social mobility have become a sham .
It’s a development that all Americans be feeling , both white and black . But it’s hitting African Americans much harder . They’re the first to seetheir livelihoods threatened . study after study shows that , most recently one by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago . Only those come from better off backgrounds be likely to improve or at least hold ontotheir parent ’ standard of living . Like Barack Obama , who have college-educated parent , or Loretta Lynch ,whose father be a pastor and mother be a librarian , or Stephanie Rawlings-Blake , the first black mayor of Baltimore ,whose mother be a doctor and who come from a prominent family of politician .
The great American dream , that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough , be turning into a nightmare for an increasing number of African Americans .