Commentary

COMMENTARY: Is Baltimore City Broken?

THE AFRO — Between Baltimore City and the rest of the world, there is always a hint of an unasked and therefore unanswered question. It is a question that is rooted in anti blackness and framed by years of deliberate Black oppression and suppression. It is a question that is difficult to ask of a city that seems to move from one scandal to the next, without pausing for a moment to catch its collective breath.

Published

4 years ago

April 12, 2019

Oakland Post

By Karsonya Wise Whitehead

Between Baltimore City and the rest of the world, there is always a hint of an unasked and therefore unanswered question. It is a question that is rooted in anti blackness and framed by years of deliberate Black oppression and suppression. It is a question that is difficult to ask of a city that seems to move from one scandal to the next, without pausing for a moment to catch its collective breath.

Outsiders look at us with a wary eye, head cocked, with the question ready on their lips. They are not sure of how to frame it, how to ask it without making us angry. They do not seem to understand that the very same question that they are afraid to ask is the same one that we ask, of both our politicians and of ourselves, all of the time: Is Baltimore (our beloved city) broken beyond repair? We are a city full of dreamers, and we want (no, we deserve) to be seen and treated better. We are, as Robert Browning once wrote, “a place where we desire for our collective reach to exceed our collective grasp.”

I think deeply about Baltimore City, about who we are and what we can become. I read our history and the stories about our city with one eye closed. This is an old lesson for me, one learned when I was in college, living abroad in Kenya with a blind woman near Mount Mtelo. She knew that I was a history major and she told me that I should always read the White man’s version of my history with one eye closed. Because, until the day comes when the hunted learn how to write, the stories would always lift up and center the hunters.

Stories and articles about Baltimore City, our neighborhoods and our residents, should be read with one eye closed. I remember this lesson fondly, and it is one of the reasons why I chose to conduct an in-depth ethnographic study of Baltimore’s most economically challenged, hypersegregated neighborhoods. I wanted to write, record and tell the stories of the people who live and reside on the margins of the margins. They are the most vulnerable and their stories need to be told and centered. I think of the words of my colleague, Treva Lindsey, who said that White supremacy does not love us; therefore, we need to learn to love and love on each other hard. This is what my act of radical political love looks like—a little bit of hope being passed from one hand and heart to the next by telling their stories, hearing them speak, bearing witness to their pain, and believing out loud with them and in their story.

Last week, I hosted a Teen Summit at the Academy of College and Career Exploration (it is located in the Hampden area, but the students come from South and East Baltimore), and I asked them, was Baltimore City, the place that they call home, broken beyond repair.? This was my second conversation with them, and they had spent some time between my visits, thinking about Baltimore and about who they wanted to be in the world. De’Shawn spoke first and was clear in his assertion that Baltimore City is broken but not beyond repair: “We just need a lot of help, and we need those who are supposed to help to do the work and fix it,” he said.Tiaja chimed in and said that the problem is that the entire city is dangerous. “People are getting stabbed inside the schools,” she said, “and then you can be in the wrong place at any time in this city and get shot. The people who are supposed to save us and protect us, are not doing their job.” They were just getting warmed up. “It is dangerous.” “It is broken.” “They don’t care about us, they never did.” Shanaya spoke up, “But we care about us, and we can repair it,” she said. We spent the next hour talking through the issues that this city is facing, from the state of the schools to community violence, from the mayor to the police force. I heard them. I saw them, and when I was packing up to go, Amir came over to me and said, “The first time you came I didn’t think anything was going to change because we talk about the problems all of the time; but you made us feel like we could change it. I don’t remember what you said, but it’s like you gave us hope.”

Karsonya Wise Whitehead is the #blackmommyactivist and an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of “Today With Dr. Kaye” on WEAA 88.9 FM and the author of the forthcoming “The Soul of (My) Black Boys.” She lives in Baltimore City with her husband and their two sons.

The opinions on this page are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
Send letters to The Afro-American • 1531 S. Edgewood St. Baltimore, MD 21227 or fax to 1-877-570-9297 or e-mail to editor@afro.com.

This article originally appeared in The Afro.

Up Next

FILM REVIEW: Little

Don't Miss

COMMENTARY: Don’t Mess with Max: Mnuchin Madness

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

Published

4 days ago

June 2, 2023

Oakland Post

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Activism

Community Opposes High Rise Development That Threatens Geoffrey’s Inner Circle

City Council chambers were full for the May 17 Planning Commission hearing, and almost all the 40 speakers who had signed up to make presentations talked about the importance of the Inner Circle as part of Oakland and Geoffrey Pete as a stalwart community and business leader who has served the city for decades.

Published

1 week ago

May 30, 2023

Oakland Post

Geoffrey Pete went to City Hall to appeal the city Planning Commission’s approval of the high-rise development that threatens the closure of his 44-year historic cultural mecca. Photo by Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones.

By Ken Epstein

An outpouring of community supporters – young, old, jazz lovers, environmentalists and committed Oakland partisans – spoke out at a recent Planning Commission hearing to support Geoffrey Pete and his cultural center – The Inner Circle – an historic Oakland landmark whose future is threatened by a proposed skyscraper that out-of-town-developer Tidewater Capital wants to build in the midst of the city’s Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD).

The speakers argued passionately and persuasively, winning the sympathy of the commissioners, but were ultimately unsuccessful as the Commission unanimously approved the high-rise to be built either as a residential building or office tower on Franklin Street directly behind Geoffrey’s building.

Mr. Pete has said he would appeal the decision to the City Council. He has 10 days after the hearing to file an appeal on the office building. His appeal on the residential tower has already been submitted.

Mr. Pete said the Planning Department still has not published the boundaries of the BAMBD. “Tidewater’s applications and subsequent applications should not be approved until the Planning Department fully acknowledges the existence of the BAMBD,” he said.

“This (proposed) building poses a grave danger to the historic (Inner Circle) building next to it, arguably Oakland’s most meaningful historic building,” Pete said.

“We’re here to advocate for what’s best for the African American district and community that has gotten no representation, no advocacy, as of yet,” he said. “The (commission) is guilty, the City of Oakland is guilty, and Tidewater is guilty.”

One of the first speakers was Gwendolyn Traylor, known as Lady SunRise, who directly addressed the developers.

“With all due to respect to your business, it’s not a need of this community. I would like to ask you to reconsider the location …What is being (promised) here does not add to the healing of this community,” she said.

Naomi Schiff of the Oakland Heritage Alliance emphasized that Geoffrey’s Inner Circle is a treasure of Oakland’s history.

“Our first concern is the integrity of the historic district, in particular the former Athenian-Nile Club, now Mr. Pete’s equally historic venue, which has been the location of a great number of important community events,” she said. “It would not be OK with us if the integrity of the building were damaged in any way, no matter how much insurance (the developer bought) because it is very difficult to repair a historic building once it’s damaged.”

The Inner Circle was previously owned and operated by the Athenian-Nile Club, one of the Bay Area’s largest all-white-male exclusive private membership club, where politicians and power brokers closed back-room deals over handshakes and three martini lunches.

Cephus “Uncle Bobby X” Johnson pointed out that commissioners and the city’s Planning Department have “acknowledged that you went through the entire design review process without even knowing that the Black Arts Movement and Business District existed.”

The district was created in 2016 by City Council resolution. “At the heart of the opposition to this building is the desire to further the legacy of local Black entertainment and entrepreneurship exemplified by businesses like Mr. Pete’s … a historical landmark and venue (that serves) thousands of people who listen to jazz and other entertainment and hold weddings, receptions, and memorial services,” said Uncle Bobby.

This development is taking place within a context in which the “Black population in Oakland has decreased rapidly … because of the city’s concentration on building houses that are not affordable for people who currently live in Oakland,” he said.

John Dalrymple of East Bay Residents for Responsible Development said, “This project will result in significant air quality, public health, noise, and traffic impacts. He said the city has not adequately studied the (unmitigated) impacts of this project on the Black Arts Movement and Business District.

“This project is an example of what developers are being allowed to do when they don’t have to follow the law, and they don’t have to be sensitive to our city’s culture and values,” he said. The commission should “send a signal today that we will no longer be a feeding ground for the rich.”

Prominent Oakland businessman Ray Bobbitt told commissioners, “Any decision that you make is a contribution to the systemic process that creates a disproportionate impact on Black people. Please do yourself a favor, (and) rethink this scenario. Give Mr. Pete, who is a leader in our community, an opportunity to set the framework before you make any decision.”

Though the City Council created the BAMBD, the 2016 resolution was never implemented. The district was created to “highlight, celebrate, preserve and support the contributions of Oakland’s Black artists and business owners and the corridor as a place central historically and currently to Oakland’s Black artists and Black-owned businesses.”

The district was intended to promote Black arts, political movements, enterprises, and culture in the area, and to bring in resources through grants and other funding.

Activism

Emil Guillermo: ‘Strong Like Bamboo’ Stories of AAPI Resilience at Oakland Asian Cultural Center

The name from the project came from the husband and partner of Nancy Wang, a psychotherapist as well as an ASIA member and a founder of Eth-Noh-TEC, Robert Kukuchi-Yngoho, who came up with ‘Strong Like Bamboo.’ “There’s an ancient anecdote that a single bamboo piece can be bent and eventually broken,” said Kukuchi-Yngoho. “But when you put together many bamboos, they are strong like iron. As Asian Americans that’s who we are as a community.”

Published

2 weeks ago

May 27, 2023

Oakland Post

Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St, Oakland, CA 94607

By Emil Guillermo

During the pandemic, I was in a group of Asian American storytellers based in the Bay Area on a weekly Zoom call when six Korean American women were killed in what has come to be known as the Atlanta Spa killings in March of 2021.

From that point on, the storytellers of Asian American Storytellers in Action (ASIA) realized we all had stories of discrimination and hate worth sharing.

The group’s discussion through the pandemic has resulted in “Strong Like Bamboo: Stories of Resilience for Healing in the Era of Anti-AAPI Violence,” a community event Sunday May 28 at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center from 2:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

“I asked myself ‘how do we heal?’ How do we respond to the crises we’re going through,” said Nancy Wang, a psychotherapist as well as an ASIA member and a founder of Eth-Noh-TEC, a storytelling theater based in San Francisco.

“I thought it would be great to gather to hear other people’s stories about discrimination they have experienced but came through it somehow as an inspiration for others to also find solace and support and strength in dealing with what’s going on.

“We all need to know we’re not alone,” she added. “That we have each other and we have allies.”

The name from the project came from Nancy’s husband and partner Robert Kukuchi-Yngoho, who came up with “Strong Like Bamboo.”

“There’s an ancient anecdote that a single bamboo piece can be bent and eventually broken,” said Kukuchi-Yngoho. “But when you put together many bamboos, they are strong like iron. As Asian Americans that’s who we are as a community.”

The free, three-hour event will feature storytelling from six professional storytellers (including yours truly) and others from the national AAPI community like Alton Takiyama Chung from Portland, Ore., MJ Kang from Los Angeles, and Linda Yemoto from the Bay Area.

Afterward, Russell Jeong, professor of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State, will lead a group discussion of the stories. Jeong is also the co-founder of #StopAAPIHate which recorded more than 14,000 instances of self-reported hate transgressions during the pandemic.

Some say it was the remarks of former President Donald Trump scapegoating Asians for the spread of the virus that led to the violent reaction toward AAPI.

The audience will then break into groups where people can share their stories.

The afternoon will also include two short movies on the Asian American experience. The event closes with a reflective song by Kukuchi-Yngoho, and a number by a well-known group of rappers made up of senior women known as the Follies.

I look forward to sharing my stories and hope to see you all at the free event.

JOIN IN PERSON:
Date: Sunday May 28th, 2022
Time: 2:00-5:00 pm PDT
Where: Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St, Oakland, CA 94607
Register to attend this Free live, in-person event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/strong-like-bamboo-tickets-509561551317
*Recording of the live event will be made available for those unable to attend.

– or –

JOIN ON ZOOM:
This event will be livestreamed on Zoom and recorded, same date and time!
To register for the live virtual event on Zoom, please visit:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwpceyrpjIoHtGozoJo7reCVDGg2PRXkGKi#/registration
*Our Zoom links have not worked in past emails, so let us know if our long link doesn’t work.

If you have any questions, please reach out to contact@ethnohtec.org.

The program is funded in part by the California Arts Council.