How ironic that in a climate of ostensive racial profiling and abuse of power by authority, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is quick to throw all black men under the bus ("Mayor calls on black men to do more to stop violence," March 10).
Too often during the prelude to major elections and campaigns, those who are routinely demonized, pathologized and disenfranchised become the targets of finger-pointing politicians who are quick to score brownie (and blondie) points with the dog-whistle-hounded hoi polloi.
It's a scripted, insidious pabulum that may actually foster and engender racism and violence while claiming to address and eradicate it. As if Baltimore's black population hasn't already been grappling with the scourge of inner-city violence and black-on-black crime that affects it directly, day and night, 24-7.
Just flip the script and make the entirety of any other ethnic or religious group responsible for extreme behavior exhibited by an extreme subset of said group, and the accusations would summarily be treated with the contempt they deserve.
Sadly, the mayor's tactic seems as simplistic as it is outrageous. It smacks of being a psychological austerity measure, as it profits from the already exhausted and exasperated.
A more earnest approach might start with examining ulterior motives of a society that greatly benefits from capacity-filled prisons and the chattel manpower provided by our country's massive incarcerated population.
In such a society girded and buttressed, directly and indirectly, by criminality and criminology, who can say that crime doesn't pay?
Tracy Stott, Baltimore