April 30, 2015--Burn, Baby! BURN!

"Burn, Baby! BURN," during the 1965 Watts riots, was the trademark of on-air rhythm-and-blues DJ, Magnificent Montaque. He and others proclaimed, some said encouraged insurrection as a large section of Los Angeles was in fact burning. During the 60s and 70s, so-called race riots spread to many American cities and to some, Burn, Baby! BURN became a rallying cry for the violent minority. Others protested peacefully, most stayed safely out of sight and were only marginally engaged.

As a much smaller section of Baltimore was being looted and torched on Monday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake uttered a 2015 version of Burn, baby! BURN. She said--

While we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well. And we work very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to deescalate, and that's what you saw.

What we also saw was a three-hour period when the rioters and looters had free range--or should I say had "space" "to destroy"--what we saw was an almost complete absence of police and not even a glimpse of Mayor Rawlings-Blake.

I can only conclude one or two things--she was ether cowering somewhere not able to think clearly about what to do or, more likely, was closeted with her political advisers since her primary preoccupation these days is not being mayor but how to launch a campaign for the U.S Senate seat about to be vacated by long-serving Barbara Mikulski.

After this week, I think she can forget about her Senate dreams.

But is there something to think about in her psychobabble about giving young people "space" to do their thing?

Much of urban America has missed out on the recent improvements in our economy and the steady growth in new jobs. As someone said, if a rising tide is to lift all boats, first you have to have a boat. Too few in the ghettos do.

Unemployment among the under-educated, especially young men of color, looms imperviously at at least 25 percent. Local schools are dysfunctional, families are shattered, street thugs rule the neighborhoods, and there is little left to do other than attempt to act as "cool" as possible, not to show concern about one's reality and sad prospects.

As with most of us, in order to become reconciled to our position in life, our reality, we find ways to validate and flaunt our circumstances, no matter how impoverished. And it doesn't help in Baltimore, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, to see the glittering city meant for and protected for other people--those of us who through fortune and effort have done well.

In everyones' faces, if they choose to look up, is evidence of the widening inequalities that are manifestly worsening.

So what to do with that frustration, anger, hopelessness, and rage? With so few on-the-street examples of friends and neighbors making it (except in the underground economy) where and how is that pent-up pressure going to express itself, get some relief? In what private and public space?

This is not to find bleeding-heart excuses for criminal behavior but rather to ask, if social remediation is not likely, what do we expect of people whose lives are so full of insult and despair? In the absence of hope what is the appropriate response to oppression and containment by the criminal justice system--the police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons?

Listening to Wolf Blitzer and Jeffery Toobin on CNN in real time Monday when the looting and arson was occurring, not so much from their words but from their tone they conveyed nothing but disgust as mainly young men looted a CVS pharmacy. They didn't deserve sympathy, but they were not the "animals" Blitzer and Toobin implied them to be. How many viewers privately agreed with them?

More likely, they were desperate people who felt the world had no respectable place for them. That too needs to be part of the narrative.

What would we expect them to do? In their circumstances, what would you do? For myself I do not have a good answer. Or one that makes me feel good.