A recent Brookings Institution blog post presented a snapshot of Baltimore’s economic and racial inequality, illuminating the social realities that fueled the unrest following the police-induced death of Freddie Gray. Here’s Alan Berube and Brad McDearman:
While criminal justice policy and police-community relationships are arguably at the core of the present debate, the economic and social context in which those actions took shape matters greatly too.
Berube and McDearman go on to explain that Baltimore is, by national standards, a relatively affluent metro area. It’s got plenty of jobs, and they pay well. But the fruits of its prosperity are disproportionately borne by the rich and the white.
The Baltimore metro has the second-largest median income for black households, but African Americans are still the predominant residents of the city’s high-poverty neighborhoods.
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...ith-the-kids/393629/]
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