Baltimore Sorrow

(photo: E!online.com)

Monday was the first day on the job for our new attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

As the first black woman to hold the position, she is facing the latest wave of riots – this time in Baltimore – protesting systemic racial and social injustice. Sandwiched between our (black) president and the (black female) mayor of Baltimore, she has her work cut out for her.

I wonder what goes through those three big brains, as they witness such potent expression of disillusionment by so many black Americans.

It can seem as if the past fifty years of civil rights progress was a trick.

Anger is everywhere.

Average citizens across the land are incensed that another black man, young Freddie Gray of Baltimore, MD, has died at the hands of police. The mayor of Baltimore, along with police officials and clergy, was angry that some protesters reacted with hostility and aggression. The rioting crowds are the raw embodiment of anger, bigger than their words can convey.

I scanned the morning paper, perched on the sunny front steps of my spacious ex-urban house. The birds broke the neighborhood quiet with their cheery wake-up songs, while I tried to imagine what all that hopelessness must feel like - a desperation that could push me to desecrate my own community? It would require blind rage like nothing I’ve known.

As harmful and counter-productive as the rioters’ actions are, they don’t incite my anger. Instead, I’m deeply saddened. Because in 2015 we are still a nation full of disenfranchised, angry people dying to be heard.