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Baltimore's skyline is reflected in a puddle along the inner Harbor promenade after many days of rain.
Jerry Jackson / Baltimore Sun
Baltimore’s skyline is reflected in a puddle along the inner Harbor promenade after many days of rain.
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In response to the D. Watkins’ oped (“D. Watkins: We can write President Trump off as a racist, but Baltimore still needs help,” Aug. 16). I, too, am from Baltimore, a native with strong roots who has lived away as an adult and then returned 25 years ago. I, too, am disappointed in outcomes of many platforms and programs that have promised to help mitigate our city’s myriad issues. I, too, see potential in people’s fierceness and resolve.

Yet, differing from Mr. Watkins, I am a white, Jewish woman, always somewhere in the middle class, and currently qualifying as a senior. Thus, given some of our attitudinal similarities, there are also glaring differences in perception. He says he is “sick and tired of seeing poor black people ignored.” I say that much of my local and state taxes have gone to programs and initiatives to assist Baltimore’s poor black people. As a counselor, I have worked 15 years in social service programs focused on the needs of Baltimore’s poor black people.’

True, at the start of these endeavors there was no sophisticated analysis. Now, like many of us idealists, I have had my eyes opened to the entrenchment of systemic racism. So, perhaps the goals as envisioned by Mr. Watkins, and myself, have not been fully achieved. Does that mean our efforts have gone for naught and that we should disappear from the scene?

I believe that for whites to help “poor black people” is not some altruistic act of charity, but is truly the right thing to do, to balance out everyone’s welfare and quality of life in this society. What would help me want to continue in this regard is to be given some true acknowledgement for the sincerity of our people’s (not of color) efforts, rather than being at the receiving end of the message when Mr. Watkins says he is “sick and tired of seeing poor black people ignored.”

Many of us are not ignoring them, yet instead of being seen as part of the struggle with you, we are made to feel like we are floating along on “white privilege” and escape the tentacles of systemic racism whose harm extends to the whole fabric of our society.

While I’m at it, I will express another sticking point. I spent the better part of a graduate school education learning about child development and the necessary environment and interactions to nurture meeting healthy milestones. There are segments of the black community that seem to have neither the internal nor external resources to encourage and support this development. This is indeed a tragedy for all concerned. But why does it then become the responsibility of society to take on the impetus for many phases of child rearing? We are told that if we don’t want to fully fund multiple programs, that somehow we are not caring about black children.

I know, that at least in my case, this is not true. I have provided professional and personal services for black children and some of their families. Yet, many times even concerted help from the outside cannot create a foundation for healthy development when well-being and resources are not intrinsic. Growing up is hard enough. If parents feel and live as helpless victims, then catching up is likely out of reach.

I wonder sometimes how much of the focus of the poor black community is on personal development rather than on garnering outside resources. I have seen bundles of money go down the tube because the ability to receive and work with resources just did not exist. In my counseling with those black clients who do come in, I have seen some embarrassment and anger from those who responsibly raise their children towards those who don’t. Perhaps it is not “politically correct” for me as a white person to say the same thing, but this is also how I feel, and it is troubling.

In Mr. Watkins’ article, I hear his anger and sense of entitlement. What I don’t hear is him enlarging his perception enough to acknowledge that there are others who also care and struggle in the most fiscally, socially, ethically responsible way to engage with this situation in the midst of all our lives.

Joyce Wolpert

The writer is a licensed counselor in Baltimore.

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