The problem in Baltimore

Michael Fletcher, a reporter for the Washington Post, thinks the problem is - and has been for the more than the thirty years he has lived there as a black man - not simply black vs. white, but between the haves and have-nots. One fact bolstering his argument is the number of blacks in city government: the mayor, city council president, police chief, top prosecutor, and many other city leaders are black, as is half of Baltimore’s 3,000-person police force. Further, this black civic leadership extends back to Frederick Douglass.

He compares Freddie Gray's  neighborhood with the average Baltimore neighborhood.

Some more details about the Sandtown neighborhood: 

More than half of the neighborhood’s households earned less than $25,000 a year, according to a 2011 Baltimore Health Department report, and more than one in five adults were out of work — double the citywide average. One in five middle school students in the neighborhood missed more than 20 days of school, as did 45 percent of the neighborhood’s high schoolers. Domestic violence was 50 percent higher in Sandtown than the city average. And the neighborhood experienced murder at twice the citywide rate — which is no mean feat in Baltimore.

I think he has a strong argument.