Review: The City That Bleeds

Maryland

I’ve only been through Baltimore once in my life.

In August 2010, I had to travel through there on a business trip to Philadelphia. My truck was low on gas and I was forced to stop at a BP gas station off I-95 near the Domino Sugars plant.

From what I remember, there was just something menacing about the black people milling about the area, more so than I am accustomed to in Alabama. They gave me a bad vibe and I made sure not to stop in Baltimore on the return trip to Virginia.

I never got that vibe again, even in Birmingham and Atlanta, which I frequently visit, until I stopped for gas on the northside of St. Louis, which has the same grimy, blighted visage as Baltimore. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid the Northern states, but I imagine the black people of St. Louis and Baltimore are a close approximation of the type of Northern negro found in Detroit and Chicago.

Paul Kersey’s latest book The City That Bleeds: Race, History, and the Death of Baltimore tells the story of the decline of civilization in Baltimore in the era of Black Run America (1965-present). In Kersey’s words, Baltimore in 2014 is “nothing more than a city of yesterday, the blight a reminder of all that was; the crime and horrendous school system a reminder of all that will be.”

The City That Bleeds is the latest in a series of books on blackness and urban decay and is written in the same “peeling back the onion layers” style as the previous installments on Detroit, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Chicago. The title of the book is an amusing riff on an old Baltimore marketing slogan – Baltimore: The City That Reads – which Baltimore cops used to put on their own personal t-shirts.

The Death of Baltimore

In Paul Kersey’s view, the demise of Baltimore can be traced to a single cause: the “Great Migration” of hundreds of thousands of superfluous black people from the South after the demise of slavery. What began as a trickle in the late 19th century as the first negro slums emerged on the perimeter of Baltimore later became a torrent after the spread of the mechanical cotton picker on Southern farms in the 1930s eliminated in a stroke the need for black labor in the cotton crop.

The North’s industrial cities – New York, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. – became a repository for the South’s surplus negroes. In Baltimore, their “role in the demise of the city’s fortune is entirely due to their inherent genetic code.” The dismal condition of Baltimore in 2014 is “just an outgrowth of the DNA inherent in every black individual who called the city home.” It is “just another outward phenotype of the majority black population found there.” Collectively, the black population of Baltimore has “lynched civilization.”

Because of their genetically determined low IQ, low impulse control, aggressiveness, poor future time orientation, poor work ethic, high self esteem, and aversion to saving for the future relative to the White population which built Baltimore, Kersey believes the African-American population which has inherited Baltimore – “a city powered by the idea of black supremacy” – lacks the capacity to sustain the civilization that Whites have abandoned. The ruins of the decaying city have been left to rot in tens of thousands of vacant, boarded up, burned out, blighted row houses.

In 1950, Baltimore reached its peak population of 949,748, and there were 723,655 Whites living in Baltimore at the time. By 2010, there were 620,961 people living in Baltimore, but only 183,830 Whites were left. Baltimore has been transformed from 76 percent White in 1950 to 28 percent White in 2010. Meanwhile, the black population of Baltimore has grown from 24 percent in 1950 to 63.4 percent in 2010.

Kersey doesn’t mince words, “White people, the engine that kept civilization powered in Baltimore, was extinguished with a demographic Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) when the black population reached a point where democracy smiled upon their majority numbers.” In his new book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, former NY Times science editor Nicholas Wade explores the idea of racial differences in social behavior and argues that sub-Saharan Africans might be genetically less adapted to the conditions of modern civilization than Europeans and East Asians.

The racial tipping point in Baltimore was reached during the 1970s. Because of universal manhood suffrage, demographics is now destiny in American politics. Black political control followed a decade later when Kurt Schmoke was elected Baltimore’s first black mayor in 1987 and the social experiment already underway in Detroit began anew.

Black Crime In Black Run Baltimore

According to Kersey, black crime is at the epicenter of Baltimore’s social and economic decline. He calls black criminals “the unpaid foot soldiers of black power” who precipitated the White flight which brought about “black hegemony” in the 1990s. He describes how Whites fled from the rising tide of black crime in the 1950s and 1960s and “evacuated” entire blocks rather than integrate.

Thanks to popular television shows like HBO’s The Wire which glamorized the black underclass, few cities in the United States are more associated with black dysfunction than Bulletmore, Murderland, and for good reason, the facts are sobering:

• In 1990s, an average of 300 people a year were murdered in Baltimore.
• From 2007 to mid-2013, 1,267 black people were murdered in the streets of Baltimore, which accounted for 91.5 percent of homicide. 77 White people were also killed during this period – mostly at the hands of black people.
• In 2012, 94 percent of murder victims in Baltimore were African-American.
• At 46 officers per 100,000, Baltimore has one the highest rates of police officers per capita in the United States.
• $3 billion dollars is spent every decade policing Baltimore.
• 92 percent of defendants in Baltimore courts are non-White.
• 89 percent of people in jail in Baltimore are black.
• In the early 1990s, 56 percent of black men in Baltimore between 18 and 35 were under the supervision of the criminal justice system.
• Baltimore has the highest percentage of its population incarcerated in jail of the Top 20 jails in the United States.
• 86 percent of victims and offenders in Baltimore are recidivist criminals.
• In Baltimore, children are often killed by stray bullets.

Baltimore is where the “Stop Snitchin’ campaign” was launched in 2004 – a month ago, the 14-year-old son of the creator of that DVD was shot in the head and killed. Kersey sees this as being emblematic of the black population of Baltimore which sees the police department as “some kind of alien occupying force.” 

Since the early 1970s, the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center has brought the homicide rate down in Baltimore as a result of advances in life saving surgeries. The war zone conditions in Baltimore have provided some of America’s best surgeons with an endless supply of black cadavers – many of them the relatives of Baltimore’s black political establishment – for decades. Kersey notes the US Army even trains its medical personnel in Baltimore to provide them with the closest approximation to field experience before deployment to the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Aside from the underlying genetics of racial differences (such as low intelligence and low impulse control), Kersey argues that most of the violence in Baltimore is being fueled not by drugs or gangs, as seen on David Simon’s The Wire, but by a “respect culture” that demands violent retaliation for perceived slights. In 2013, only 3 out of 224 homicides in Baltimore was found to have a drug motive.

In Baltimore, prayers for peace marches by the black community to “stop the violence” have long been an annual ritual. Kersey compares this to the voodoo dances held by the black community in New Orleans, the hearse parades in Detroit, and Mayor Larry Langford’s sackcloth and ashes rally in Birmingham all of which have invoked divine intervention to stop black-on-everyone violence in America’s cities. He observes that many of Baltimore’s blighted rowhouses now feature bizarre “graffiti memorials” where black thugs will congregate to smoke a blunt and pour out a 40 ounce malt liquor can as a kind of pagan offering to their fallen comrades.

Victims of Black Crime In Baltimore

Yesterday, eight people were shot within 24 hours in Baltimore. In The City That Bleeds, Paul Kersey puts a face on the victims of black crime:

• Kimberly Leto, a popular 51-year-old White bartender who was beaten to death in her home in January during a burglary by two black teenagers.
• Zach Sowers, a 27-year-old White financial analyst at John Hopkins who had a passion for “deejaying, spinning trance-tinged progressive house music” at night. In 2007, Sowers was robbed by four black teenagers and was curb stomped by Trayvon Ramos. He later died from his injuries.
• Jonathan Fogg, a 30-year-old White editor at The Baltimore Sun who was robbed and beaten in the head with a brick by Mustafa Eraibi on his way home from work in January.
• The Dawson family, a black family who made the mistake of snitching more than 100 times on drug dealers and who were all burned to death in their home in Baltimore in 2002. The incident was labeled Baltimore’s “Alamo.”
• Jose Abreu and Jose Melo’s wife, who were shot multiple times at the Latino American Deli in Baltimore in January. Jose Melo, a Dominican native, reopened his store on Martin Luther King Day after his brother-in-law was murdered.
• Mike Bowman, a 32-year-old White bicyclist who was beaten by a mob of black teens on video in Baltimore in April.
• Joel Lee, the son of a Korean immigrant who was murdered in a robbery in 1993. A black jury acquitted his killer in spite of the testimony of six eyewitnesses.
• Stephen Pitcairn, a John Hopkins cancer researcher who was stabbed to death as he walked home in 2010. The two blacks who murdered him were later heard bragging about how they had hurt “a white boy.”
• The White tourist from Virginia who was beaten in Baltimore by a mob of blacks in a viral video on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012.
• In 2012, a flash mob of hundreds of black people terrorized Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on St. Patrick’s Day. After Del. Patrick McDonough accused black mobs of terrorizing Baltimore on holidays, every single police officer in Baltimore was required to work on July 4th, 2013 to deter black mob violence in the Inner Harbor.

Black Politics In Black Run Baltimore

In 1987, the Ivy League educated Kurt Schmoke was elected as the first black mayor of Baltimore, and many White liberals fooled themselves into believing that a new era of “colorblindness” was at hand. When Schmoke ran for reelection in 1995, Kersey notes that he used the colors of African nationalism and ran a racially polarizing campaign on the slogan, “Mayor Schmoke Makes Us Proud,” an explicit racial appeal to black voters. He even went so far as to put Louis Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam” security force in charge of policing public housing projects in Baltimore.

Schmoke was succeeded as mayor of Baltimore in 1999 by Martin O’Malley who is now the governor of Maryland. O’Malley was the mayor of Baltimore until 2007. He ran for mayor on a bold anti-crime platform and was only elected because the black majority couldn’t unify around a black Democrat without a criminal record.

In Kersey’s words, O’Malley’s election showed that only White pawns who agree to “play ball with the black community” and represent their interests in Baltimore can get elected. While O’Malley was in office, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution urging the governor to pardon the Black Panther cop killer Marshall Conway. Neither Schmoke or O’Malley succeeded in bringing jobs or people back to Baltimore. From 2000 to 2010, 34,312 jobs were lost within 10 miles of downtown Baltimore.

In 2007, Sheila Dixon was elected as the second black mayor of Baltimore. In 1993, Dixon made headlines as a city councilwoman when she took her shoe off and waved it at her White colleagues and declared, “You’ve been running things for the last 20 years. Now the shoe is on the other foot. See how you like it.” Dixon resigned in 2010 after she was indicted on corruption charges and found guilty of embezzlement for spending money on gift cards intended to be distributed to needy families.

With Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in office as Baltimore’s third black mayor, Kersey notes the “shoe of power is firmly on the black foot.” Rawlings-Blake has created a minority business council to promote black business owners. In Baltimore, blacks still have their own blacks only police organization, the “Vanguard Justice Society,” and their own blacks only firefighter organization, the “Vulcan Blazers.”

Black supremacy permeates every aspect of Baltimore’s political system from the mayor’s office to control of the police and fire departments to who is awarded city contracts to the judicial system which is shot through with black racial consciousness in the form of witness intimidation (the Dawson family) and black jury nullification (Joel Lee).

Black Public Schools In Black Run Baltimore

Baltimore’s public school system, which is 83 percent black and 84 percent low income, is as abysmal as one would expect given the demographics:

• 4 school personnel in the Baltimore City Public School system were assaulted every single day in 2010.
• 38 percent of adults in Baltimore are illiterate.
• There have been 4,000 assaults in the Baltimore City Public School system within the last five years.
• In 2013, Baltimore paid out $49 million dollars to teachers in worker’s compensation claims, mostly due to black violence in the public schools.

No wonder only 8 percent of students in the Baltimore City Public School system are White. The only White parents who enroll their children in Baltimore’s public schools are those who can’t afford to send them to private schools.

Even though the Baltimore City Public School system was second in per pupil spending among America’s 100 largest school districts, Paul Kersey sees Baltimore’s public schools as little more than a “day care center” for budding black criminals where teachers are changing grades to pass failing students.

Kersey argues that black violence in the Baltimore City Public School system drives down property value, reduces tax revenue, convinces capitalists to invest elsewhere, and wards off White couples with children who take their jobs and tax dollars to the suburbs.

Black Society In Black Run Baltimore

In The City That Bleeds, Paul Kersey quips that “a bank can’t lend social capital,” and this can be seen in all kinds of ways in Baltimore:

• Baltimore is second in reported HIV infections among large US metro areas.
• Chinese novelists have been inspired by the dystopian “bombed out” landscape of East Baltimore.
• Baltimore’s judicial system is similar to Haiti’s judicial system where black juries refuse to convict black criminals while throwing the book at White defendants.
• ABC News has reported that Baltimore is the heroin capital of the United States – 1 in every 10 people in Baltimore is a heroin addict.
• In 2009, 33 percent of black people in Baltimore were on SNAP EBT.
• Baltimore has the fourth highest tax rate in the United States.
• Baltimore is a place where 12-year-old girls are robbed at gunpoint on the way to school.
• In 2013, Baltimore was the seventh most dangerous city in America for the second year in a row.
• Baltimore is about to impose an even tougher youth curfew because black 5 and 6-year-olds are wandering the street at night without parental supervision.
• Even though the State of Maryland finances 40 percent of Baltimore’s budget, Baltimore is on the path to bankruptcy and financial ruin.
• Because of the high crime in Baltimore (over 90 percent of which can be attributed to the black population), there are now over 600 surveillance cameras in Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department is requesting another $700,000 to expand its police state surveillance network.
• $22 million dollars is being spent to tear down blighted rowhouses in Baltimore.
• In Baltimore, cabs have bullet resistance shields.

If there is any mental image that defines the essence of black society in Black Run Baltimore though, it is the Korean convenience store owners who barricade themselves and all their merchandise behind yellowed bulletproof Plexiglass.

In Baltimore, the black family has disintegrated, and has been replaced by matriarchal households centered upon welfare state dependent grandmothers and baby mommas. Fatherless black children are raised amid the blighted rowhouses, vacant lots, and trash filled alleys populated by heroin addicts. Young black males who are unable to adapt to Baltimore’s post-industrial economy stake territorial claims to street corners and shoot each other over “disrespect” in vicious turf wars.

The young thugs who are are the source of so much misery in Baltimore are chased through the night with spotlights by the Baltimore Police helicopter fleet. Most White Americans aren’t accustomed to the excitement provided by gunshots and helicopter spotlights in their neighborhood at midnight courtesy of eruptions of what Kersey has labeled acts of “spontaneous blackness.”

Conclusion

In 1917, Miss Alice J. Reilley wrote in a letter addressed to the mayor of Baltimore, “What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?” It’s a good question that is still valid today. It is pregnant with all kinds of uncomfortable implications.

Almost a century later, Paul Kersey ends The City That Bleeds with a formula designed as a similar time capsule that explains the demise of Baltimore to future generations: Low Impulse Control + Poor Future-Time Orientation + Low IQ (x) jury nullification (black political control)2 = Baltimore in 2014.

Don’t let this happen to your city.