Racism town halls call all to action

In a nine-day span in early September, 52 people were shot in Baltimore, 14 of them fatally.

Each week, the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Facebook page features a photo of a lit candle and invites all to pray for those lost to violence of any kind in the city; that list included 12 names Sept. 14, ranging in age from 1-year-old Kaleb Shaw to 41-year-old Troy Poindexter.

According to a database from the Baltimore Sun, as of Sept. 21, 240 known homicides were reported, a little behind the pace of 2019, when 348 homicides were recorded in the city, a record we don’t want to surpass.

This is not to say that Baltimore City is the only jurisdiction in the state with violence, but it remains an epidemic that continues to hurt our community.

Poverty, drugs, gangs and homelessness are certainly factors, but many of these can be traced to pervasive, systemic racism.

Sherita Thomas, interim director of the archdiocesan Office of Black Catholic Ministry, notes her office and the Racism Working Group it sponsors will focus on educating the whole community.

“We believe it is critical for us to understand the history, the sin of racism, how it manifests itself and how it hides in plain sight within policies and practices that may deny access and discriminate against people of color,” she said in an interview for “Catholic Review Radio.”

Bill McCarthy, executive director of Catholic Charities of Maryland, told the radio show that generational poverty holds back many families. While some families pursuing “the American dream” may accumulate wealth and pass that on to their children and grandchildren, for many families in Baltimore, poverty itself – the lack of wealth and opportunity – is passed on from generation to generation, he said.

During a Mass Sept. 13 to mark the feast of St. Peter Claver as a day of prayer for racial justice, Archbishop William E. Lori referred to the coronavirus pandemic and said the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis this summer, Freddie Gray Jr. in Baltimore in 2015 and others illustrates that racism is also a pandemic – one that “never seems to go away, and its symptoms are many, whether it’s acts of violence committed against Black persons, a dearth of decent housing in many Black neighborhoods, a lack of educational and economic opportunity in Black communities, discriminatory attitudes, remarks and jokes.”

“Some among us are asymptomatic,” the archbishop said. “They do not appear to be overtly racist but nonetheless harbor racist attitudes and assumptions of privilege in their hearts. They, too, can be carriers of the sin of racism and they help to spread it in our society.”

The Maryland Catholic Conference, in partnership with the Archdioceses of Baltimore and Washington, will convene two town halls for discussion around police reform, race relations legislation and issues affecting communities. The Baltimore event – hosted at St. Bernardine Parish in West Baltimore – will be Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m.

Parishioners are invited to submit questions in advance to communications@mdcatholic.org and can submit questions via chat and email during the planned one-hour event, which can be accessed at mdcatholic.org/townhall.

According to organizers, the town hall hopes to bring together key constituencies for moderated public discussions about police reform and race relations in Baltimore, in the light of the work being done by a legislative work group.

A similar session will be held Oct. 6 in the Washington Archdiocese.

Thomas said, “White Catholics also let me know that they want to be involved, they want to make sure that we are representative of the universal church, and that too much burden at times is put on Black people to solve the problem. We all must work together.”

Whatever the color of your skin, if you want to be part of the solution, a good place to start would be to participate in the town hall Oct. 26. Vote Nov. 3. And then take action in your community to make things better.

More articles & commentary on racial justice

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