2015: The Deadliest Year in Baltimore History

Hunter Wallace
Occidental Dissent
January 3, 2016

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Many decades ago, the United States ceased to be a serious country, and nowhere in 2015 was this more true than in Baltimore – which after Ferguson carried the banner of the “Black Lives Matter” movement – and suffered the bloodiest year in its entire history on account of black people shooting each other:

“Blood was shed in Baltimore at an unprecedented pace in 2015, with mostly young, black men shot to death in a near-daily crush of violence.

On a per-capita basis, the year was the deadliest ever in the city. The year’s tally of 344 homicides was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents.

The killings were on pace with recent years in the early months of 2015 but skyrocketed after the unrest and rioting of late April. In five of the next eight months, killings topped 30 or 40 a month.

Nearly 90 percent of the year’s homicides were the result of shootings, renewing calls for new gun laws. Counting nonfatal shootings, gun violence was up more than 75 percent compared to last year, with more than 900 people shot.

More than 90 percent of the homicide victims this year were boys or men, more than 90 percent were black, and more than half were between the ages of 18 and 30 — reflecting an urban reality that residents and civil rights activists say is devoid of legitimate job opportunities and caught up in the often-violent drug trade. …”

Baltimore in 2015 was the epitome of Black Run America: it has a black mayor, a black chief of police, a black chief prosecutor, a majority black City Council, and it is represented in the US Congress by Elijah Cummings, a black member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and in the Maryland state legislature by numerous black state representatives and state senators. Also at the federal level, Barack Obama is the first black president, and Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, the last two Attorney Generals have been black as well.

Even the Baltimore police officer who is now on trial for allegedly giving Freddie Gray a “rough ride” out of racism is black. In Baltimore, four out of six police commanders are also black, over half of active duty police officers are black and non-White, as well as over half of police captains. With the exception of Martin O’Malley from 2000 to 2008, Baltimore has been under the rule of a black mayor since 1988.

So what is the greatest problem facing Baltimore at the outset of 2016? Obviously, it is white supremacy and a society crippled by structural racism, particularly in law enforcement, which has no respect for the value of black lives. This in a city which has been desegregated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for half a century now.

In the mainstream media, the narrative is always angelic black civil rights protesters clashing with evil White racists like Bull Connor in Birmingham in 1963, with civil rights martyrs like Michael Brown and Freddie Grey reprising the role of saint Emmett Till. The narrative barely acknowledges that we are now living through an entirely different epoch of American history that began in 1965.