But Baltimore’s problems stretch further back, to institutionalized racial discrimination in the early 20th century. Federal and local policymakers of the time
redlined areas with "undesirable racial concentrations" to omit them from mortgage insurance programs.
And over the century, the same neighborhoods faced one destructive policy after another, from mass incarceration to the rise of predatory banks.
Aggressive policing, tougher drug sentencing, slashing the budgets of school and public housing and parks—throughout Baltimore’s history, lawmakers at the local, state, and federal level adopted policies that entrenched poverty and segregation in the city.
President Barack Obama hinted at the need for assistance in
off-the-cuff remarks this week, though it's unlikely to come from federal politicians. “If we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could,” he said, adding, "I think we all understand that the politics of that are tough because it’s easy to ignore those problems or to treat them just as a law-and-order issue, as opposed to a broader social issue.” Conservatives keep trying to change the conversation.