The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette just published an
article
talking about how this has been the deadliest start to a year in over
a decade in terms of gun violence. This is not the Pittsburgh I live
in. If you look at the map in the article, you can see what I mean. I
live in the middle of the large gray section in the eastern part of
the city.
Pittsburgh has distinct neighborhoods. There are some diverse
neighborhoods, but overall the city is heavily segregated by race and
income. The
schools are even more
segregated. Gun
violence (and violence in general) affects Black people here far more
than other
groups:
between 2005 and 2019, 89% of homicide victims in Pittsburgh were
Black despite Black people's making up only 22% of the city's
population.
I don't know how we begin to address this problem when the city's
largest newspaper won't mention the elephant in the room out of fear
that people will think they're saying this is a "Black problem". But
that's what people already think. And they already have a solution in
mind: enact policies that drive away Black people. Pittsburgh has been
doing this successfully for over a
decade,
and it's successfully reduced the city's Black population by making
the city far less livable for Black people (especially Black
women)
than white people. But the people who leave are those who have the
resources to leave. Which means those who remain are poorer.
The shootings are not a "Black problem", but Pittsburgh has made them
its Black population's problem. They are a symptom of policies that
lead to poverty, and to geographic concentration of poverty. Unless the
city lives up to its "most livable city" reputation for all its
residents, it won't be long before it's not a particularly livable
city for anyone.