Hogwarts, Baltimore and Ruth Benedict

Anthropologist Ruth Fulton Benedict was the first female president of the American Anthropological Association.  When it comes to Baltimore, Benedict had this dystopian tragedy figured out decades ago.  She laid out both the problems and the answers in her book Patterns of Culture. 

What we see manifested in Baltimore’s troublesome summer of 2015 is seated in her quote, “Group ethos is just personality writ large.”  In essence, Benedict says that any society unconsciously selects, supports, gives obeisance to and promotes the character traits it admires and sees as beneficial.  You are the person the people around you want you to be.  Unfortunately, our nation is paying a horrendous cost for what that societal self-selection is doing in Baltimore. 

Do they need better schools?  Baltimore ranks 4^th among all major U.S. cities in per pupil expenditure.  The public schools of Baltimore spend $16,578 per pupil; that is 52% above the national average.  Yet, 25% fail to graduate high school and 50% fail to pass the state High School Assessment.  SAT scores are 100 points below the national average.

Do the people of the Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park area need more financial help?  According to the Baltimore Sun, Maryland has one of the most generous welfare systems in the nation. A mother with two children who is participating in the seven common welfare programs could receive benefits worth more than $35,000.  That is $15,000 above the poverty line for a family of three.  

Do they need more jobs?  Only 2.9% of full-time workers are poor, while 23.9% of non-working adults are.  The nation’s unemployment rate is 5.5%; Baltimore’s is 8.4%; but it is 50% in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park.  So where are the employers?  Only seven states have a worse business climate than Maryland.   When you rank tax burdens from lowest to highest, Maryland is near the top.   It is 40th in terms of business taxes, and 45th in terms of personal-income taxes.  The state’s small businesses face the nation’s seventh-highest marginal tax rates.

            Money is not the answer.  Neither is lack of it the problem.  The people of Baltimore, from the mayor to the young men on the street, are making choices that reflect the standards of the group.  The dysfunction of this city is their, “personality writ large.”  We cannot change that group think, but they can.  Here is how.

            The problems of our inner cities are not problems of race; they are problems of culture.  That is where Ruth Benedict comes in. Here meticulous research showed that societies (consciously or unconsciously) select the individual behaviors they find most effective, and promote, endorse and support the people who display those behaviors.  They create a society that reflects their own values. 

            The ugly truth is that Baltimore has gotten the city they want.  But they have the ability to change those standards of behavior—if they want to.  Keep in mind, any decision to change means stepping away from “the Devil you know” into uncharted land.  People will often choose to stay with an outwardly dysfunctional system because they have learned how to work with it.  Some may even thrive in the chaos; others just know how to stay alive, dodging between the shadows.  But if the beleaguered people of Baltimore want better, there is a way up and out.  

            They need to start by doing some sociological triage.  There are pockets of Baltimore that are going to live and some that are going to die, no matter what we do.  We need to start with the neighborhoods that could go either way.  If that sounds like a stern choice--welcome to reality.

Pick out four, four-block sections of Baltimore that are not coterminous, but are in the areas that have 20-30% of their people living below the poverty line (that data is already available and mapped out).  Do not share the location of the other localities to prevent sabotage.

Treat these four small localities as if they were the four houses at Hogwarts.  They are in competition with each other.  They will be judged on a few basic, but life improving, activities.  If their children improve their school attendance, if there are fewer incidents of crime, fewer cases of arson, some clean-up of the streets, removal of graffiti, more people getting a job (part-time, minimum wage, anything), that four-block location gets points.  Every four months the area with the most points gets a 3% increase in all benefits.  Where does the increase come from?  From the other three locations who find their benefits decreased by 1% each.

 

                       By the end of a year, a consistently better location would have increased its benefits by 9% but no other area, would lose more than 3%.  The tax payers would not be facing a greater burden.  All gain and loss is internal.  What is more, good things would be happening in some, if not all of the areas.  Once an area is well established in the system it will be expanded out by one block in every direction.  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Slowly, Baltimore will start to change the characteristics it wants to support.  Competition will work its magic and no more taxpayer money will be swirled down the drain. 

Reward only good behavior and keep the faith.