“For evil is in the world: it may be in the world to stay.” – James Baldwin, 1961.
The allure of the politician as charismatic, desirable, witty, well-read, and all-American is the lifeblood of our evening news and the morning paper. Which candidate do you want to have a beer with? Who can kiss your baby? How can they court your vote? Whether it’s church basements, schoolyard visits, or the perfect family photo, there’s a stage for every potential politician to shine. The danger, as illustrated by decades of increased military spending and decreased literacy rates, is in the details. We are a nation facing the woes of crumbling 19th-century infrastructure without a national strategy for much of what ails us. And, I fear, unless we confront our missteps and challenge ourselves, we are doomed to lose much on the road ahead. Said another way, the dangerous road before us all requires much.
Some of what is required is a firm understanding of where we’ve been. For me, reflecting on U.S. politics plants me back in 2008 — a year marked by market collapse, bank bailouts, plus the first presidential election I can recall with surety. That year, my fifth-grade teacher offered us extra credit in exchange for crafting signs supporting Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. I, a young, eager child, leaped at the lure. By the evening, when my grandmother and her forest-green Ford truck retrieved me from the neighborhood rec center, my mind was set. Get materials and get to work. By the six o’clock news, I was strewn across her bedroom floor with glitter, markers, and the best poster board we could find in the craft aisle of Rite Aid. With the help of too much Elmer’s Glue, my endorsement of the then-young Illinois senator sparkled. The words “hope” and “yes we can!” shimmered on the cardstock. This moment, colored through the perspective of a young child who was dazzled by the promise of extra points and praise from a teacher, is one of my earliest political memories.
My understanding of Obama as a dynamic leader ruptured. And by 2015, when he addressed Baltimore on CNN and advised parents across the city to beat us, their children, rather than allow us outside to protest the murder of Freddie Gray, it was laid waste.
Half a decade later, in 2013, my Algebra II teacher cleaved my elementary understanding of U.S. politics and broke what I thought I knew about leadership. My friends and I, leaning on her kindness and novelty as a new hire and young teacher, ate lunch in her classroom most days. In between jokes that were too loud (and likely not all that funny, but hilarious to us), we took pride in our grasp of the real issues. And that day’s circle centered on Obama’s greatness. Soon the bell rang, and we rose to leave. Getting up from her chair, our teacher spoke, asking us if we knew much about the drone program and Obama’s role in it. We shook our heads, and she continued, “Back home in Pakistan, my family and our neighbors hardly gather for weddings or funerals or family reunions because of the drones the U.S. military flies over our heads. When more than 10 of us gather, the drones begin to sound overhead, and we fear being shot.” My understanding of Obama as a dynamic leader ruptured. And by 2015, when he addressed Baltimore on CNN and advised parents across the city to beat us, their children, rather than allow us outside to protest the murder of Freddie Gray, it was laid waste.
Later, a third teacher in the same building — in the English department — introduced me to the work of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, breaking open my understanding of politics again.
We read everything Baldwin from “Autobiographical Notes” to “Sonny’s Blues,” examining 20th-century syntax every measure of the way. And one essay, “The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King,” originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1961, sticks with me now. In it, Baldwin profiles Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and assesses the Southern preacher on all fronts. More than writing a profile on King, Baldwin presents a hilarious and sobering analysis of U.S. politics and race at the top of the 1960s. In one paragraph early in the essay, he writes, “King is entirely right when he says that segregation is dead. The real question which faces the Republic is just how long, how violent, and how expensive the funeral is going to be; and this question it is up to the Republic to resolve, it is not really in King’s hands.” Seven years after publication, King would be assassinated in Memphis. It’s been 64 years, and we are solidly in the funeral procession. I’m fearful that we’ve made little progress in the way of, as Baldwin declares, the “growing up of this dangerously adolescent country.”
In the shadow of Baldwin’s writing and in the wake of King’s death, the challenges posed to the Republic haunt me. We, as a nation, have not moved on from segregation’s funeral, let alone begun to confront the ills of classism. Still, in Baltimore City, the biggest city in a state praised for our wealth of resources, and since 2024, our wealth of Black politicians as symbols of racial and political progress, most Black Baltimoreans are food insecure without sufficient wages, housing, or options for transportation. What are we to make of progress with this material reality of our conditions? How are we to proceed when Baltimore, like Atlanta and many other cities, proves that Black politicians are not automatic solutions for the problems tormenting Black poor people?
On the one hand, Baltimore is a beacon for many as news of our decreasing homicide rate and increased funding for youth programming makes the rounds online and off. On the other hand, the virality of that news, without citations or explanation, exemplifies one major problem with political engagement at present: so much is said with little understood. Social media’s influence on information sharing has reshaped our discussions and propelled the condensation of knowledge. We — as nudged by the almighty algorithm — favor short, succinct taglines over the slow process of learning and verifying information. The result is the ongoing regurgitation of Instagram tile copy and corporate headlines without statistics or sources to ground us. We are lured in by doom, buoyed by hope, and at the mercy of editorial teams and social media savvy.
My issue is not with the spread of good news about Charm City. I’m a proud Baltimore native witnessing the changing tides of the city that raised me. My qualm, and Baldwin’s for that matter, is with passive political participation. We must realize the fate of the nation is in our hands. And that fate is not for politicians to decide, though how we engage politics and politicians will say a lot about where we go next. Are we ready to challenge politicians as servant-leaders of the people? Or are we invested in politicians as civil celebrities?
Brandon Scott, as mayor of Baltimore, is tasked with serving the needs of his constituents. His career in politics began nearly 15 years ago as a city councilperson. He is not a novice getting his first shot at power. Our assessments of Scott need to consider his years in the crucible of Maryland politics — or those assessments won’t be rigorous or get close enough to the truth. What I mean to say is, Scott is not a new kid on the block. He’s a long-time resident in the halls of power. And we need to treat him as such.
His supporters claim that a critique of Scott means support of right-wing, racist agendas, in the same way that Obama’s supporters did. But this rhetorical defense jostles us between two settings, devotee or blasphemer, and neither does much to confront the challenges plaguing poor and working-class neighbors across the city. As interest in Baltimore rises, and budgets are allocated to court outside interests, Baltimoreans deserve to question elected officials about when their needs will be met. Otherwise, Baltimore is a city with arms wide open for new residents of Scott’s mythical “Wakanda,” while current residents and Baltimore natives suffer the familiar pang of neglect.
According to economic indicator data, Baltimore’s labor force continues to revolve around academic and health care institutions. This fact has held steady for many decades, and it’s unlikely to shift. The chance for change, benefiting working-class and poor residents, must then occur at the level of negotiating contracts with these institutions that require increased investment in municipal infrastructure. Simply put, Baltimore City government must leverage the relationship with these multi-billion-dollar behemoths to benefit people at all levels of the economic strata if this city is to keep its head above water for longer than two years at a time.
Until our engagement with local politicians transcends identity reductionism, we are doomed to confuse storytelling with political strategy. The dangerous road ahead necessitates data-driven strategies vetted and criticized by the Baltimoreans directly impacted by their implementation. Baltimore City can be better, and it takes rigor and criticism to journey there. We can’t continue to engage with our politicians in the same way I did as a fifth grader, hoping for extra credit.