Repairing Baltimore's Torn Social Fabric: D. Watkins Speaks to AP Psych Class

Earlier this month, our 12th grade AP Psychology class welcomed D. Watkins, drug-dealer turned writer and educator, to the High School. Convinced “we need to communicate with people that we fundamentally don’t know if we are going to resolve human relationships,” Mr. Bolenbaugh arranged the program to offer his students the opportunity to gain understanding through opening a dialogue with a member of the black community actively trying to repair the racial divide in his city. Cumulating weeks of coursework on attribution, the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events, Watkins presented the class a raw perspective on Baltimore from the eyes of a young, African American male growing up in the notorious Lafayette Projects.

Shaking the seniors’ perceptions of the recent unrest in Baltimore City, Watkins combined the narrative of underprivileged blacks growing up in poor, inner-city neighborhoods with his gentle yet provocative social and political criticism. Shocked, like many of the other seniors, by a statistic revealing that merely 21% of Baltimore City police officers reside within city lines, Daniel G. ’16 explained that “it is really hard to express empathy towards people who are alien to you, to solve the crushing social problems facing the city first it seems rational that the police need to develop some kind of commonality with the residents.”

However, Watkins did not harp on police brutality nearly as much as he criticized the rupture of the “social fabric” in the inner-city for which he blamed the misalignment of financial incentives. Essentially, a vast number of city residents simply don’t have access to a spectrum of resources from quality education to practical jobs, largely due to the political influence of corrupt interest groups. Humbled by the unfortunate circumstances shared by many teenagers her age growing up in the city, Emma S. ‘16 expressed that “it’s crazy to be so caught up in the college process where we think that whether or not we get into an Ivy League school is the biggest deal in the world, when in reality it is such a blessing for us even to have the ability to apply.”

Though presenting no silver bullet to cure the current racial disparity, Watkins simultaneously presented the multi-dimensional woes plaguing the city with a far-sweeping and strikingly simple call to action: reading and awareness. While he offered utilizing social media to spread awareness of the unjust situation faced by many city residents, Watkins ultimately offered reading as a means to mend the torn socioracial fabric of our city.