What Baltimore Has in Common With Ferguson and Other Protest Flash Points

From Ferguson to Staten Island, to Oakland and beyond, America has watched as reactions to police violence against black men has drawn concern and outrage from local communities that share more than grief over the death of one man—be it Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, or Oscar Grant in California.

With each new death, Americans have seen a form of protest that is growing familiar. This week’s calls for justice in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death and the violence in the streets of Baltimore are reminiscent of the protests that came before them, where locals voiced feelings of hurt and frustration with the deadly actions of law enforcement.

While law enforcement deserves review and reform as we increasingly hear about years, and sometimes decades, of poor treatment of black men by badge-carrying officials, that’s not the only institution failing in these places, or the only source of tension and stress for disadvantaged communities.

In each flash point of protest—Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland, and New York—reporting reveals some core inequalities, from schooling and employment to basic necessities. These gaps and areas of disadvantage are hardly the whole picture, but it’s worth examining how they contribute to a broader sense of disenfranchisement.

Basic Food Access

As CNN correspondents noted this week from the streets of Baltimore, the areas that were in open turmoil are also the parts of the city with few major businesses and services—fresh fruits and vegetables still get delivered by horse-drawn cart. It’s not just a challenge to eat healthy foods in these places; there’s a consistent struggle for access that is unheard of for many Americans.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created a national map to track the corners of America where residents struggle to find fresh food—dubbed food deserts. You can see how your city rates here.

You can also see that broad swaths of Ferguson and St. Louis report low food access, as do the areas of Oakland surrounding Fruitvale Station, where Oscar Grant was gunned down at a BART station, and parts of Staten Island near Eric Garner’s death.

While there has long been a fairly obvious link between limited food access and poverty, research from Johns Hopkins University has found a link between race and food deserts, too. As researcher Kelly Bower said after publishing the findings in 2014, “the poverty level of a neighborhood certainly matters, but even beyond poverty, racial composition matters.”

When there’s a daily struggle to find food, there’s daily frustration—and few residents of these places believe their struggle isn’t tied to their race or socioeconomic disadvantage.

The Need for Food Stamps

Outside of retail access, simply having money to purchase food is a pressing concern. In 2011, nearly 15 percent of Americans were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a food stamp safety-net program that boomed in the wake of the Great Recession. Find your city on the USDA’s map of food recipients.

But in Baltimore, that number was far higher: 32 percent of the city’s more than 600,000 residents were on food stamps. In Alameda County, home to both Oakland and far wealthier Berkeley, California, 8 percent of residents received SNAP in 2010; the participation rate for Alameda County shot up 56 percent between 2007 and 2011 to serve about 114,000 locals.

With about a million residents St. Louis County, where Ferguson is, has about two-thirds the population of Alameda County—but local hunger advocates say about 121,000 residents relied on food stamps in 2013.

Income and Unemployment

As the food-stamp statistics indicate, poverty plagues a sizable part of Baltimore, and in the Sandtown neighborhood, median household income between 2008 and 2012 hovered at $24,006—less than $1,000 over the national poverty line. That federal standard has long been criticized by advocates who say it’s far too little for a family of four to even survive on. In Ferguson, Oakland, and Baltimore, at least 20 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. It’s closer to 25 percent in Ferguson.

While the national unemployment rate was down to 5.5 percent in March, Sandtown’s rate was 14 percent in 2013—but there’s a caveat there. The figure includes those who are looking for work. Statistics that looked at employment between 2008 and 2012 found that about half of working-age Sandtown residents don’t work—51.8 percent are not employed.

In 2013, the unemployment rate was 12.6 percent in Oakland, 12.2 percent in Ferguson, and nearly 9 percent in the area of Staten Island where Eric Garner was killed.

Educational Attainment

The nation’s high school graduation rate hit a record high of 81 percent in 2012–13.

In Baltimore, only 69.7 percent of the class of 2014 graduated on time. Overall, 18.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds living in Baltimore never graduated from high school or earned a GED.

An even higher proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds in Ferguson—20.4 percent—don’t have a high school diploma. But data from the Ferguson-Florissant School District—where Brown went to school—shows that just over 78 percent of the class of 2014 graduated within four years.

According to federal census stats, 86 percent of Americans over age 25 have a high school diploma or higher. About 88.6 percent of Ferguson residents have hit that mark, but those numbers dip to about 80 percent in Baltimore and Oakland.

As for Staten Island, education trends in the New York City borough are mixed. On the bright side, a full 88 percent of residents over the age of 25 have a high school diploma or higher, beating the national average. But 4.9 percent of residents in that demographic did not start ninth grade, and 7.2 percent did not complete high school or earn a GED.

As for Staten Island’s high school graduation rate, it’s well below the national average. Only 72 percent of the class of 2013 graduated on time. But those youths must be taking the GED exam in droves, because only 10.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds have no high school diploma, lower than Ferguson, Baltimore, or Oakland.