We Don’t Say That Word

This article in the Baltimore Sun caught my attention for all the wrong reasons.

Police: Columbia woman* pepper-sprayed man after yelling slurs at shopping center, Brendan Nordstrom, Baltimore Sun

One choice of words leapt out at me. It’s not what you might expect.

Shopping center.

Oh my word. The Howard Hughes Corporation does not create anything so ordinary as “shopping centers.” Merriweather Row is, I believe, a self-described Lifestyle Center. I wonder if someone in a corner office somewhere cringed when they read those words.

Shopping center? The very idea! Next they’ll be talking about Walmarts and garden apartments.

There goes the neighborhood. (I wonder if they’ll sue.)

As I said, that’s hardly the reason to be concerned about the crime committed here, which was both racist and violent. You might expect me to mention the particular pain caused by such an act in a community that was meant to be the very opposite of racism from its inception. But I’m really tired of reading takes like this that never seem to be followed up with meaningful action to address the very real, current problems.

So I won’t belabor that old trope. Columbia, the (old) New American City, is as racist or antiracist as we make it.

I will point out that the Restorative Justice Partnership has been holding their third People's Conference this weekend at the Harriet Tubman Center. This year’s theme is Chasing Freedom. The weekend concludes with an afternoon of play. Play is joyful. Play fosters connection. In a time of hateful acts, play is strengthening and an act of resistance.

In an ordinary day in Columbia, Maryland a woman attacked a man with pepper spray, saying, “I’m a Confederate. I’m going to kill you.”

It doesn’t matter if it was a shopping center or a lifestyle center. What matters is that, in that moment, a relatively safe place became unsafe. What will we do as a community to address that harm?

What kind of lifestyle do we want to center?

Village Green/Town² Comments

*I did some amateur sleuthing to see if I could learn more about the perpetrator and the process reminded me that I am neither a professional investigator nor a journalist. Therefore, I’m not going to share what I found.

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