The good news you didn't hear

The riots in Philadelphia last week were the headlines of practically every major news outlet in the country and perhaps the world. What I learned in Journalism school at the University of Arkansas a few decades ago still holds true today: If it bleeds, it leads. The average person believes there's much more violent crime in America, especially murder, than there actually is because of that journalism mantra. So whether you're watching the nightly news in New York City or Hastings, Nebraska, violence is more likely to be the lead story than anything else.

That was certainly the case with the riots in Baltimore. Night after night we watched as angry protestors marched, fought, destroyed property, burned down buildings which they had earlier looted, and clashed with the police. For those people living in the heartland, it was a familiar scene they were watching, one that had its origins back in the '60s and 50 years later, nothing much seems to have changed.

That's how perceptions are made initially and then solidified with each passing event. When people always respond to a situation the same way, our perceptions of them become fixed. We generalize and stereotype and decide that's just the way they are.

Most of us know better. We know you can't assume that an entire race, gender, ethnicity or religion share all the same characteristics. But it makes it easier for us to judge them so that's what we do. I hear the same stereotypes thrown around where I meet with my buddies that I've been listening to for the last fifty years. And I hear some of the same things at the college too.

Most white people know there are successfully black people. There's even one running for President in the Republican primaries. We've had commanders, generals, CEO's, Secretary of States and Presidents of the United States that were black but many still think those are exceptions to the rule. They continue to generalize that blacks are poor, shiftless, lazy people living off the government tit with no desire to contribute to themselves, their family, their neighborhood or their country in a positive way at all.

But this last week in Baltimore, even before the marches and the violence was over, that neighborhood's residents took to the streets to clean up what a gang of complainers and malcontents caused. More than 2,500 volunteers came out to clean up the mess the rioters had left behind and help local shopkeepers get back to business. The Week magazine reports that with public schools closed, a Twitter campaign was launched to help prepare lunches for the tens of thousands of students who rely on school food for their daily meals. One Baltimore resident was quoted as saying that in spite of all the troubles they had experienced, "we can see a more hopeful tomorrow."

This was much more than just a feel-good story because those kinds of stories usually close a newscast instead of leading it. This was democracy in action. This was the people who actually LIVED in that neighborhood taking action to fix the wrongs imposed on them by teenagers looking to have fun in a criminal way and outside agitators that provoked them into that kind of behavior.

Most people don't want the neighborhood they live in torn down and burned up and the residents of that neighborhood in Baltimore didn't either so they went to the streets to fix it, just like rioters had taken to those same streets earlier to destroy it.

I don't know if we'll ever stop painting people with a broad brush. We sure haven't in the 50 plus years I've been aware of the neighborhood, the country and the world I live in but for a long time I had hope. But the reality is we've always had wars and we still have them. We've always had racism and we still have it. We've always had elitism and we still have it.

My optimism for a bright tomorrow has been tempered, to say the least.