I’m thinking.

There’s a lot of talk about crime in St. Louis. And that’s because there’s a lot of crime. St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis – they go back and forth as to who wins the title of most dangerous city. And crime here is something on the minds of people. Not only fear of being murdered and other violent crimes, but perhaps property crimes (like car thefts and break-ins) even more so.

But most of these statistics concern the city only. And if you look at the St. Louis metropolitan area but exclude the city, things look more normal (not that normal is good). And that’s important because St. Louis City contains only about 10 percent of the metro population.

That is weird in and of itself. The estimated population of the city is about 290,000. The population of the metro area is about 2,800,00. When I was in high school, St. Louis City population was, according to the 1950 census, 856,000. That was about 1/3 of the metro area population at that time.

There is also a racial aspect to the crime statistics unfortunately. St. Louis city is about half white and half Black. Very few Asian or Hispanic residents in the city proper. The city is racially segregated. The north part of the city is almost all Black. Actually, it about half Black and half empty. The west and south of the city are not all white, but predominantly so. Most of the crime, and especially most of the violent crime, occurs in the northern section of St. Louis.

But the fear of crime seems pervasive and must have, along with a rational fear to some extent, a racial component. But this gets complicated because the statistics do show that Black residents are involved in most of the violent crime.

My thoughts about St. Louis and race growing up would take a post in and of itself and is not for today. Suffice it to say that St. Louis when I was growing up was virtually totally segregated residentially. And the Black population was, obviously with some exceptions, extraordinarily poor. This was in part a result of the reactionary policies of the state of Missouri government (it was always bad), and the general feelings of the white population (Missouri had its heritage as a slave state of course) which by and large had Black inferiority built into its genes.

There were no race riots in St. Louis in 1968, something the city was proud of but that I always thought just reflected the hopelessness of the city’s Blacks at the time. And fear of Blacks led to the very high white flight from the city. And my guess is this legacy continues today to a great extent.

Still today, on the whole, the city and the suburbs are different and they come together only to support the Art Museum, the Zoo, and the Cardinals and other sports teams. I know I exaggerate and there are many exceptions, but I think this separation remains a general problem, leading to isolating a large part of the inner city Black population and to personal hopelessness and crime.

Enough for today, except to make it clear that this crime problem does not blot the whole city. Western and southern St. Louis City are prosperous, thriving, lively and welcoming. And very diverse. But the sense of fear of being a victim of some kind of crime seems to be pervasive across the entire area, and seems to delay, rather than foster, positive change.