There's a lot of problems in american cities. I worked in the south bronx in 1980's. It was pretty insane. During that time the south bronx was dubbed "Fort Apache", hence the movie name. If you characterize any of those places as a shithole, you're called a racist. The south bronx in the 80's was such a shithole. The only reason our building didn't get burned out was because the winery was downstairs below our business, and the locals broke in to steal wine regularly. What sense would it make to burn out your source of stolen alcohol???
We hired two of the local gang members full time to go for coffee and sweep up when they felt like it. Consequently, we had local protection. If you robbed our shop, you probably don't have to worry about the cops, they were too busy solving murders to worry about property theft... If the local gang found out you robbed us, you would be found with a bullet in your head, or maybe they would just kick your ass, take to stuff you stole and sell it themselves. No honor among thieves...
It's pretty impossible to be a white person and point the finger at anything in the black community and criticize it without drawing the racist accusation. Sadly, that dynamic continues to hurt their community. Every community needs to be less like the italian mafia of old, where we protect our own even when they are doing wrong. Every community needs to be called out when they are fucked up. In the case of the mafia, their heinous reign didn't diminish until good italians rejected their cultural practices and were involved in prosecuting them, and criticizing good italian people for being complicit with the mafia's behavior... A lot of urban cultures need that criticism from within, rather than tribalistically accepting some fucked up cultural disfunction among people of their own culture out of some sort of "Cultural loyalty".
As John was saying, we have a boatload of insults and accusations back and forth from both parties, but not a lot of desire to come together to eliminate the present urban cultural problems. It's just my opinion, but I think the biggest obsticle is "who gets the credit". If democrats get on board with a Trump policy that helps needy communities, then they help Trump get re-elected. If republicans back a democrat's plan that helps the american people, then the democrats pick up support for their successes.. Neither will help the other do anything good for us, because they risk loosing political power in the process.
I don't think this is a very controversial thing to say. I think politics after WWII was less devisive because we fought a war together which saved the planet. I think as we became more prosperous as a nation in the years after the war, politics gradually became big business. That's where we are today. The parties are competitive businesses, who are more concerned with choking out their competitor than producing a better product for we citizens...
It's actually more politically effective to let people suffer and blame your opponent for the suffering, then do something good to eliminate the suffering and take the credit for yourself.
...... I have spoken....