­I was preparing for a trip to Baltimore, Maryland, as for one to a war zone.  Everyone told me not to go there alone, as it was too risky for a white person and especially a woman. So, I took my mobile and $ 40 in cash, and went there.  Alone.

To be honest, the place gave me rather mixed impressions. On the one hand, there are all the luxurious apartments and the fabulous skyline at the Inner Harbor… on the other – there are the devastated areas,packed with poor socially troubled communities, predominantly black, living in crappy housing blocks.  Two different American realities,existing side by side.

It was more challenging to talk to the “corner kids”, than to well-off residents, sunbathing at the Harbor.  So I went to the famous “Block” area, with its high concentration of drug-dealers, strip clubs and pimps. Men wandering around were offered drugs and girls twice in five minutes, while many refused the crack, some were interested in the girls, though they were very picky.

One of them, Alain, 30,  wasn’t interested in either. He told me that there was no point in reporting the criminals to the police, as they are released the same day they are caught. A police station is located a couple of blocks from “The Block”, so Alain explains they are simply confining the drug-dealers and pimps to the area, to prevent them spreading into other fancier quarters of Baltimore.  “Police are highly corrupted here” – he said.  Alain says he is lucky, he works as a driver for a private company but he is also on edge. He hasn’t been paid for several months.

I stepped down into one of the clubs –it was all dark and shadows. A curvy black dancer was performing at the poll, others were sitting at the bar waiting for their turn. The majority of girls here were from 18 to 25 years old, with the mature expressions of an old lady in their eyes.

Sam (not her real name), told me she performed almost every day, as she had to support herself. Physically and emotionally abandoned by her parents, who she generously explains also came from troubled backgrounds, Sam is on her own.  She left school early. College was never an option, how could she afford to pay for it? “I can’t take a student loan, because I am not sure I’ll be able to give it back” – she told me.  She didn’t know how long she was going to be a stripper,“for as long as I can, to keep going”, she said.

On the way back to DC, I was thinking about the misery I had seen there: a big family surviving on food stamps, a bunch of young drug-dealers, a hardened criminal in his early twenties.  So what does America have to offer these guys? Do they have any perspectives? Or is it just a myth that the USA is a country of opportunities? 

The answer came suddenly from an old black lady sitting next to me, who I was talking to.

“The majority of us will never be rich… we were not born into the right family” – she said.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.