Within the past year, the news has highlighted the intense struggle between the black community and the police force. The stories of Michael Brown in Ferguson, M.O., Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner on Staten Island and Walter Scott in North Charleston S.C. sparked national news headlines about race and police brutality. All of these highly publicized stories were met with rage and frustration from some, attempts of empathy from others, and defensiveness and denial from far too many.

In April 2015, Freddie Gray's death pushed communities far past their final breaking point. After hopelessly fighting for relief from an institution that punishes people based on the color of their skin for months in the news but even for years before that, the results of these unjust deaths yielded did not meet their standards. And months after the headlines have faded, change has still not come.

The answer to why is quite simple: we, as a society, treat the symptoms of a problem and not the actual problem itself. These stories of intense police brutality to the black community clearly highlight the societal problem, institutionalized racism. When these concrete examples of institutionalized racism surfaced, people's often overlooked the issue at hand to examine the results the issue yielded. Many people responded by doing one of two things. First, people refused to believe police brutality against the black community even exists. More commonly, others only seemed to only acknowledge police brutality against blacks on a rare, incidental basis like when there is a highly publicized story which creates large-scale violence, such as Freddie Gray's death.

The truth is institutionalized racism exists everywhere, all the time. For example, in schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade, black children are three times more likely to be suspended than white children and "make up almost 40 percent of all school expulsions." A black man is three times more likely to be searched at a traffic stop, and six times more likely to go jail than a white person. Additionally, there is a jarring gap between the population of people who own homes, 73% of the white population versus 43% of the black population. US News reports that the "median household income for whites (is) about $91,000 compared to...about $7,000 (for blacks)." While there are countless examples, these are just a few examples of the ways racism is so deeply embedded into America's institutions today.

Baltimore, specifically, is no stranger to institutionalized racism. "The Greatest City in America", as it is commonly referred to, is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. For instance, some of these predominantly black neighborhoods often exist in food deserts, where most are unable to access healthy and affordable food. In addition, black people make up a a quarter of the Baltimore region’s working-age population but accounts for nearly half of all unemployed people. In these ways and in many others, Baltimore encapsulates the struggles that racism creates on a national level.

Institutionalized racism is, very plainly, the explanation of the unjust deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray. The violence that followed these events were reactions to this system that has oppressed a large group of people since America's beginning. Instead of looking into the roots of the problem and working to resolve this issue substantially, we watched comfortably and waited for the violence to be stopped. And as the mass violence and media coverage have stopped, so have our conversations.

What society at large fails to grasp is that problem can exist without such an obvious symptom so blatantly outlined for us. We assume that because there aren't headlines about Baltimore or fiery images plastered over our television screen that this racism and the ways in which it is manifested in our society, does not affect people on a daily basis.

The truth is that Baltimore is still the same as it was before the riots. It is still the beautiful city with a rich history and diversity that attracts so many people here. Yes, people have increasingly grown in community and support for one another because of the uprisings in April. However, not much else has changed. Neighborhoods are still segregated. Black children are still more likely to be expelled from school for the minor offenses. Barriers between police and the black community still exist and in many ways have grown.

Racism still slithers its way into every facet of life. It endures ever so subtly in today's system. Subtle in a way that it is designed to allow the average white person to comfortably moving through life without acknowledging its existence. It is only when these especially horrific racist events happen do we acknowledge the racism engraved in our society, which is not enough.

The great Martin Luther King Jr. once said "to ignore evil is to become accomplice to it." Every day, we carelessly pass through a society so evil that we have become unwilling to recognize it. When we are not fighting for the rights of those who are enslaved by institutionalized racism, we are contributing to the system.

As citizens with an increasingly high moral standard and passion for social justice, we have a responsibility to continue the conversation. To give voices to those who do not have the platform to share their experiences and thoughts about society that thrives off of oppression.

Even more so then continuing the conversation, we need to work towards justice. Justice is rejecting this systematic oppression. We must actively choose to tear down the parts of our institutions that allow young black kids to be unfairly expelled from their schools, segregate our neighborhoods and unjustly imprison thousands of people based on the color of their skin. Justice means piecing together these singular events such as the death of Freddie Gray, to the see the connectivity between that police brutality against the black community and institutionalized racism. Together, we have come together in community and combat this inhumane system and rebuild a just system.

Baltimore, while now devoid of the mass media attention that gave the city a national platform back in April, is still buried by institutionalized racism and will be unless we change it. We have a responsibility to for the first time in history to make this city "The Greatest City in America" for ALL people, ALL of the time.