“Neighborhoods such as Roland Park required homeowners to sign covenants barring African-Americans.”

That sentence is from Baltimore leaders agree: City has a race problem, a front-page story in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun.

Those restrictive covenants also excluded Jews.

I have represented Roland Park my entire career.

My three colleagues in the 41st District for the last 12 years, Lisa Gladden, Jill Carter, and Nathaniel Oaks, are African-American.

Approximately 2/3 of the population of our district is African-American.

Blacks and Jews have a shared but not identical history of being outsiders, bearing the brunt of discrimination.

There are local concerns and public policy issues where these communities agree, but sometimes they don’t.

What’s constant is our effort to represent our diverse constituencies.

Should a conflict or crisis arise, we’re not newcomers in any neighborhood.