My memories of Minnesota are innocent ones, wonderful summers spent as a child with my grandma and aunt at their house in Minneapolis, and weeks-long canoe trips as a child in the boundary waters between northern Minnesota and Canada. Later on I would spend a few weeks with my aunt in a small cabin in the Minnesota woods, with a hand pumped well in the kitchen, a root cellar under the floor, an outhouse out back, and fields of sumac from which we made sun tea and juice.
As a child, I was oblivious to the fact that Minnesota had practiced lynching 100 years ago, and that Minnesota would develop over time into a state with such an underlying fear and distrust of people of African-American descent that any white supremacist would feel right at home. One cannot get much further north in the continental United States than Duluth, Minnesota. Racism has spread everywhere like uncontrolled cancer.
Having grown up in Marquette, Michigan, a very northern city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my exposure to people of color was limited to a few Native Americans, a few black men stationed at K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, and a few black college students studying at Northern Michigan University.
Once I transferred to the University of Michigan in downstate Michigan, I was exposed to many more black college students and the existence of a separate black subculture. Being a shy young man from a small wilderness town, I can’t say that I made too many friends in general, but I could have had a black girlfriend if I hadn’t been such a social incompetent. I don’t remember her name, but she really liked me. We all have missed opportunities, and she was one of mine.
During the course of my engineering career, I became friends with our black warehouse foreman Yves, who was from Haiti, and with a cute young college intern named Zakia, whose parents were from England. I called her my Princess of Wales, she called me her Boo. A 25 year age difference was a critical factor in our just being really good friends.
Later on, I spent much of a summer travelling to various Caribbean islands, working with the local construction crews, most of which were made up of black men. My job was to instruct them on the installation techniques for the products my company was providing for various jobs. Even though I didn’t spend enough time at most of the projects to develop good friendships, it was a great experience and reinforced my general impression that a friendly smile and a respectful manner transcends a lot of perceived differences.
It is incredibly sad to see the horrible state of affairs in Minneapolis right now that has resulted from the callus brutality of four police officers. The brutality that ended in the murder on a busy street in broad daylight of a black man already secured in handcuffs and laying helpless on the ground could not have been a more graphic display of how our racist past lies just under the skin of our society, ready to burst forth in hatred and cruelty, and how so many of us are so ready to embrace this ignorance without shame or remorse or a moment’s thought.
This illustrates in the starkest of ways why “Black Lives Matter” is such a profound plea that white people need to understand and accept how much racism still exists within our country.
There are many things that we as individuals cannot change right away. We cannot eliminate racist, sadistic, heartless police – only the police can do that. We cannot eliminate the economic and medical disparity that exists for all the poor – Black, Latino, White – only society as a whole can do that.
What we can do as white people is to make a concerted effort to develop empathy and try to understand what it has been like for people of African-American descent to live in this country as a feared and disrespected minority, generation after generation after generation.
I came to realize not too long ago that in 1957, the year I was born, there were still such things as whites-only drinking fountains, hotels, restaurants, etc. The entire civil rights movement has occurred within my lifetime. In many ways things have changed for the better, but we are a few generations away from being able to come together as one people. The old ways of thinking need to die with those who think them before we can truly be free.
In the meantime, each of us can reach across the color divide and make personal connections. Share your stories, share your photos, share your recipes, share your beer and barbecue. If I were a black person, I think that I would be appreciative and relieved to find out that my white neighbors wanted to be part of my life in a positive and friendly way, and I would be happy to reciprocate.
The point is that it is hard to hate a friend.
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