See/Feel/Hear . . . & Act

Wow--reading The Warmth of Other Suns about the Great Migration of Black people leaving the South for the North (c. 1915-1975) is really filling in gaps in my understanding of my Black coworkers who have family roots in the South. (Especially my older coworkers, but younger ones too.)

It fills in the background of my coworkers' attitudes and behaviors that I've interpreted  (knowing I don't have all the info!) as admirable Zen-like acceptance, or, on other days, as frustrating passivity;
plus, on the other hand, smoldering rage and frustration--again, sometimes expressed in ways I admire:
Mr Furniture's collage art, for instance, is full of pain and rage... but in service of and hope for a better Black future),
and sometimes self-destructive (the people across the street from the store, killing each other).

It's so different from my immigrant ancestors who fled dire poverty in Sicily: They were proud, and free to express their pride without fear (mostly) of humiliation, or lynching...

(I know there was anti-Italian prejudice and violence--including the New Orleans lynchings of eleven Italian-Americans– but that wasn't my ancestors' experience in Milwaukee---though my grandfather chose to raise the family in German neighborhoods, to stay away from other Sicilians!
But my point is, he was free to do that.)

My mother's side was Scots and other northern Europeans (Dutch? Welsh)--they came early and crossed the Appalachians in search of land.
Again, while they were literally dirt poor, some of them, and low on the social ladder, they obviously felt they were worthy of climbing the rungs, and did.

If you feel you can change your circumstances, that's freedom.
If you (we) feel trapped, we do all these things like chewing our leg off to get free, or eating our young, or living with the depression of learned helplessness;
or cultivating belief in justice in the afterlife, so you can stand THIS life...

This city is segregated--often invisibly to most white people like me, until the uprising after the cops murdered George Floyd made us (some of us) see and hear and feel the range of it.

People who complain about the violence of the uprising aren't getting it--the violence is a gauge of the repression that pins people down, which the uprising was/is trying to LIFT OFF.

"DO YOU SEE/ FEEL/ HEAR US?"

The strength of the reaction (riots, blockades, artwork, etc.) is testimony to the strength of the conditions being pushed against (repression).

I knew that before I started working at the thrift store, in theory.
But I never really knew Black people before--just a little bit from having Black coworkers for a year in Chicago.
What I knew I knew mostly from books.

White Minneapolis likes to SEE itself as extremely progressive, as do I, and on some issues the city is (bike lanes!), but that's not the whole reality.
Racism isn't just an attitude, more importantly for people's lives, it's actions and physical realities, like having choices about where you live and where your kids go to school... And even feeling you can work and push for those things, which was not the case in the Jim Crow South... nor, necessarily, in the North, even now.

“Mr. Floyd’s death, and the cascading protests that followed, are especially painful in light of  [former US vice president] Mr. [Walter] Mondale’s work supporting civil rights measures, he said.
'I really worked really hard on that issue for 40 years, and here we are,' he said. 'About where we started, I guess.'
. . .
“Minneapolis has ridden this reputation of being progressive,” said Robert Lilligren, who became the first Native American elected to the City Council in 2001.

“That’s the vibe:
Do something superficial and feel like you did something big. Create a civil rights commission, create a civilian review board for the police, but don’t give them the authority to change the policies and change the system."

---From The New York Times, "How Minneapolis, One of America’s Most Liberal Cities, Struggles With Racism", June 1, 2020