This morning I woke up to the awful news of the death of George Floyd on the corner of 38th and Chicago. He said his last words with a (now fired) police officer's knee on his neck as he lay handcuffed on the street, under arrest for allegedly trying to pay for something with a fake $20 bill. You're going to see this story unfold through the lens of the news cameras. You're going to come to conclusions about the neighborhood, the police, Mr. Lloyd, the city of Minneapolis. The scene of this horror will seem like it's far away from Chanhassen, but it's not. The neighborhood isn't "sketchy" or "troubled" or "dangerous." It's mine--and I care about it, a lot. George Floyd died four blocks from my home. I've lived in my house for 24 years. I know everyone on my block and many, many people on the blocks around me. I know the corner of 38th and Chicago well. My best friends go to church down the street and I regularly walk or run through that intersection when I'm exercising. As a white person I cannot begin to imagine the anger and trauma this brings once again to people of color, but I can tell you that our neighborhood is heartbroken that it's happened again. So now, in addition to all of the perspectives you'll get on social media and from the local reporters, you have another one--this time it's from someone who cares deeply about the neighborhood where this happened. Other people live here too. My neighbors. Now you know someone who lives here. You can ask questions of a real person that you know. If you were keeping up with the news in the last month, you'd have noticed a lot of talk about another place I really care about. New Mexico is not usually the first state on the minds of many other Americans. Some people haven't even gotten the memo that it's in the United States. I've told you all stories about how kids with whom I went to college asked me if I would drive to LA on the weekends (not realizing it's 800 miles away). Yep, it's gorgeous. People visit from all over the world. It's also one of the lowest-income states in the country. Even when income is counted to include noncash and cash public benefits, New Mexicans don't earn a whole lot of money. A big part of the reason that New Mexico is a high-poverty state lies in its lack of population density. Unfortunately, wealthy people visiting and moving there from other parts of the country have not helped much in stimulating New Mexico's economy. The reality of New Mexico and the New Mexico that visitors see are usually very different pictures. When people tell me how much they love Santa Fe and Taos after visiting and finding out that's where I grew up, I often groan inside--none of the people who served these folks in the hotels and restaurants they enjoyed can afford to live in either of these places. Workers commute many miles from neighboring towns to serve folks from out of state. How do I know this? I grew up there. That's what a number of my friends from high school, some of whom grew up without being connected to the electrical grid or a water system, ended up doing. Native Americans in New Mexico are experiencing COVID-19 in a very different way than most of you have in Carver County. The Navajo Nation in particular, this country's largest sovereign Native American nation, has been particularly hard hit. They've got the highest rate of infection in the country, 4633 confirmed cases, 153 deaths in just over 156,000 people (there are about 350,000 Navajo, or Dine, people in the United States in total). At that rate, everyone knows someone who has suffered, is suffering or has died from COVID-19. The Pueblos, where I grew up, are getting hit even harder. Facts don't move us off of our preconceived opinions, interestingly. We tend to think that we are correct even in light of facts that contradict our own conclusions. What moves us out of our silos is relationships with people who are different from us.
There are different places. You can make the most of finding them by doing what I asked you to do on the first day of class: entertain the idea that there is a possibility that you might be wrong and then ask other people from other places what they think. If we were in class together, I'd tell you that someday you're going to want to explain this time to yourself. Open your mind to the fact of other places and start asking questions.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
In
|