Today’s Star Tribune article by Hennepin County District Judge Lucy Wieland reinforces a powerful message delivered by MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz a few years ago; “it is time to put away our rosy view of Minnesota as a land of opportunity and grapple with the ugly reality of racial disparity”.
I grew up in Nordeast Minneapolis in the 1950’s and a number of my friend’s fathers were firemen, postmen, policemen and city / state highway workers. There were no women or black men in these jobs back then. I will never forget the phoney qualifications testing that kept these jobs for white men only, nor the social policy changing *war that occurred to end this discrimination.
The unrest of the 60’s & the vicious attacks by policemen & dogs and firemen on nonviolent protesters (Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connors/Selma Alabama) was not that long ago—I’m not that old.
Many of my friend’s fathers were outspoken bigots afraid of being forced to share their good paying jobs with other people.
I had few liberal childhood friends in my neighborhood and I had no healthy understanding of racial issues until I was in college. I remember one black student in junior high school and none from my senior high school (and I was an inner city kid).
Today, too many of my friends and business associates talk the same talk (minus certain words) that I heard back then. Blaming people that have very little, never had much, and most likely will never have more than subsistence (no matter what they do), along with teachers and social workers as the root of our nation’s problems.
Blaming and hating people solved nothing in the 50’s and it is not working today (if it were, we could simply elect Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh to run the nation). Continue reading ‘What’s It Gonna Take? Judge Lucy Wieland Is Dead Right’
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