Looking back at Netroots Nation I am still somewhat haunted by what happened outside of Dakota Jazz Bar on Thursday evening. For those of you unfamiliar with the incident, I will be brief. Long story short, angry older white man made an inflammatory statement to several women wearing hijabs. Young women stated their disagreement. Older white man started screaming that they were not Americans and he kept trying to take photos of them. At this point some Netroots Nation attendees and some Minneapolis natives stepped in stopped the man and had him arrested. This incident will not be the focus of this diary, it is just a starting point.
Now I will be honest, this subject, is a little outside my comfort zone. However, I had not seen hatred in the way I saw it on Thursday night in a long time. It really bothered me...and I feel the need to stand up and say that that kind of behavior is not acceptable. Ever.
More below the fold...
Now I will admit…I was pretty pissed off at that angry older man. It took everything I could muster to not walk up to him and tell him to, “Shut the f*ck up” and then punch him in the mouth. Other than sheer willpower, what stopped me from committing an act of violence? What stopped me were the influences in my life…they were in the back of my mind. My mom, my dad, SSG Kennedy and my high school principal, Milt McPike.
My late mother, what a mixed bag of lessons she taught me over the years. As a child in the early ‘70s I remember when a black family moved into the neighborhood. Mom said, “Black people should stick to their own neighborhoods.” In her last years she voted for Obama. At one point she agreed with Anita Bryant on, as she put it, the gays. In later years she said she did not understand it, but if they (meaning “the gays”) were happy that was all that mattered.
Dad – Dad was a pretty simple man. His views on race relations…never judge a man or woman by the color of his or her skin. I think his views came from his time in the Navy in WWII. He was a Minnesota farm boy sent into Port Chicago California as the first all white draft to the port. This was right after the Port Chicago Mutiny. My dad often said that the Navy “treated the blacks like hell.” The port was segregated and in the talks I had with my dad over the years I think I can confidently say that segregation did not sit well with him.
SSG Kennedy was my first squad leader in the Army. A black man from Alabama nearing retirement, he was a Vietnam vet. He had a scar than ran from just above his right ear to the corner of his right eye where it took a turn southward to end just above the middle of his chin. A scar caused by shrapnel from a booby trap (what we would call an Improvised Explosive Device or IED today) in the jungles of Vietnam. I would have followed that man anywhere.
Then we come to Mr. McPike…I do not know really where to begin with Mr. McPike. He was a giant of a man; he played football for the 49ers. I know that during our freshman year he gained our respect out of fear. Madison East was a huge high school and was very intimidating to an incoming freshman; add in a principal who stands well over six feet tall with the build of a professional football player and you were one scared kid. By the time our senior year rolled around you did not respect Mr. McPike out of fear – no, you respected him because of who he was. He was a man who knew the name of every single student in the school. Quite a feat when you consider the average class size was somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 kids. He was fair but firm.
Madison East was quite a mixed bag when it came to the student body. You had rich kids from Maple Bluff, upper middle class kids from Cherokee, middle class and poor kids from the rest of the east side. The have-nots out-numbered the haves. I was in the have-not category as were a lot of my friends.
None of that mattered to Mr. McPike, rich or poor, black, white or Hmong it made no difference. What was important was who you were…and you were relevant to him. He always made time for his students. We did not look at him as a black man; we looked up to him as a man that we wanted to emulate. Many years later after high school I ran into Mr. McPike. He still knew my name, and said I could call him Milt now as I was no longer a student. I never could bring myself to call him Milt. To me he will always be Mr. McPike.
Milton McPike 1939 - 2008
Racism, Homophobia, Islamophobia (just to name a few ‘isms and phobias)…they are really all the same thing. Fear, fear of someone or something different, all three are learned behaviors. Look at a group of kindergartners on a playground. Color does not matter to them. A playmate is a playmate. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we still held that same viewpoint as adults; a person is just a person.
We all have prejudices…to say we do not is to lie. It is how we approach those prejudices that defines who we are and how we act. We fear what we do not know. I am sure that the reason the gentleman acted out in the way he did on Thursday evening was out of fear. That does not excuse his actions; however, it gives us a starting point…if you have a fear about a person or group of people…ask questions. Allay your fears…don’t lash out. Maybe if we all took time to just talk to each other…the world would be a better place for all of us.