You may have read the headlines: last night a crowded small-town mall in central Minnesota became a crime scene. At the time there was little news and much speculation, but as the details emerged overnight some things became clear: around 8:15pm a male dressed as a security guard went on a stabbing spree in the mall corridor and at least one store. Eight people were wounded and mallgoers ran in every direction. Ultimately an off-duty policeman from another jurisdiction chased down and shot the assailant, killing him in Macy’s.
What is not evident at first blush is the context: the mall-- called Crossroads Center --is located in St. Cloud, MN, a city of ~70,000 about an hour northwest of the Twin Cities. It’s a part of Minnesota people elsewhere likely don’t know exists, historically German-Catholic rather than the stereotypical Scandinavian-Lutheran, and it is deeply conservative. It was, until 2014, represented by Michele Bachmann in Congress. More importantly though, this once lilly-white community now has a population that is about 10% East African, mostly Somali refugees and their families. The community has struggled with diversity in many ways, but there have been few incidents of overt violence to date. Unfortunately, it appears the mall attack was likely committed by a Somali (or Somali-American, details are not known yet) and the police have revealed the assailant made “references to Allah” and asked some victims if they were Muslim before stabbing them.
St. Cloud, like many similarly-sized cities in the U.S. today, struggles with poverty, declining living-wage employment, and anger at the perceived loss of a way of life, the “good old days” when everyone in town looked the same, could safely be assumed to be either Catholic or Protestant Christian, when jobs were aplenty, and violence happened mostly in cities far, far away. As employment declined, the middle class got hammered, and changing demographics due to both immigration and out-migration took hold, small-minded and ignorant people have embraced racism as a sort of security blanket. Any time the local paper reported an assault, a property crime, or even a traffic accident, these racists immediatly started crowing about “the Muslims” or “the Somalis” or even in their shorthand, “people from Chicago,” by which they mean African-Americans. Now there has been an assault that at the very least looks like it could have been an act of terror and the assailant (from what we know 12 hours out, per the authorities) may in fact be Somali.
Today the racists are out in force in social media, not only assigning blame but calling for action. A sampling:
- “Another Muslim that the Libtard Media will cover up and make excuses for.”
- ”The number one rabid dog today is Islam. Ban Islam. It is not a religion, but a violent, intolerant political ideology that is intolerant. Islam today is the nazis of 1941.”
- ”In Hillary Clinton's world the guns would be gone so we would all be more at risk of something like this happening to you or someone you love.”
- ”Get your carry permits, get a gun, and vote Trump in November”
- ”Why shouldn't this happen with an increasing percentage of Americans ignoring and rejecting the Lord? All Muslims totally reject Jesus as Savior. As Iraq and Syria are today, America will be.”
- ”Just think, Obama and Hillary want to let 100,000+ more terrorists in training into our country instead of using the money to help our own people first... I really hope Obama gets one in the head before he tries to screw us more on his way out, hell I'd pay to watch that.”
- ”You Islam lovers are a bunch of meek sheep, and many of you will be slaughtered.”
- ”Well at least it was a democrat state, as deems are the ones who allow these people to come here.”
Perhaps more disturbing than the comments are the large numbers of “likes” they draw. These are all from the comments in the St. Cloud times headline story from this morning...more/worse were evident as the news unfolded last night, enough of them including threats of violence to raise concerns about acts of revenge in the community.
This is such a sad moment for the greater St. Cloud community, which has struggled with diversity and a declining economy for a decade. Things have been improving on both fronts in recent years and even months. Somali-Americas are running for office, joining community organizations, opening businesses, and reaching out to neighbors while their children make up an increasing percentage of school enrollments and slots of soccer teams and in other community activities. They are a part of the community now, though a substantial minority (one hopes it is a minority) of whites refuse to admit that. This act of violence is going to make integration and acceptance much harder to foster...the cost of violence perpetrated by one man will be paid by not only the Somali and Somali-American residents of the community, but by the toll increased tensions, fear, and mistrust will take on everyone.
This saddens me in particular because this is my community. I live a few miles from the site of the stabbings, and last Tuesday night was in that very Macy’s with my daughters shopping for homecoming dresses. We could have been there last night. There’s also a bit of piling-on emotionally; our community is where Jacob Wetterling was abducted in 1989 and his body finally found just this month. We haven’t even held his memorial yet, and now we have to move on to both processing the feelings of fear that logically stem from such an assault in a public place and the now-growing fear of retaliatory violence targeting our Somali neighbors.
Just a few weeks back the local Catholic and Lutheran churches in my small town (we live just outside of St. Cloud proper) held a weekend event to welcome the first Somali residents into our town. It was a nice gesture, but I was a bit saddened that it was felt necessary— there are 8,000+ Somalis living in St. Cloud next door but local leaders here were concerned that our mostly-white and mostly-Christian community needed to make an overt effort at welcome in order to send a message to the majority population. Last night’s attack is going to set that effort back. I worry very much about the toll this act of violence will take on intercultural relationships in our broader community. The racists, who were perhaps quieted by efforts to welcome diversity, are now emboldened again: “We were right!” they crow, and their solution is not only segregration but exclusion— to build Trump’s wall around our town as well.
Our thoughts today are with the victims of this attack. In days to come, the people of St. Cloud will need to turn their thoughts toward recovering the positive progress made between races and cultures in the community over the past few years. I hope the racists will constrain themselves to making threats and ranting online, and that they do not turn their hatred and ignorance into a public display against other members of our community.