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In the process of researching my last Reader column, I came across an event being held by the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial called “Honoring the Future, Building the Past.” The event was being held to bring attention to the work of the organization as well as pay tribute to local community organizer Claudie Washington.

Sitting in a room filled with so many people who care what happens to minority populations in Duluth was extremely heartening. Given some of the incidents that have occurred recently, seeing that many people gathered together who are committed to the advancement of racial equality and social justice was very moving. That being said, attending this event reminded me of some of the issues that I have always had with the current state of civil rights in America.

The overall message for the night connects to the aims of the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial: eliminating racism and increasing unity. This idea ran throughout all of the speeches, including the speech given by Washington. There were a couple of particularly important moments during the event. The first was when master of ceremonies Stephan Witherspoon asked his nephew to stand up. His nephew is the victim of the Denfeld Snapchat incident. He received a rightfully earned standing ovation from the audience for his graceful response to a tragic situation. Rather than striking out against the students, he took the high road and took the situation to the public. Although violence is justified in some situations, there are others where public humiliation is far better. This Denfeld incident is one of the latter.

Another important moment occurred when the 2014 CJM Scholarship recipient Taneasha Muonio gave a speech to the crowd. Although her speech on the whole was somewhat standard, it took on a personal, poignant moment when she talked about experiences that she had dealing with racism in her own life. Recalling these events touched her so much that she started to weep at the lectern. Even to the most jaded of us all, that was a scene that can remind everyone why it is important to erase racism.
Her speech also serves as a symbol of both the importance of the fight against racism as well as the problem that I have had with the fight against racism. Racism has direct effects on many people in this city, whether you are black, Latino, or Native American. If your skin color is anything but white, there is a good chance that you have experienced discrimination. And, to be fair, if you are white and surrounded by minorities, there is a chance that you have experienced racism as well. Although white people may not have to experience it on a larger scale, having a moment where they are discriminated against can make any white person understand what minorities have been dealing with for centuries. Every single time that one of these experiences happens, it hurts deeply.

Although there are people everywhere who experience racism, the discrimination is not as rampant as it was during the Civil Rights era, a time when you could turn on your television and see images of young Black people being sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. Racism is not as visceral as it once was. In a lot of ways, it has become abstract, something that doesn’t quite exist in the concrete. Black people can hold jobs, walk around with less fear of being attacked by the police, and register to vote with considerable ease. Although these are great things, I’m here to assure you that racism still does exist in a concrete form, even if the visceral threat isn’t nearly as great.

In the current realm, racism comes in the form of the microaggression. You may do some of these and not even know it. Do you move over a bit more when you see a black man walking down your side of the street? Do you cross the street when you see a black person walking towards you? Do you hold on to your possessions a little bit tighter? Do you assume that a black person does one thing or another just because of the way that they look? Have you been denied help at a store because of your skin color? Have you been followed around a store for the same reason? These all might seem like small things that aren’t of particular consequence, but these are all things that have happened to me as a black man. Every single one.

These small events, whether you intend them to or not, have the exact same effect as spraying a person with a hose. They signify to me that you see me as less than. Less than a man. Less than a person. Less than an American. These incidents say to me that you see me as less than you. I want to take this column space in future weeks to do what Dr. Roger Gregoire demanded in his speech at the dinner: to shine a light on racism to get it out of this city forever.

The only way to shine that light is to have an open discussion about racism and how it manifests in our current world. I want to use this column to do that. If you have experienced racism in your life, whether here in Duluth or elsewhere in this country, I want you to get in touch with me. I want to tell your story. Email me at achawley@gmail.com. If we don’t work together and see how racism still occurs all around us, there is no way that we can ever get rid of racism.