News & Articles

Asking for a friend

A good friend, a Black woman writer, asked me today, “Why do they hate us so much?”  She wasn’t asking as a friend, woman or writer.

The George Floyd homicide trial continues in Minneapolis. In a very real sense, the people of the United States are on trial, and to a slightly lesser extent, Christianity.

When a minority person interacts with the world in the U.S., they never know what the day will bring them.  Not because of whether they’re “good” people or not; that doesn’t matter!  But because of the color of their skin.  There’s so much hate out there in our society. Dark-skinned people can lead a perfect life, but if they’re dark, they may be red-lined, slighted at a service counter (or think they've been), made fun of, insulted, spat on or sometimes killed. Mostly all done with impunity, sometimes anonymity. They don’t know what the day will bring, if anything. They spend the day, every day, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  All their lives.  So what’s the incentive for some to bother leading a good life?

When you’re in the minority, who can you turn to in the majority for help? How can you spot the helpful ones, from the hateful ones? During the terrible, sinful Vietnam War, those of us who opposed it could find our like-kind through the universal peace symbol, and other things. Christians and Christian sympathizers identify each other through the cross (a symbol born of terror).

In Billings, Mont., in 1993, bigots began targeting the minority Jewish community population who had Jewish symbols in their windows. The town responded by printing copies of the symbol. More than 6,000 non-Jewish families put them in their own windows. The bigots didn’t know who to target, and stopped.

Could those willing to aid and defend minority people find a common, universal symbol of identity? A green arm band? A medallion? A ring?

A. Martin
Merrifield, Minnesota

There’s a larger problem

We aren’t going to solve the problem if we don’t, first, identify it correctly.

Guns are certainly a problem, but more than that, they’re a symptom of a far larger problem.  It’s not that hard to understand. We live in a culture where many men (and women) learn to view “aggression” as a necessary trait if one is to be considered “masculine.”  When aggression is carried to its logical extreme, it turns into violence.

Included in the expectations, are that men either not be vulnerable, or not show or admit to it. If one denies their vulnerability in order to act “rough tough, neat and cool,” that person will have a hard time feeling empathy. I doubt any of the shooters felt any empathy toward their victims. This may also be the way they learned to resolve conflicts.

One can’t be a friend without the ability to resolve conflicts, which in-volves seeing others as equals. Anyone with an aggressive or fear-based person-ality usually has little interest in being equal with others. Their main interest is based on controlling others in order to keep from caring. Caring would make them feel vulnerable to others.  In essence, under their facades of hate and anger, one will find fear. Scratch the surface of a bully, and one will find a coward.

Those who fear, will almost always want to control how other people are acting toward them, rather than controlling themselves, and how they act toward others. Connected to this, one of the unwritten expectations of being an officer is to be suspicious.When one adds aggression and fear to suspicion, one can get nervousness or paranoia.

When officers are also dealing with nervousness or paranoia, it seems they’re rarely focused on being friends and resolving conflicts, and more on controlling others. When things are happening too fast, one can see how they might lose focus and become preoccupied with the wrong things. It can be too easy to respond without fully thinking. If so, one may not have a happy ending. Act in haste; repent in leisure...’

Gary Burt
Marble, Minnesota

A solution for stuck kids

Hey! I think I have a way to keep kids from being injured with a Peloton product. TURN IT OFF, AND REMOVE THE POWER CORD. That way, the belt can’t move and suck a child under it.  

Pennie Turcott
Duluth, Minnesota

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