My Buddy sent me an email today in response to my anecdote about the fellow who stopped his car by my house and asked me to, “Please resign.” My Buddy wondered if it was an example of tribalism.
If I belong to any particular tribe I hope its the Socrates Club. He was Plato’s teacher who proclaimed that: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I heard that back in junior or senior high and decided those words described me. Among my many examinations are the debris from the Red Plan – debris that have been swept under the carpet. The fellow who stopped to ask me to resign may be with the Move Duluth Forward crowd that insists figuring out why our schools are so tortured should not require any investigation or accountability.
As for tribes in general…..I’m not much of a joiner. I reluctantly kept a Facebook Account that I started seven years ago but ignored until two years ago when my daughter started posting like crazy about my grandchildren. To this day I have only got about 25 “friends.” Even this limited number of folks, mostly family, posts up a storm I can barely keep up with. My posts are few and far between. I got a kick out of Christa Lawler’s column yesterday about her anxiety when one of her friends seemingly dropped her as a friend. I dropped a few non family-friends a year ago and have agonized about it for fear they think I’m mad at them. Nope, I did it for my sanity. Anyone wanting to keep up with my politics can do so here in Lincoln Democrat.
Among the non family “friends” I have is a young woman who is passionately interested in race relations in Duluth. When I ran for the school board in 2013 she helped organize a meeting in a West End Church about the meaning of the Trayvon Martin murder. It was sort of a Black Lives Matter meeting before that phrase caught the nation’s attention. Many school board candidates traipsed over to the meeting among them Rosie Loeffler-Kemp and me.
Some of the African American participants were unhappy when they alleged that there was racism in the Duluth Schools and Rosie proclaimed that there was no such thing at East High School. I think Rosie has her heart in the right place but such a stark denial isn’t helpful. Racism has changed radically if slowly over the years. Its true we are long past Duluth’s notorious lynching and the KKK. Its also true that the most resolutely pro confederate state in the Union, South Carolina, just voted to remove the Stars and Bars from its State Capitol grounds. Still, as I reported a month ago, a car full of kids screamed by a solemn commemoration at the gravesite of Duluth’s lynching victims and hollered at those in attendance, “Hang them all.”
I’ve spoken to the African American Father of an East High Student who reported that Art’s partner’s harasser was known for pretty fast out of school suspensions for black students. OSS is one of the many worries, not only in Duluth, but but across the State of Minnesota. That’s because an alarming number of black kids are penalized this way just about everywhere.
My young Facebook Friend was pretty non-plussed by Rosie’s assertion. She and Rosie were also Facebook friends as it happens from their joint affiliation with the DFL. A short time later another of my young friend’s Facebook friends posted a rant on Facebook about his ill treatment at East High. He described being called a called a “chink” and having water poured over his head.
My young Facebook friend, remembering Rosie’s assurances, sent the rant on to Rosie. Rosie unfriended her. Maybe, like me or Christa Lawler’s “friend,” it was simply housekeeping. However, that’s not how my Facebook friend interpreted the gesture.
Please note: If I hadn’t just endured the most remarkably unpleasant year of my public career I would not have posted this anecdote. Its pretty small potatoes to run across good hearted but clueless people. But this story involves a public official who sanctioned the public accusation that our colleague Art Johnston was a racist (among other things) in order to have him removed from the School Board. As it says in Mathew 7:2: (International Standard Version)”…the way that you judge others will be the way that you will be judged, and you will be evaluated by the standard with which you evaluate others.”
