When we talk about fixing racism in the United States, I’m strongly reminded of the missteps the city of Dubuque, Iowa took in the early 1990s to “diversify” their city.
Like most Midwestern cities, racial diversity was not one of Dubuque’s strong suits. In fact, the city had an ugly history of cross burnings and institutionalized racism since pretty much forever, garnering a reputation as the “Selma of the North.”
Census data showed that Dubuque was the least diverse city in the state. The final straw came when a local NAACP official discovered the smoldering remains of his garage, along with a small cross and the message, “the KKK Lives.”
Dubuque’s well-meaning city council decided on a solution. They would put out ads in magazines and newspapers asking African-Americans to move there. They touted the city’s good schools, ample jobs and safety. Private businesses would receive incentives to absorb the newcomers. Things were looking up.
Except, nobody informed the school district that next year’s classes would be much larger and more diverse. Nobody told the manufacturing plants already reeling from foreign competition they’d be expected to hire even more workers.
Nobody on the city council consulted or asked their neighbors how they felt about one hundred black families moving in next year. In short, nobody prepared a town harboring deep-seated racist tendencies that had only a handful of black families to begin with.
You can imagine what happened next: The cross burnings continued. White people were upset that blacks were receiving “preferential treatment.” The situation spun wildly out of control. One gent arrested for a cross burning told police he couldn’t have been a racist since “he has black friends.”
I think Dubuque’s epic fuckup highlights the difficulty in talking about or fixing racism. Currently, white people and minorities generally don’t see eye to eye when it comes to race. As a result, efforts to dismantle racism have suffered.
In part, it has to do with patterns of segregation where most Americans live in communities that have less than 5 percent of people with a different skin color. Mostly, I think the issues stem from differences in education.
As a person of color, my parents taught me about racism. Nationwide, 75 percent of minority households teach their kids about race. Seventy-five percent of white households don’t.
To paraphrase Tim Wise, race in the U.S. is like a book club where some of the members read the book cover to cover and others skimmed the preface. You simply can’t have a productive discussion when everyone is not on the same page.
In the past, minority columnists at The Maneater used incendiary rhetoric to advance a fair point: that racism still exists in society and little has been done to address it. Although cathartic, I don’t think it’s productive.
At the same time, race is a subject that has been avoided for far too long on this campus. The events that unfolded this week and last year around this time show that. We’re not going to move past it as a university if no work is being done on it.
You wouldn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink and then ask your roommates to “get over it” when they get moldy. Likewise, although anger would make sense, no amount of shouting is going to get the chore done if they can’t be convinced to do their damn dishes. Somehow, both parties need to come to the middle. And that is our challenge.
