The Great White North

So last Monday I was in one of my favorite northern Michigan taverns getting a bowl of chili before hitting the river when I overheard a stunning bit of sociological analysis. To be precise, several locals at the bar were advancing the proposition that African Americans had ruined Flint and Saginaw (never mind dependency on a single industry, the globalizing economy, NAFTA) and threatened to ruin the entire country at some point in the future. "That's why I moved up here," announced one man at the bar. (There are next to no black residents in most parts of northern Michigan.) Another, a former Flint resident, noted that one graduate of a distressed high school who had gone on to play in the NBA donated money to his alma mater to rebuild the track and the football field, which the school itself couldn't afford to repair, leading to a concession that "there are a few good ones." The aforementioned refugee shook his head in response and muttered, trailing off, "most of them, though..." A few others at the bar chimed in with like sentiments.

No one attempted to draw me into the conversation, thank God. Anything I'd have been likely to say likely wouldn't have gone over well, though if I had tried to say something, I'm not sure where I would have begun. My primary response was less indignation than disorientation. Whenever I hear these kinds of conversations I get the feeling I've slid back fifty years, or at least back to my childhood, when family gatherings sometimes came with a dose of those attitudes. I tend to operate with the assumption that mindsets like those of my barmates no longer figure broadly in American society. Certainly I don't share the attitudes displayed in the bar on Monday, nor do they arise in most of my day to day life. But sooner or later they do reappear and diminish my illusions of barriers falling, of affinities spreading.

I've singled out northerners in this post, though truth be told, you don't have search too widely in southern Michigan, or anywhere else I've been, to hear frankly racist comments. This isn't peculiar to or concentrated in rural areas, either: I've run into more racist chatter in suburban Detroit than anywhere else (though usually it's in more subtle, coded forms there). Even liberal Ann Arbor, as some black acquaintances at my church tell me, isn't the haven of inclusion and tolerance it makes itself out to be. For all the real progress in racial equality made in the last half century, it sometimes seems that this country is still saturated in racial antagonisms.

I'm not claiming sainthood in the area of race relations or any special bond with the oppressed and marginalized. But I know enough, as I think most Americans do, not to blow on the embers of the problem, not to keep committing the sins of the past. In various media outlets, self-appointed dominant culture scolds step forward occasionally to admonish blacks, latinos, whoever, to stop blaming racism for their problems since it has been vanquished by civil rights legislation and the examples of minority individuals who have "made it" despite experiences of prejudice and poverty. I would actually agree insofar as I believe no one, of any background, should passively submit to the limits of their situation. But if blacks and other minorities are a more that bit skeptical of arguments that full acceptance in American life is theirs for the taking, I'd have a hard time arguing they don't have reasons.