On Razor's Edge: 30 Cities and Counting

Here we are, on a razor's edge. You feel it, don't you?

Well, maybe not. Maybe you're in the middle of Montana or something. But I do.

I'm on Milwaukee's east side, where stuff like we're watching isn't supposed to happen. Some folks demonstrated yesterday, blocking the freeway for a while. Good protest. Got someone's attention, but wasn't violent.

Maybe that'll be it. But don't count on it.

Among the other cities that have had demonstrations so far are Denver, Louisville, Atlanta, Los Angeles. There's been some violence, too. I thought it was just a few, but then I saw today's New York Times. There have been protests in thirty cities, at least, in the last two days.

All this is a few text messages and/or phone calls from being coordinated. It might make what happened in the '60s look like child's play. And the baby boomers remember how ugly that was.

The violence in Minneapolis has left the governor with no choice: He's called out the National Guard. I have family in it. It's tense. But what else can he do? They haven't stopped setting fires.

45, in his infinite wisdom and a nice bit of rhyming, said that with looting comes shooting. There. That fixed that. And then he's mustered the military police, to support the National Guard. Nothing like preaching calm to the troubled masses. Meanwhile, a disproportionate number of people of color list amongst the more than 100,000 to die of the virus.

All this is, of course, a band-aid and tearing it off to expose the horrible scars beneath. Inequality and racism have always been with us. The unjustifiable (though no doubt lawyers will try to prove otherwise) death of George Floyd has happened at the worst possible time--when a very contagious disease seems to be hitting the black community at a horrifying rate, and one which will probably accentuate the distance whites will be inclined to keep from them, anyway.

People (read: whites) will now look at blacks (read: people) twice, wondering whether they're both diseased or trouble-makers. How could it be otherwise? But how long can someone keep the resentment bottled up?

We are paying, yet again, for what we have never successfully addressed: the inequality of our
society. Education, jobs, housing: Here we go again. Lights will be shined upon them. Hands will be
wrung.

How much do you think will happen? How deep is this imbedded? How exceptional do you think we really are?

Milwaukee is supposed to be the most segregated city in America. And maybe it is. Minneapolis, no
doubt, is close. If there's a good thing coming out of this, it's that Minneapolis is so far north that no
one can claim that somehow, Southern influence has been brought to bear.

But then, in the '60s, Martin Luther King said that he never saw mobs as hateful as those in Chicago. And those remembering the open housing marches led by Father Groppi in Milwaukee also remember the pushback against them. All that went away, and newspaper stories ran and columnists wrote and we all said we cared so much.

Then I went to a college for mostly rich kids (I certainly wasn't, but they gave me non-scholarship
financial support to play football) that went out of its way to introduce black students. Except they lived with each other, and we didn't see them all that much. They rebelled, too. And some of us wrung our hands and some of us objected. I wonder what was done. At the time, some concessions were made. But attitudes remained.

I remember going up there once, to second floor Plantz Hall, just to visit. I knew a couple well enough. And I said to myself: What's the big deal here? Why aren't black students living with white students? It had to be just as big an adjustment for them as for us. Wasn't that the point? What attitude won out, really?

Then, more than 40 years ago, bussed desegregation of schools was tried in places like Boston and Milwaukee. In Boston, it was resisted strongly; in Milwaukee, it was undermined with 'white flight.' Hence the condition noted above. Hence the re-hardening of stances with no one there to push back.

Now this, and piled upon other police murders in other places. It's a big country, and stuff like this doesn't happen everywhere, so it looks isolated. But we all know it isn't. Because it could happen anywhere.

The problems are systemic. The only way they will be overcome is if a majority of the country becomes people of color. And, in fact, that's due to happen. But few of my age will see it.

Hang on tight, everybody. This ride could get rougher. Promises have been broken for too long.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark