Letter: Reports past, present prove racist attitudes

Letter: Reports past, present prove racist attitudes
By Michael Davis • St. Cloud and • September 30, 2009

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Del.icio.usFacebookDiggRedditNewsvineBuzz up!TwitterCompelling evidence indicates St. Cloud's historic and continuing racial problems demand:


A functioning and reliable human rights office with enforcement authority.
Constant investigation, intervention and monitoring from outside.
Dependable tools for discrimination redress.
And an aggressive NAACP, for once.
Despite denying, downplaying and/or ignoring facts of St. Cloud's "inglorious" or "sordid" racial history (as cited by Star Tribune columnist Doug Grow and described in letters to Twin Cities' high schools, 2002), cause-effect relationships establish relevance.
For anyone daring to investigate, available details of community racism shout from St. Cloud Times' archives, Stearns County Historical Museum documents and conclusions from a plethora of critical studies.
Claims of historical irrelevance presented in the Sept. 19 Your Turn "Critics offered limited solutions," by Mike Landy, conveniently dismiss the cumulative impact of illegal slaves, Bettye King's critical Saudia report and University of Minnesota Law School findings of up to 7-to-1 race-based profiling.
A letter from Landy to the Council on Black Minnesotans in 1998 stated, "If the Black Community wishes to move forward quickly it should seek the path of least resistance first before it chooses to be confrontational."
The "path of least resistance" appeases the status quo. At what point does a history of injustice become relevant enough to confront, defy and force change?
The Aspen Institute in 2008 selected St. Cloud among 42 communities nationwide to study race relations. Evidently, Aspen researchers recognize relevance in past and present patterns of racism.
St. Cloud had double the hate crimes of other Minnesota cities, according to 2006 FBI statistics, with few arrests. And we don't think history is relevant? Racism remains. ("City addresses hate;" St. Cloud Times, 11/24/07); "Hate group activity flourishes: Movement on rise again, report finds" St. Cloud Times, 12/21/07)
The effect is justice denied, thus relevance.