; it's me, trying to understand why I live in a place that hates me.
on growing up Black in Minnesota.
I was born at the largest hospital in the state, right in downtown Minneapolis. My mom had left the south side of Chicago not long before, with a two-year-old in tow and me on the way, for this much colder (albeit less windy) city. She didn’t know much about this place except for what her sister had told her; if she wanted to raise her kids in a place that was affordable and safer than the south side, Minnesota was the place to go.
For the record, Chicago isn’t what white media tries to make it out to be (you know exactly what I’m talking about), and we still have family there that love that city for everything it is and can be. But the trauma of growing up in a neighborhood abandoned by the city in almost every way for no reason other than how Black and impoverished it is had my mom ready to leave. And the Greyhound would take her straight here.
I tell you this story because there’s a very real reason myself and many other Black people call Minnesota home. There is a pervasive idea that the further North you go in America, as a Black person, the better your life could be. This idea’s existed since it was being whispered between my enslaved ancestors working fields in South Carolina, and it’s what brought their young, pregnant descendant here in 1993. Black people have always been looking for better, freer, and less violent, places to exist in America. We follow the whispers, the “I have family in [insert city] and they love it,” the photos of city streets where you don’t have to play Where’s Waldo to find the Black people in them.
We just want to live. Safely.
I know that when my mom moved here, making me the first Minnesotan in our family, she did it because she wanted me and my brother to live. And we did. I’ve since lost cousins in Chicago to gang violence and the prison system, so it’s not lost on me the ways in which my mom’s decision likely broke a cycle she had been born into. There was a price though, as there often is when Black people want to live.
We were living among mostly white people, and they, and the systems they built, hated us.
Hey, if you’re Black, can you remember the first time a group of white people screamed “White power!” or “Fuck niggers!” at you? Oddly enough, it was at a McDonald’s drive thru for me. I was 8-years-old, thrilled that my brother and I had convinced my mom to get us ice cream with our happy meals. We were sitting in the car waiting to order when a blue pickup truck drove up next to us, white men hanging out the open driver and passenger-side windows, and sitting in the flatbed. Bandanas covered their faces as they screamed joyously, it sounded to my small ears. A giant confederate flag flapped maniacally on the back of the truck as they careened away.
What we don’t talk about much about being a Black child is that you don’t have to understand racism to understand fear, and I was scared to my bones. I knew then what hate looked like, even if I didn’t have the words for it.
How about the first time someone left human excrement on your family’s porch after you moved from your diverse neighborhood (NE Minneapolis pre-gentrification) to the suburbs where you were one of only a few Black families?
Can you remember how old you were when you realized white people in Minnesota, and the North in general, actually hated Black people and didn’t want us here? I can’t exactly. It was more of a slow, sinking feeling. Like finding out about:
how difficult it is to date here if you’re darker than a paper bag, redlining and racial covenants leading to one of the largest homeownership gaps in the entire country, Rondo, new businesses aligning with white supremacy like every week, having one of the largest educational gaps between white children and Black children in the entire country, there being no Black bookstores in the state after 2017 (and only two before that), state surveillance of Black immigrants, our police killing 3 people in just a little over the last two months…
Just to name a few things. Growing up here has felt like sinking slowly into a snowbank while all the white people around you are wearing custom-fit snowshoes. And they’re like, “Why don’t you get a pair of snowshoes?” And you’re like, “I would but I’m trying to get out of the snowbank first. I’m up to my fucking chest, could you help please?” And they laugh and go, “That sucks but have you seen the South? They have SWAMPS. And Alabama! At least we’re nice!”
I can’t tell you how many times nice white Minnesotans have called me a nigger, or told me they’re uncomfortable bringing me around their families, or told me to go back to where I came from, or to leave if I don’t like it here, or that I’m ungrateful for all they’ve done to support me so why am I harping on the “negatives”?
Honestly, why the fuck am I still here.
I mean, sometimes, I don’t know. But I think it’s because I believe, fundamentally and in practice, that Black people belong everywhere. Period. Even this fucking frozen, milquetoast-ass state. I was born here goddammit. My mama still lives here. I know these neighborhoods, these parks, the bus and transit lines, how long it takes to drive to Duluth (two hours flat if you drive fast baybeeee), the best coffee shops, and what summer nights to expect my block to be swarmed by MN United fans. I know so many Black people who feel the same way, whether they were born and raised here or not. Minnesota is my home.
But just because we belong here, doesn’t mean we’re safe here. (Jamar Clark should still be alive. Philando Castile should still be alive. George Floyd should still be alive. Dolal Idd should still be alive. Daunte Wright should still be alive. Amir Locke should still be alive. And more, and more, and more.) And I want us to be safe here. I want us to enjoy life here. I want us thriving, not just surviving. I want us to meet each other at markets, and festivals, and bookstores more often than protests (although shout out all my organizer and bloc friends, I love you).
But it’s not on us to create a Minnesota that doesn’t hate us. Only white people firmly committed to antiracism, anticolonialism, and reparations, can do that. And we all know they don’t take that job as seriously as they should. But that’s for another time.
For now, I just wanna say thank you to all the Indigenous and Black people that have also helped me learn over the years that we belong here. Minnesota is ours to love even when it doesn’t love us. It’s ours to hurt over, to fight for, to leave if we must. I’m remembering as I gear up for the aftermath of yet another police murder, that my desire for a better Minnesota is just my love for Black people.
Because we belong here.
reading these posts costs $0 but if you wanna buy me a coffee and support my dog’s lifestyle, please do!
Living your life and thriving is an act of protest itself. Continue to be in places/spaces wherever you choose to be and thrive. Nobody can take that away from you. Also, white folks y'all need to do better to protect and defend Black and Indigenous people, which means putting your bodies at the front lines and doing the actual anti racism work before harm is done.
I lived in Minneapolis from age 2 to 12 and my name is Dionne, too. We lived at 39th and Oakland Avenue South on a block that was 50/50 black and white families. California was and continues to be a culture shock-terrible public schools are at the root of it. I need to revisit Minnesota and see if it is less idyllic then I remember. Thanks for posting!