POOR WHITE TRASH

I have wanted to write about this for some time but never have I felt it to be more relevant then right now. The controversy over racial disparity in this country is at a boiling point and in a small way I thought I once knew how people of color feel right now, except I’m not black, so really, I don’t know how they feel-- but I do feel something. Their pain. I grew up in a small town in poverty so I knew what it was like to see people look down their noses at you. To be snubbed and left out. But yet when you think about it, I was only a new suit of clothes from fitting in. I didn’t have to change the color of my skin to be excepted

After I graduated from high school I moved to North Minneapolis. I had a decent job so I was able to buy that new suit of clothes. No one knew my past so the prejudices went away. I became one of the white middle class and moved to the suburbs. It was that easy. I wasn’t a champion for civil rights, don’t get me wrong. Live and let live was my mantra. I figured if the poor blacks didn’t like the way they were living they could do the same things as I had done. How little I knew about prejudices that were far more, than what a person had to wear.

A lot of things besides the color of their skin has beset communities of color. Drugs and a lack of a good education probably lead the list. So, you say, “No one made them make those bad choices.” When I was a poor kid growing up-- had the opportunity came along for me to get out of poverty by peddling drugs-- I am not so sure I wouldn’t have. It was a different time and different place. The town I grew up in was a railroad town and as a kid I used to go to the depot and watch the trains come in. The porters and conductors were mostly people of color. It was my first introduction to black people, although I never spoke to them. I did notice, none of them ever drove the train. 

About twelve years ago my wife and I took a trip to Biloxi Mississippi for a vacation. As we traveled the whole state from north to south, I was astonished to see the poverty that existed. Sure, we had poverty in Minnesota too, but ours was just neighborhoods, not miles upon miles of it. Biloxi was a resort town on the gulf. Kind of a gambling mecca and many of the poor blacks that lived in those rundown shacks worked in the casinos and hotels. A few years later hurricane Katrina was to devastate that area. I never felt sorry for the wrecked casinos and their rich owners. Just the loss of jobs and homes for the poor people that worked there. The newspaper accounts never talked much about the people who lost their jobs. Just the loss to the state treasuries who had lost their cash cows. 

Yes, there needs to be change. Change in the hearts and minds of everybody. Change in the police and here’s where the hackles go up. Change in the black communities too. Look at your kids and say “I want better for all of you.” Then tell them how important it is to stay in school and get a good education. Without that education, poverty will still exist and with that poverty will come that sense of hopelessness you have had to endure for centuries. Don’t let them keep you down. Without a good education no one can help you. With a good education you can control your own destiny and I for one will cheer you on.