Thirty columns ago, in the very first issue of The Rake — March 2002 — I wrote that “being a real brother is not as important as being a real man. Real men think for themselves and live with the consequences of their decisions.” I admit that I took some defiant pride in the not-so-veiled assertion that I was above race. In fact, I accepted the Rake gig with the clear understanding that I was not going to be the magazine’s “head nigger in charge.” I was a writer who happened to be African-American. When it came to topics that would be covered in this space, the world was my oyster.
However, I found myself writing about race-related stuff and the challenges of living in north Minneapolis more than I envisioned in 2002. Over time, readers began emailing, calling, and stopping me on the street to say things like, “Finally, someone is writing about us.” Even people who initially thought that I was suspect because I didn’t shy away from being critical of black people decided that I deserved my “brother card” after all.
In fact, I began to view my column not so much as an exclusive possession, but more like American Indians historically viewed the land—as something that I merely managed as a steward. This became especially clear to me over the past several months, when I wrote about the bad guys who shattered my front window after I confronted some neighborhood wannabes about drug dealing. That column, and the one that followed, about Bill Cosby airing African-American “dirty laundry,” generated more letters from readers than any of my others. I felt simultaneously flattered and trapped by the response. All writers love knowing that they are connecting with readers. There are few ego strokes sweeter than to have a stranger leap out of a crowd and tell you “I really loved your last piece. I can’t wait to see your next column.”
Yet I also began to feel more like a spokesman than just a writer. I am all too aware of how few African-American writers in this city have had the writing platforms that I have in the past dozen years. In fact, when I started writing for the Star Tribune in 1992, I was that newspaper’s first African-American editorial writer since Carl Rowan—in the 1960s. Things haven’t changed much since then. You can count on one hand the number of African-American columnists in major (i.e. white-owned) media outlets in this town and still have a finger or two left over.
There is a scene in the film The American President when an advisor played by Michael J. Fox tells the president, played by Michael Douglas, that “the people want leadership! In the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert to a mirage and when they discover there is no water, they will drink the sand.” I believe that a number of Minneapolitans are in a similar position—which explains the powerful response to those recent columns. Many of us, especially those on the Northside, feel like our problems and our pain may get headlines, but that month after month, year after year, we are denied the resources to deal with them.
I am grateful for the support I have received from Rake readers. I will never forget those who encouraged me to fight the drug thugs and not lose hope. But as much as I care about Minneapolis and the gritty issues confronting the Northside, I must respectfully resist the temptation to allow this column to become a monthly collective cry for help from disenfranchised parts of the city. This is too big a burden for one writer, armed with only one column, to carry.
On the other hand, it’s an entirely appropriate burden for all of us, as a community, to shoulder. We need to shake down the system and let the people who run it know that we are thirsty for real leadership—the kind of leadership that is just as fed up as the rest of us with the gangbangers, the drug dealers, the users and abusers destroying North Minneapolis. And, we need to let our elected officials know that we are willing to stick with this fight even if it means taking down members of our own families if they refuse to get with the program.
Truth is, I want to write about other topics—and not feel that I’m letting down my community if I do so. Like it or not (and I do not always like it), I do have a special responsibility as an African-American columnist in a mostly white town. Yet those loyalties can never be greater than the one I have to myself as a writer to take on all the things—and there are many—that trip my trigger.
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