“For many elders, watching Black neighborhoods go to war with one another was devastating. Some saw it as a grotesque outgrowth of generations of trauma, this time fueled by tribalism, PTSD, and self-hatred.”
Minnesota’s policymakers had an opportunity during this legislative session to take action to gain a portion of that $6.6 billion of annual GDP, and they failed. Instead, efforts to close racial equity gaps fell victim to polarized and antiquated views of economic growth and competitiveness.
On the flight back to Minneapolis I researched why “tribe” and “tribalism” are so problematic. I learned that the words originated with white Christian conquerors and their violence toward not only Native people, but Africans as well.
In March 2021, we hosted a forum related to our “Transforming Justice” magazine issue. One of the women we talked to was Robin Wonsley Worlobah, who is an advocate for building new systems of community safety beyond policing. Here is some of what she told us.
How disrespectful it is that eight members of our community were killed and we were met with ‘Happy St. Patrick’s Day’ greetings from white colleagues the next day. We saw more social media posts about celebrations than acknowledgement of our suffering and our grieving.
Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor, writes a popular daily email on Substack that provide context around political news. She wrote about these topics in the last week:
Since every month at Minnesota Women’s Press is about acknowledging the accomplishments of women, we are not doing anything unique to commemorate Women’s History Month — but we will honor the stories of a few local historical women, starting with Nellie Griswold Francis.
Now that I am 81, I am learning about many things for the first time. There were times when I could have spoken out about injustice in the past and did not. Why didn’t I?
