A Story Not Really About Racism, But Maybe?

“Did You Find Something?”

Dwight Burdette, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I wrote this story maybe 15 years ago. I had just started blogging and tended to write about what I knew that didn’t require research. I ran across this story, which I now see through a different lens. This event happened when I was a young kid, which is my only justification. There are points in this story where I’ll attempt to address whether racism was involved (mostly on my part) and expound on my thoughts from 15 years ago.

When I was eight or nine years old, I attended Field Elementary School in Minneapolis, MN. Back then, we had recess periods to let kids exercise and blow off steam. One day at recess, I looked down and saw a shiny Kennedy half-dollar coin on the ground. You rarely see a Kennedy 50-cent piece these days, although they are technically still in circulation. The coin had just been introduced, and everyone you saw seemed shiny and new. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

At the same time, I noticed a white boy about my age scouring the ground looking for something. We looked each other in the eye.

He said, “Did you find something?”

“No.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds, I moved on, and he kept searching the ground. I knew he had lost the fifty cents; he knew I had found it.

There were several hundred students at Field Elementary, and I have no memories of the other kid; we weren’t friends, didn’t share classes, maybe we never spoke again in life? Was racism involved in my not returning the money?

Had he been one of the Black kids who made up 10% of the school’s population, I likely would have known him, and it would have been a different dynamic. The Black kids at Field Elementary of the same age group knew each other. We had to. Maybe a fifth-grader didn’t know someone in kindergarten. But even then, you'd made a mental note of who they are. The school had only recently integrated before I started there, and there was still tension. I don’t know if I kept the money because the boy was a stranger, or because he was a white stranger.

Across the street from the school on 46th and 4th Avenue was a corner grocery store called “Dave’s.” When kids had money, they’d go over and buy candy. When school let out, I bought some red licorice coins with my fifty cents. I never gave the previous owner a thought; finders keepers, and all that. He probably never forgot me, the Black kid who got his money. Maybe he appropriately singled me out individually for having taken what was his? Maybe he held a grudge against all Black people? I don’t know. I do know that even though this story isn’t inherently about race, it’s a perfect metaphor for what one aspect of racism looks like. Somebody got something that belongs to you, denied they have it, benefited, and you lost. If the boy had brought it up again, I might even have gotten an attitude about it.

Fast forward a bunch of years, and racism in practice doesn’t seem that much different, although attitudes have changed. Racism is universally decried as a bad thing in the abstract, yet the benefits and costs are perpetually denied. It has also been redefined such that almost nothing qualifies any longer in the aftermath of the Roseanne Barr controversy. I’ve had discussions with multiple white people who condemn Roseanne Barr’s individual racism yet get very uncomfortable discussing its systemic nature. They were shocked… shocked to read her vile tweets, which are little different than her tweets gone before. They laud ABC for doing the right thing, yet forget they knew who she was when they originally picked up her show. Roseanne says, “I am not a racist, I have never been a racist.” More likely true is that she has never not been racist as an adult, but it’s not of her I wish to speak.

Many white people are uncomfortable speaking about racism other than in an individual context because they know they got the fifty cents but can never admit it. Instead of red licorice, their fifty cents went toward generational wealth, property ownership, and policies intended to protect those who have benefited from the rules that they put into place. There’s a class aspect of this as well, and poor white people have much to argue about regarding their treatment as well. Often, those with the least are pitted against each other to keep them from joining forces, but that’s another discussion.

I choose voter suppression as an example of how racism works today. The goal of voter suppression has always been about maintaining power. Historically, the Democratic Party has practiced it more openly and violently than the Republicans, who have made it a mainstay of their current political strategy. It is also their strategy to say voter suppression doesn’t exist… “I don’t have your fifty cents.” I don’t mean to single out modern-day Republicans; voter suppression cannot exist in a vacuum. Its tolerance in an allegedly Democratic society is because Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the courts, up to and especially including the Supreme Court, allow it. Ultimately, all of their interests lean toward protecting the rich and making sure power remains in the hands of those deemed worthy to wield it, as the steady demographic trend makes America less and less white. All the more important becomes voter suppression, along with a targeted immigration policy. America is looking more and more like apartheid South Africa, trying desperately to maintain minority rule.

Some of the arguments from white people I’ve heard recently include: “Racism ended after Jim Crow, why don’t you just get over it?” or “Wouldn’t you be better off focused on Black-on-Black crime or the illegitimate birth rate?” To the first question, I reply, “Tell me when you believe racism ended so I can bring you up to date?” To the second, it’s an opportunity to talk about the racist policies that help create or perpetuate those real issues. People often say, “We need to have a discussion about race, yet there is the concern that the discussion will get back to, “What about my fifty cents?” So, mostly that discussion won’t be had.

As I write this, there are discussions about bringing back a spin-off of “Roseanne” without Roseanne Barr. By canceling her show and removing her individually, racism in America has once again been stamped out, and life can return to normal. The problem is that it’s normal and needs to be fixed. #RacismAliveAndWell

To the little white boy on the playground, I apologize for not returning the money I found. While I actually feel sorry about it and wish I had acted differently then. It is of no more consolation to you than thoughts and prayers. You may never have forgotten, and I certainly haven’t, that I owe you fifty cents… plus interest.