My St. Louis

I was 17 and my best friend and I had gone to a Blues game downtown by ourselves.  We had used the metro link (STL’s transit system) to get downtown to avoid parking.  We didn’t get out of the game until after 11pm.  Being high school girls who were still figuring out good directional sense, when we went to head home we took the wrong direction.  Of course we didn’t realize this until the train parked itself at the end of the route smack dab in East St. Louis.  If you’re not from STL, you might not know that St. Louisans contribute most of the high crime rate and rankings to East St. Louis and North County (NoCo).

The train sat for thirty very long minutes, as we watched out the window.  In the parking lot we could see several things going on that we tried very hard to pretend like we couldn’t see.  We tried to hide our white skin and slumped in the back as middle aged men with different color skin and baggy pants came on and off the train.  I felt small, insignificant, and endangered…all because of my race and gender.  After thirty very long minutes the train started back up it’s route headed in the opposite direction…west.  Which if you know your St. Louis geography is the “safe” part of town.  That feeling of insignificance and endangerment faded, and life continued as normal.  We joked about it at school, the two white girls getting stuck in East St. Louis.

In St. Louis, the running joke when everyone meets you is they have to ask what high school you are from.  While it’s a song and dance we all keep up with, I realized why it happens as I got older.  We live in such a segregated and categorized city that by knowing where someone went to high school you can quickly peg what their race, and socio-economic classification is without even talking to them.  Having lived in several other cities since I left home, it was a shock for me to realize how segregated my city was.

See, I didn’t grow up believing racism was overtly present in my city.  My heart still wants to say it’s not.  That’s for other parts of the country, not my midwest hometown.  Obviously the past weeks headlines, calls from friends and family, the tension and lack of sense of safety in my city says otherwise.

My grandparents lived in Florrisant, right behind St. Louis Community College, close to the Ferguson line.  Every Christmas until I was a teenager was spent there.  Usually at least 2 other weeks throughout the year, I stayed at my grandparents house, this beautiful old farmhouse off Hudson.  I loved that house with it’s old wood floors, hidden closets, claw foot tub, and the front porch where I would swing with my grandma and admire her garden full of lily of the valley, crocus and tulips.  My grandma had great friends in that area, and we would ride around in her old black minivan that smelled of lavender, when she needed to run errands or get her hair done.  We’d often head over to the old Kmart in Ferguson.  She was so thrifty.  She worked for years at Jamestown Mall and it seemed like everyone knew her there when we walked in. My parents office was in NoCo, just around the corner from the old Northwest Plaza.  I spent days at my aunts house for an entire summer just off Howdershell.  My other aunt lived down the road where I loved to go visit with my cousins, and play with the neigbors in their big back yard and family oriented neighborhood.  My uncle had a house just down the road from my grandparents while I was growing up.  My dad went to high school and graduated from Hazelwood.  Shortly after getting married my husband and I attended a church in NoCo.  I know this area.  I spent a lot of my childhood in this area, and I have wonderful memories of it. I want to believe the best for this area.

In the mid 90’s the white flight happened.  Maybe because the connotations of the high schools had changed.  Maybe because the color of the neighbors had changed…I’m not sure.  I wasn’t ever aware of it being about either, it just happened that my family didn’t live there any more and I didn’t get up that way as much.  The connotation for going to high school in NoCo was that you lived in the hood.

When people ask where I went to high school, I’m slow to answer and try to divert.  Because I know the tagline that comes with being a female from my high school. Rich b!#ch.  And just like in most cases, there is a stereotype for a reason.  I don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes, I want to break them…and I want to believe that others want, and are trying to do the same.  We had “city kids” bussed into my high school.  I vaguely remember parents complaining about this, and have heard the practice has since stopped, but I genuinely enjoyed the diversity it brought into our school.  The first time I felt like the extra roundness my backside had wasn’t a terrible, horrible, no good thing, was courtesy of a sweet girl I was friends with…and maybe a few comments from the guys too.  I had several friends who woke up at 5 am just to make the bus stop to get to school by 8:20.  It took them several hours to get home, but they put in the hours and work because they knew it offered them opportunity.  I had a great deal of respect for how hard they worked for something I took for granted.  I learned a lot from them.

I live in a different city now, and one of the things I love about the area is how diverse it is.  I didn’t realize how segregated home was until I left.  My kids go to school with large groups of several different people groups, and I love that they get exposed to different colors of skin, languages, food, and culture.

I pulled into our local Chick-Fil-A today with this weeks events running through my mind, grieved for my city and the divide that exists in it.  My daughter walked in and threw her arms around Rosanna’s neck, one of our favorite CFA attendants who has been doting on my children for the last three years.  As I left the store two teenage boys held the door open for my family.  I encouraged my boys to notice their example and thanked them for the example that they were setting.  One of them had a different color skin than us.  I’m grateful for all the colors and ethnicities my kids get to see, most of whom are leaders and examples to them.

I want to believe that for my home, for my country.  That we stop seeing skin, or accents, or the way people dress, but see people as people.  As a community, fighting together to make things different for everyone’s benefit, and to leave a better generation in our wake.

I got to leave my feelings of insignificance and endangerment due to race and gender on the metro link when I left.  Unfortunately, many in my hometown don’t get to do the same.  I have no doubt that a black male in my city may experience that same feelings of insignificance and endangerment when he is pulled over by a cop.    Is there racism on both sides?  Yes.  This is what bitterness, anger and resentment do to a city, a culture, and even a country when we let these things sit and fester.  Generation after generation passing on their feelings of mistrust and hurt because of “those” people.  Justified or not, hatred and anger passed down like family heirlooms result in destruction.  I’m saddened that people assumed the worst about the officer.  I’m saddened that people assumed the worst of Mike Brown.  I’m saddened that a mother, a family and friends are mourning.

Instead of focusing on “other people” and all the “issues” contributing to this, and “white” or “black”, we all need to take a long hard look at ourselves.  How are we contributing to the issue of racism?  How do we stereotype?  When we hear loud music being blasted, do we automatically assume the race of the driver before seeing them?  Do we label certain stores as being for people of a certain ethnicity?  Do we avoid parts of town because of the color of peoples skin who live there?  Do we assume all people in law enforcement are out to get us?  Do we assume people with a certain color of skin are always working against us, and to oppress us?  Do we judge those who don’t speak our language, demanding their immediate integration into our society?  Do we make comments about the way certain ethnicities drive or carry themselves? Any answer to yes means further introspection on self is needed.

This is more than an “us” and “them” problem.  It’s an American problem, Ferguson just happens to be the latest locale where it’s reared it’s head.

Until we look at ourselves in the mirror and ask where we judge, stereotype and mislabel, until we see that we are passing down the generational sins of hatred and bitterness, this won’t stop.  We all have to being willing to see how we are playing a part.  Then…hopefully, change.  Maybe that means a move to an area that makes you a little uneasy but also has some of the cutest houses in the city.  Maybe that means a move to a different part of the city where you’re a different color than people usually seen.  Maybe that means not ranting all over Facebook when situations like this occur, and automatically lining up with one side (generally the one with the same color skin as you).  Maybe it means not being afraid in certain areas, but assuming the best and giving people the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe it means adopting a child of a different ethnicity to show that genes and skin color don’t make a family, love does.  Or maybe it simply means that your kids never hear stereotypes or racial slurs pass from your lips, and that they don’t see a certain color come in and out of your home, but simply people…of all walks, shapes, backgrounds, socio-economic status, and race.  Jesus, let it be.

As long as we are all standing in the street pointing fingers it won’t stop.  Until we look where the other four are pointing and deal with that, only then can we begin to move on and see real change.