How the Hatred Began...

It all began on the hour and a half bus ride to school. The maturity level of the high schoolers was shocking for me and my younger brother. Kids our age were trying to torment the bus driver, bully five year olds, and set off smoke bombs in the back of the bus thinking it was the funniest thing in the world. This was not the way high-schoolers behaved back in our home town… Looking back at it now, I do realize that my brother and I were simply just unfortunately trapped on the bus with all the “bad kids”. Not everyone at Cambridge-Isanti High acted this way…. There were a few choice students who extended a friendly attempt (and we were grateful for it), but the majority shunned my brother and me. He was bullied and beaten for wearing his hat backwards (which was the style and way to wear it where we had come from…) being called a “wigger” (“white nigger”). I was rejected in a different sort of way. Trying to talk to and get to know other girls, I extended what I deemed to be a friendly shake of the hand. I received nothing short of that cinematic, stereotypical stuck-up sneer, that size-up of absolute rejection. So. They didn’t like outsiders apparently. Bigotry and racism was the first and foremost horrifying experience for me as I was trying to cope with living here. My classmates back home could say some stupid stereotypical things sometimes; it can’t be denied that it’s everywhere, even in Yankeeville. But absolute racism is a whole other entity. I’ll never forget my first semester’s History class, watching an educational video on our American history, when a clip came on the screen involving the KKK burning a cross in the name of their hatred, and half, HALF of my class began to whoop and holler and “hurray!” for the Ku Klux Klan. Andy was his name, sitting next to me. He was the most excited. I, was completely mortified. The teacher said nothing but a timid, “Hey now, none of that. Sit down.” And this was the teacher that went to our church. His daughter was one of few who were kind to me, probably the kindest. So. I judged him profusely. I suppose that wasn’t all too fair of me. I didn’t exactly stand up and say anything either. I just sat there, in shock. And ever since I’ve been trying to redeem myself for that moment… I soon became a bigot myself. Anyone with a cowboy hat was on my imaginary hit list. After all, it seemed to be the cowboys and the cowgirls who liked to throw the “n” word around. I was sick of seeing “KKK” written on the cafeteria wall, “nigger” written on a note posted on one of the African-American student’s locker, and I was really, really sick of seeing that damn Confederate flag being set sail on the back of giant pick up trucks. All of this made no sense to me. Minnesota is as north as north gets, right? Does someone need to give these people a map? They do realize that they’re NOT the state of Alabama… right? I still don’t understand it. Things haven’t changed all that much in the past fifteen years of my family living here, either. Racism is still a fluent language of hate in these small towns of Minnesota. I blame it on ignorance. But I also blame it on narrow mindedness and small hearts. As I grew up a little and matured, I realized that my hatred for the haters was no different than their hate. I was being just as prejudice, and being angry wasn’t going to change anything. I made a few feeble attempts of expressing my opinions on the matter. I wrote an article for the school paper, but wasn’t aggressive enough to get it published. I made a cheesy poster for a writing class that supported the idea of peace between differences, but nothing profound enough to make a real change. Junior year, the perfect opportunity came along for me to stand up for what I believed in. In my Marriage and Family class we were given computerized dolls to teach us about caring for babies. I, was given an African American one. Fate. It was fate, I told myself. I knew exactly what was going to happen when I walked through those halls with this black baby in my arms. I knew this was my chance. But my chance fell through. The girl who lived right across the street from me and her friend, Sara, had come rushing to my side in the open, empty school hallway to take a look at my baby. They had never given me the time of day before… They were friends with my brother but had a wonderfully cruel way of turning their noses up at me. So, to begin with I was irritated that they were suddenly interested in talking to me just because I had a novelty tucked away in baby blankets. They were squealing like pigs to look at my doll, as if I had a real baby sleeping in a car seat carrier on my arm. I was annoyed with that. I pulled back the blanket, and a new noise came pounding into my ears. It was laughter. A horrible laughter, followed by, “You have a nigger baby!” And more and more guffaws to follow. Shock, it was. I was in shock. I gave them this horrified sharp look, and the two of them went arm in arm laughing hysterically down the hall and disappeared from me before I had the chance to catch my breath and realize what just happened. The rage grew. And grew. I ended up losing it on this poor, stupid kid who did nothing but walk by my baby on the bus, tap it in the face with a marker like a dumb teenage boy would, and got off the bus leaving me to stew overnight about what I was going to do to him the following day. I was ready. I had twenty four hours to stew and brew. The rage was still fresh, and it was growing, truth be told, like an alien in my chest. It was ready to break free, man, and it was going to get ugly. And it did. I came out of the high school, sped walked to the bus as if I was going to murder the kid, caught the boy in my sight and aimed true. I grabbed him up the collar, slammed him against the window of the bus and said things to him that to this day I cannot remember. (Temporary insanity does that to you...) The bus was dead silent with the exception of my emasculating this poor creature from head to toe. The silence broke with Paul (an acquaintance) shouting out, “Kick his ass!”. So. That was not very effective. I let out steam on the wrong person and in the wrong way. And it discouraged me. I hated myself for not finding a way to utilize my anger and passion for the greater good. Through out the years after it was a pile up of other things that created this hatred for Minnesota. I didn’t fit in with the people, not at all. I had friends, oh sure. And some really wonderful ones at that. Most of which were, thankfully, outcasts and misfits just life myself. But every time I met someone new at work, held out my hand to shake theirs and watch them look at me as if I was a freak for offering to shake hands (and then did NOT extend their hand in return), I became obsessively sorry for myself for every rejection. And I also became angry. Minnesotans, in my head and heart, were rude, unfriendly, cold people through and through and I was sick of them. I was sick of the lack of manners, the lack of friendly protocols that I, as a New Yorker, grew up with. People here were nothing but passive aggressive, spineless, mean folk with no sense of properness. And so, my bigotry grew once again. I was sick of having that store door close on me for the hundredth time that week because people here aren’t polite enough to hold it for you, and I was sick of big, fat rednecks saying sexists things in the bar, and I was sick of crazy, manipulative women trying to sucker me into friendships, and I was sick of eating over at friends’ houses and people not being polite enough to wait for everyone to sit down at the table before eating, and I was sick of people staring at me blankly as I talked to them with no indication that they were listening, or understanding, or even hearing what I was saying, and I was sick of walking on eggshells around people because, heaven forbid you speak your mind! and I was sick of people having to be sneaky and manipulative to avoid confrontations, and I was sick of the phoniness when someone was actually angry with me but pretended ridiculously not to be, and I was sick of… of: all of it. I hated snowmobiles, four wheelers, tractors, and John Deer. I hated the phrases, “Goin’ up North” and “You betcha”. I hated that damn Confederate flag… flailing in the breeze going down the road…. I hated those giant pick-ups that go forty miles over the speed limit and never get pulled over. I hated that stupid, little fat man in the auto parts shop that laughed at me when I didn’t know the make of my car engine (damn sexist!). I hated the sub-zero temperatures. I hated those effing mosquitoes, and horse flies, and deer flies, and gnats, and ticks. I hated the damn poison ivy that I was cursed enough to be poisoned by. I hated that good pizza was virtually and literally non-existent and unavailable. No culture = no good food. I hated the smell of spring: it didn’t smell like New York’s thawing hills. I hated that empty space in the sky where those hills were supposed to be. I hated everything. I hated that the man I loved didn’t love me back. I hated that my family was being torn apart. I hated that I was so far away from my childhood friends, my best friend, everything I lost that I had associated with my identity. I hated that I hadn’t seen my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins in years and years and years. I hated that all those traditions and ways of life of old were buried for good, gone and dead for all time. And it was all because I had to start life over in a place I did not, in any shape or form, fit in to. I blamed everything, everything on Minnesota. And that’s how it began. Judge me as you may. Be offended as you might. I recognize that my hatred is not justified. I recognize that even though my perspectives and heart have changed drastically within the past fifteen years toward my nemesis, big ‘ol MN, but I also recognize that I am not fully healed from my bigotry and resentment. I love my friends here dearly, and I’m in no place to whine anymore about “not fitting in”. I have found a comfortable little joint of misfits to belong to, and I’m grateful. But Minnesota as a whole is still a sour spot for me. And I hope to change that with this little project, journey, endeavor, reformation. Now you know how the hate began. I hope you’ll join me, help me, follow me on this way toward change.