Although many of us in Duluth, Minnesota claim to be colorblind, I posit that race awareness operates in most social situations where different colors meet, unless those involved already know each other. As a city bus driver, I regularly witness race loaded situations, some of them blatant. These are uncomfortable but not difficult to deal with. It is the subtle, but more common race-based interactions that can teach me something meaningful or torment me for days. Three kinds of interactions, in particular, highlight our continued racial separation. I’ll call them: the Lack of Common Recognition Barrier; the Historical Assumption Barrier; and the Fear to Be One’s Self Barrier.

The Lack of Common Recognition Barrier is, by far, the most prevalent race-conscious situation that I witness. This is where a white person looks right past a person of color without recognition of his or her humanity (and vice versa, I might add but it seems more understandable the other way around). Rarely do I see a black man noticed for reasons other than his color. One small accidental incident revealed this point to me. I was dropping off a blind person on the West End of Duluth. This woman was obviously either new to the area, new to using a cane, or disoriented for another reason. Two white men and a black man were standing near the corner.  I recognized the black man from the bus. I beckoned to him and asked if he could help this woman cross the street.  He graciously hooked one arm in hers and dramatically stopped traffic with the other as he held his head high and proudly escorted her to the other side. Since then, he always sits up front and chats with me whenever he catches my bus on his way to work.

Even when a situation is not about race, because of a history of being singled out by race, a person of color may assume that this too is about race, and be hurt by it. An example of the Historical Assumption Barrier occurred last week. I picked up several passengers at UMD on my Route 13 up Woodland Avenue. The Woodland bus coming down, number 9, passes through UMD one minute later, on the other side of Kirby Drive. People unfamiliar with the Woodland routes will often get on a bus that takes them in the wrong direction.  As folks boarded, I noticed a figure in the corner of my eye, running towards my bus from across the street. When that person in line came into view, I asked him if he knew that this bus went up Woodland Avenue, not down, to Fourth Street. “Yes, I do,” he said emphatically and hurried to sit down.  Coincidentally, he was the only person of color in the group of boarders and the only one I had asked.  I wanted to explain why I’d asked the question, and that I didn’t notice race, or even gender, before I asked, but he was gone. The bus was full. I needed to move on. I thought I might catch him on the way out but he exited the back door shortly thereafter and I had to accept that this is what he deals with every day.   

The third barrier, the Fear to be One’s Self, is one in which a person in the minority will hold themselves back and remain quiet until they know enough about the other people or the environment to act spontaneously without fear of being rebuffed, insulted, or otherwise restrained. This can often be a sad waste of personhood in a race-mixed situation. One night I was headed to New Duluth when a male passenger in a wheelchair, whom I’ll call John, rang the bell to get off at the Riverside stop. This is a fairly unlit, uninhabited, piece of road after dark. John had successfully disembarked and I was winding in the ramp when his wheelchair slipped on gravel and he kept sliding until his chair fell back completely. I made some frightened comment as I jumped out of my seat. Instantly, although there were at least a dozen others on the bus, a young black man, with friend in tow, raced from the far back of the bus to help me lift John up. Later, this young man introduced himself as the son of a woman I had known some years before. Now, it’s possible that this young man would have stepped up in any crisis, on any bus, but I believe he acted because he knew it was safe to be himself.  Because I’d known his mother, he knew something about me. I wondered how often, in Duluth, this might not be the case, for a young black man.

While many of us like to think we greet and treat people the same, regardless of race, I don’t believe our behavior matches that assumption. Unfortunately, we hold too many fears and false generalizations about race to be unaware of skin color. Even when we are acting in a colorblind way, for people of color, race is always present.

Traveling alone or with companions — persuasive

Traveling to and from work (and other places) with or without a car — cause and effect

Reasons to travel to other countries — classification

What impressed me most about Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay, “On Compassion” was it’s texture: descriptive words that made use of all my senses.  The sight of a man on a busy Manhattan street with his buttonless shirt hanging loose, “carefully plaited dreadlocks bespeaking a better time”, and his shuffled gait “held in place by gravity” contrasts sharply with the blonde baby in the expensive stroller with whom he meets. The man with the briefcase lifting and lowering his shiny-toed shoe, “watching the light reflect, trying to catch and balance it” continues the heartfelt but visual feast before us.

The “buttery, overpriced croissant washed down with rich cappuccino” offers as much taste satisfaction as the real deal does, and when “the scent of stale cigarettes and urine fill the small, overheated room,” we are sitting at that same table with the narrator.

Ascher’s thesis in the essay is a question: How are the more affluent affected by the homeless among us? Sentances that compelled me to think more closely on the issue, included: 1) “We want to protect ourselves from an awareness of rags with voices.. ”

2) “I don’t believe that one is born compassionate.” and,

3) “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Personally, it’s hard to hear anyone justify war for any reason. I think war is barbaric and I no longer buy the argument that those who participate in war are protecting my freedom unless the freedom they speak of refers to a freedom to invade other people’s lands to strip them of resources so I can maintain the nationalistic, wasteful way of life that I have grown accustomed to. I’d prefer that our leaders pursue an agenda that leads us to share the world’s limited resources rather than kill others for a greater proportion of them. In order to kill citizens of other lands, we have to believe that U. S. citizens are somehow more valuable and entitled than non U.S. citizens. If our leaders do decide to take the country to war, as a matter of course, they should lead their own kids to war first, and not expect the rest of our kids to pay the full cost of their decisions.

I found it interesting that Nathaniel Fick starts out his essay with the word citizen-soldier while describing his admiration for the Greek farmers who traded their plows for swords, but then spends much of the essay trying to convince us that well educated people make better soldiers than citizen farmers, etc. I found other contradictions as well.

He claims he never has to wrestle with discipline problems because his soldiers are volunteers. Perhaps he is a good leader. According to my brothers who served, the military is one of the few places where men feel a strong loyalty and bond with each other.  Good leaders bring out the best in others and if one is treated respectfully, I find it hard to believe that other soldiers, less educated soldiers, would behave much differently than these particular soldiers in regard to discipline problems.  He claims that grunts are no longer relevant but then describes support jobs, like truckdriving and engine repair as jobs that minorities fill. He later says his infantry platoons were made up of men “far more diverse than my class at Dartmouth, and far more willing to act on their principles.” 

He confused me entirely when he described the qualifications and enlistment standards (There has been much news made from the lowering of these standars in order to increase enrollment quotas) and again when he described why a larger force where members serve fewer deployments makes a stronger military after saying earlier that the military requires much more training and education now than before.

Mostly, I react to his essay negatively because I hate the glorification of mass killing when in many other arenas, technology for instance, we view ourselves as part of a global community. I think we are capable of understanding other countries’ priorities and negotiating with them in a way that makes a saner world for all.  I’m intolerant of one who tries to make a good argument for any kind of war. 

“Suffering a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defenseless wayfarers.” This sentence in paragragh two, is at the heart of Staples’ essay. An ordinary person, unable to sleep, is doing what anyone might do, but then in doing so, is percieved as someone with entirely different intent.

Throughout his essay, I see this disparity between his attempt to move through life as himself; a normal young man, afraid of knives, engrossed in classes, a walker, and the perception that others have of him; abnormal, a knife wielder, a fearsome entity, a night time criminal. Isn’t this disparity the heart of racism?

Two other messages stood out for me in Staple’s essay. First, in paragraph five, he shows his awareness of women’s fear, a fear based in reality. He shows a sensitivity to all involved in his described incidents.  However, this sensitivity does not lessen the pain and isolation that racism brings to people of color. Can white people even imagine the damage done to one’s psyche to feel “ever the suspect” whenever one is in public space?

The other bit that caught my eye was the “bandolier-style” purse straps. This detail implies that he is not referring to older women who might remember Jim Crow segregation.  He is talking about women who view themselves as younger, hipper, more enlightened, and who probably pride themselves on being no longer racist.  He’s talking about me.

List evidence/draw conclusions: 

 1)Car is stuck over water between the dock and a boat

2) The dock and the boat had to be there first

3) Woman with car keys does not appear to be wet

4) Rope is slack; must be untethered

Paragraph: I gather that this picture was taken some time after the accident. The woman in forefront appears official but I’m guessing all bystanders are simply gawking at the wacky accident since there is no sign of water on the dock.

My partner is Mackensie. The first president she clearly remembers is Ronald Reagan whereas I’m old enough to recall when President Kennedy was shot. As the older person in our research partnership, I will contrast and compare our motivations to continue higher education. Mackensie lives in Hancock, Minnesota with her husband and five children under seven. She’s taking six classes on-line this semester while running a daycare in her home and working in a bar three nights a week. When I was her age, I had zero children, was unmarried, worked as a waitress and really had no plans for a career or higher education. Questions I’d like to explore are:

1) What was your family’s expectations of you?

2) What are yours hopes and fears regarding higher education? What do you fear without it and what are your hopes for having it?

3)Where do you draw your support to continue?

4)What does the future look like for those without higher education?

5) What role does higher education play in your life?

Grandma’s small house, clad in pink asphalt siding, sat tucked inside a grove of pine trees, high on a hill. It was a narrow house with the kitchen in front, a main room in the middle, and two side by side bedrooms in the back, their doorways each facing into the main room. Acorns and orange pine needles lined the steep, rutted driveway that led up to it. At the top, across the gravel drive, Grandma grew a garden of tulips that floated color across the yard.

   Two cement squares laid like a short piece of sidewalk led up to her front door. Once inside, there was a landing, then three short steps covered with linoleum that led up into a sunny kitchen. A formica table with three aluminum chairs sat in front of a window looking down toward Sparrow lake. A black wood-burning cook stove, central to grandma’s world, stood across from the window.

Windows were everything in Grandma’s tiny house.  Inside the second room were two rocking chairs, an old bureau with an ornate mirror and another, larger table that sat in front of bay windows also looking toward the lake. In this bay window, I learned from Grandma how to braid, how to crochet, and how to use the treadle sewing machine. It was here that the old woman and the girl pored over black and white photographs stored in cigar boxes stacked inside the bureau drawer. Grandma’s short rounded fingernail pointed out the faces, giving names and shape to time that spanned three generations.

Grandma wore full-size aprons over her dresses that hung looser as she got older. The aprons were made from light cotton prints. They looped over her head and had bib fronts, decorated with rickrack or sturdy binding tape and each had pockets and cloth ties that wrapped behind. 

    She wore sturdy lace-up shoes and thick shiny support stockings. Her two button-up sweaters, worn open except for the top button, were the same two sweaters she’d been wearing for years, and as long as they remained useful she saw no need for new ones. At night, before getting into bed, she took long, thin hair out of its bobby pins and braids and let it fall down her back against a floor-length flannel nightgown. First thing every morning, she wove the hair together again, winding the braids into coils or across the top of her head.

   Most everything in grandma’s house faced toward the windows. The view beyond those windows could leave a city person breathless. The great hill sloping down to Sparrow Lake was “just the perfect place for down-hill skiing!” cabin people told her when they showed up on her doorstep, after “simply hours” of looking for a way to reach the top, “without trespassing of course. You never know, some country folks might shoot you!” Usually Grandma told them no, especially when they talked loud and acted like she didn’t know what it was she had in front of her own nose. Just because she never skied, that long hill was not wasted in Grandma’s mind. She sent them on their way by clamming up and acting shy. But back inside her house she’d say, “If folks knew how to work they wouldn’t have time to look so silly getting exercise.” 

   When Grandma came to visit her son’s house, she hiked down the hill at an angle, passing the plateau where for decades she grew outstanding vegetables. She passed the rock pile on Cemetery Hill named for a baby girl buried there in 1920, back when the Peterson’s still owned the place. Veering gradually away from the lake, she hiked through an open field, pulling up every mullein weed she saw–which is why she had fewer mullein weeds than any of her neighbors, or so she said. She then climbed through a barbed wire fence, crossed over the ditch and up to the black-topped county road that passed right by our front yard. Except for mid-summer when the trees were full, I could watch her going home again, or look across that field at night and see the lights on up in Grandma’s house.

“However, the Krispie, the Plain, and the Peanut are three that recur with more regularity than any other.” This is the sentence that pulled it all together for me (in an otherwise fully loaded paragraph). This is the sentence that defines the theses. Before I read this sentence, I wasn’t sure where I was going. Was he talking about me, who considers sitting in his office, like Homer, overwhelmed with work and emergencies, begging for mercy?

            I got sidetracked by the M&M dispenser. Does he really have one in his office?  Will Homer end up returning for the M&M’s?  Is the truth about M&M’s in their seduction quality?  However, the krispie, the plain, and the peanut sentence put me back on track. Comforted by a familiar structure, I knew now where I was going.

            The Krispie, the Plain, and the Peanut are useful analogies for categorizing a wide range of student personalities. The krispie is fried. The plain is steady and reliable and the peanut has substance. All three categories are well supported by specific details painting a believable trio of characters. However, in the end, I wondered how actual these categories could be. For example, I feel a bit of all three: the krispie, because I want to throw off the stress; the plain, because I’m rooted in that old work ethic that won’t allow me to quit; and the peanut, because I’m still curious about the big questions.

            The Simpsons reference at the essay’s end held a sweet aha. I hadn’t caught the names until I saw them strung together. The essay also made me wish I had some M&Ms.

“To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.”  This sentence in Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay, “The Purpose of Education,” stands out for me as a statement that summarizes his thesis. To save ourselves from the morass of propaganda, we need to think critically, clearly, and without bias. It is not enough that education trains one to read a newspaper, write a brief, or multiply numbers.  Education should also develop character and worthy citizenship through self-awareness, logic, and truth, even if that means going against the grain of majority opinion.

King evokes the late Eugene Talmidge as a man who possessed one of the greatest minds in America.  “By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmidge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior human being.  Are those the types of men we call educated?” While he uses Talmidge as an example of a well educated man, limited in experience and unable to look outside his race, King is speaking to an audience at an all-black college, Morehouse, calling on his “brethren” not to do the same.  He is calling on them to raise their standards for what the purpose of an education is.  He advises them to view their education as more than a means to make themselves noble or a way to join the class of men now able to exploit those less fortunate.  His defining message is “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”