Secrets of the City

A White Bear Lake man pulled his ninth-grade daughter out of school this week to protect her from racial threats. Over the past three weeks the young African-American girl “has been called a racial epithet on a White Bear Lake school bus, been stared at menacingly in a North Campus classroom, and had her life threatened by a weapon-wielding student.” A police report shows that a juvenile from the school was arrested on Wednesday and put into juvenile detention, but the school has not confirmed this.

Meanwhile, between 6 and 16 officers were patrolling the halls of Owatonna High School this week after a fight broke out between white and Somali students. Tension had been building for a couple of weeks, “stemming from a student’s inflammatory paper alleging Somali privilege that was posted on a school blog.”

And in St. Paul, the final candidate for Saint Paul Public Schools superintendent was met with a protest of about 30 high school students yesterday, claiming that North Branch superintendent Deborah Henton “was not supportive of minorities.”

From wcco:

It’s not an accusation you’d expect against a very successful, Hispanic, female Supreme Court nominee. But some critics are calling Sonia Sotomayor a “racist” or a “reverse-racist.” Is it even possible for a minority to be a racist?….

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In the most recent issue of City Pages is the following letter to the editor:

If you say “Nordeast,” you are a racist: Your reference to Nordeast is offensive and highly politically incorrect … The Nordeast word goes back to the Eastern European immigrants who early on populated lower Northeast Minneapolis; they were learning how to speak English and had a problem with pronunciation, often using words such as “dem” for “them” and “dose” for “those.”

It may be “offensive” to you, Concerned Reader, but it’s not racist nor is “politically incorrect” IMHO. Is the “Oreo” cookie next on your list? Are you going to go after Ole and Lena jokes (or anyone who speaks in a funny Scandahoovian accent?), too?

So a local grocery store runs an ad for Black History month that includes discounts on collard greens and frying chicken. KSTP considers running the story, but then kills it, and quickly quiets rumors that the story was killed on behest of the advertising department: “Radford said the fact that the story is now old and that there wasn’t any concern from a leading civil-rights organization means it’s unlikely that the story will ever air.”

Now Jason asks: Was the ad racist? Discussion on Twitter points out that Black History Month would presumably include soul food, but what do you think?