There is a story here. In some ways it is a story of each of us and the choices we make or allow to be made for us. Forces we are only dimly aware of will control our lives if we don’t find a way to look at them directly and discover their power. But knowing the forces are there is not enough to overpower them. We must add to our knowledge with daily choices to resist these forces and change.
The Twin Cities in the 1960s
I grew up in this community of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Michigan, planted in a town and a culture that was white. Just across the river, another culture was growing that I knew nothing about. Over time, I crossed that river and came to know some of the people there. But I didn’t understand much. I knew they were living with few resources, unlike the surrounding communities, where people seemed to be oblivious or uncaring about the poverty just across the river.
I blamed the unfairness on prejudice and individually racist people. That’s a part of the explanation, and certainly I knew people who were that. And, of course, I believed I was an exception. I was raised to understand that prejudice and discrimination were wrong, and so I did what I thought was right to get rid of them from our culture. I worked with the poor. I joined white churches that encouraged black people to be members. I even dated a black man. I grieved the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I argued with people who said that the poverty in Benton Harbor was caused by the character failings of Black people.
Lies and True Causes
You probably know people who believe that lie about Black people. Six decades after the devastation of Benton Harbor in the 1960s, poverty and segregation persist in our community. Why? And how to change that? The people who believe the lie about Black character would say that the people of Benton Harbor, after having gotten control of the city, failed to make it prosper. They point to poor financial leadership, deteriorating housing, high crime, and high unemployment as the self-perpetuating causes of all that is lacking in the resources of the community.
What if we need to keep asking, “Why?” until we get to the true causes?
But what if these are not the causes, but rather the results, the symptoms and not the disorder? What if we need to keep asking, “Why?” until we get to the true causes? Why have the financial decisions of the city had such poor outcomes? Why has so much housing become run-down, unsafe, or needing to be demolished? Why is there so much crime? Why is unemployment so high? And most importantly, why are these things true for Benton Harbor and so very untrue for St. Joseph and the surrounding communities? Has “race” really made such a difference?
We know now that “race” is a made-up distinction, and nothing about a person’s “race” has any impact on intelligence, ability, or character. But beyond this, we can see that, yes, “race” has a lot to do with the true causes of what happened in Benton Harbor 60 years ago, that the community is still trying to recover from.
What Happened Here?
What happened here? To answer that question, we need to look back and trace the ways that Benton Harbor, once the business and educational center of the county, was walled off from the surrounding communities as a container for all the problems those communities wanted to avoid or ignore. Those communities enjoyed Benton Harbor’s amenities and harvested its resources, and then moved on, keeping themselves separate and safe from the poverty they left behind.
I benefitted from that separateness and safety. My parents were raised in Benton Harbor when it had the best schools in the county and many enriching activities supported by the taxes of residents and businesses, and sustained through civic pride.
After my parents moved to St. Joseph as newlyweds, they still brought their family to Benton Harbor to shop at stores our littler town didn’t have. But as I grew up, people on my side of the river started to warn that it wasn’t safe to go to Benton Harbor. The unspoken continuation of that sentence was, “If you’re white.” The nicest thing anybody said about Benton Harbor was that it was sad what had happened to the city; mostly their comments were derogatory and disdainful. The underlying racism was obvious.
Since my parents grew up in Benton Harbor, they didn’t share the disdain. The were bewildered and grieving about what was happening to their town. They taught their children to see racial prejudice as wrong, even as they failed to see how they were complicit the inequality by race that persisted around them—even after discrimination in employment and housing became illegal. They thought that really trying to listen to Black people would help the Black people. Instead, to the extent it helped at all, it helped my parents to begin to understand the challenges Black people faced. But it wasn’t enough.
A New History
Sixty years later, we are beginning to be more aware of the forces that have shaped our community’s inequity. That work of learning must continue, must be our priority. And we must teach our children, too, that the hidden history of here may have consigned them to a certain place and station, but that they can break free from that history and make a new history from here on.