Garretson cannot say it has many people of color in town. With regards to race, the vast majority are white, with only a smattering of people of color here and there.
As a relatively quiet small town, Garretson itself has not been directly impacted by the recent national protests and riots sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man who was killed by police while bystanders begged for them to reduce force. However, as a part of the nation, the effects are felt, and many local folks have had to examine their underlying thoughts and assumptions about black people and people of color.
While most Garretson residents will not say they are racist, conversations with local people of color have pointed out that incidences of micro-aggressions and small insults toward their race are high, and that the bar for expectations of behavior is set much higher.
Chef Omar Thornton, co-owner of O So Good, sat down with Pastor Tyler Ramsbey on Wednesday, June 3 for an hour-long conversation posted on the Renovation Church page about the national unrest. On Thursday, June 4, Ramsbey had a conversation with Captain Mike Walsh of the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Department on the Blue Light Podcast. Both interviews in full can be found on their respective Pages on Facebook.
In the enlightening interview, Thornton, who grew up in Oakland, California, and moved to Sioux Falls in 2000, told several stories about his experience as a Black man in this area. One story was about his experiences as a softball and soccer coach, where he pointed out how he noticed differences in reactions toward him versus other coaches.
“Part of where you could see the difference when I was coaching games, and where I would do things similar, if not the same, as the white coaches were doing, but yet the opposite team, or the person viewing it from afar, would see my body language differently for some reason…The tone was different, the looks were different. Even after the game, the non-forgiveness was different.”
What Thornton is describing is far too common, and it is the textbook definition of racism.
Racism is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as, “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.” Racism is not only lynchings, or direct insults, or telling someone to move to another part of the bus. It is more insidious than that, and manifests in different reactions, behaviors, and consequences toward minorities.
During the interview, Ramsbey asked Thornton about Black Lives Matter. While Thornton said he may disagree with some of their tactics and does not condone violence in any form, the overall message is important, especially when it comes to underlying racism.
“When they’re saying that Black Lives Matter, they’re not saying that it’s better than any other life. They’re just saying, ‘When you come and you talk to me…don’t look at me as less.’ Because I’m getting emotional, don’t look at me as less. Just because my neighborhood is not as good as your neighborhood, because my neighborhood might have quote-unquote ‘more crime in it,’ doesn’t mean I’m less.”
“So then you get into these points where that voice, that black voice, gets ignored. You get into these points where when you see a black person arguing with a cop versus a white person arguing with a cop, there’s a slight difference over the reaction of it.
“People get mad at the cops all the time. I’ve seen white person after white person get mad because they got a ticket or because they got pulled over and they disagree with the cop. I’ve seen people ‘be disrespectful’ toward a police officer that had nothing to do with what color they were…They have study after study- if they have done the same crime- that the number is so big of a difference, it catches your eye.”
According to The Sentencing Project, a non-profit geared towards promoting a fair and effective U.S. justice system, 1 in 3 black men can expect to be jailed at some point in their lives.
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