My hometown

Last week the Washington Post published an article about my hometown, Worthington, Minnesota, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/immigrant-kids-fill-this-towns-schools-their-bus-driver-resents-the-system-that-brought-them-here/2019/09/22/861c0fb4-d321-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html.  Reading the article about my hometown prompted me to think of Bruce Springstein’s song, “My Hometown.” First, I’m amazed that the Washington Post would do an article about Worthington.  That’s very cool.  But the content is disturbing.  I’m not sure it reflects an accurate picture of what is happening in Worthington, but it leads me to ask the question, “What’s happening in my hometown?”  I think Bruce Springstein could write a song about Worthington.  Though I haven’t lived there since I graduated from college, my parents still do and I go to Worthington at least twice a year.  I pay attention and care about what’s happening there.

Worthington is a much different place compared to when I graduated from high school.  According to Census information, in 1980 the percent of non-Whites was one or two percent; in 2010 the percent of non-Whites in 2010 was 34 percent.  In thirty years the number of non-Whites has gone from about 200 to 4,000. 

The changing racial demographics of the City has garnered people’s attention. Worthington has become one flashpoint of the debate happening in the United States about Immigration.  Just last week Veena Iyer (http://www.startribune.com/immigrants-make-our-community-stronger/561470552/) and Michelle Bachmann (http://www.startribune.com/washington-post-article-shows-that-open-borders-rip-our-towns-apart/561470512/) wrote articles in the Start Tribune in response to the Washington Post story. 

Combine issues around Immigration with Race and the Washington Post and many others in the media will pay attention.   

For three weeks I’m sharing a sermon series on the topic of race at the church I serve. They can be found at: https://vimeo.com/chainoflakes. I’ve shared the story in the series how I learned about race when my parents moved for a year to Kansas City. We lived a hundred yards from the “projects.” In Kansas City I had friends for the first time in my life whose skin color was different than mine and friends who spoke a different language. It was a whole new world about which I loved learning. In my sermon yesterday I shared that in 4^th grade I went to Kansas City to learn about race while today I could learn the same lessons in my hometown.  

Change is hard and some of the quotes in Michael Miller’s article were disturbing. Don Brink and Dave Bosma were quoted in a way that made them sound like White Supremacists. Whether that is true or not I don’t know.  I’ll give both Brink and Bosma the benefit of the doubt.  However what I do know is the schools in Worthington are bursting at the seams and more space is needed. The sixth referendum for expanding the schools will be voted upon in November.  If I was living in Worthington, I would vote for it and encourage others to do the same. Quality education has always been one pathway to a better life—whether it was for the Norwegians in the 1890s, the Vietnamese in the 1970s or the Hispanics in the 2010s.

 These changes are hard because race is at the center of them.  I’ve been preaching to the people of Chain of Lakes that we are called to create an environment where race can be discussed openly and honestly. Healthy discussion without charges of racism or tinged with guilt or judgment can untie the Gordian know that race can cause. 

And I get it, the call to healthy conversations about race seems small when the issues are so large.  “Let’s talk in a healthy way” doesn’t seem to resonate when the schools are overcrowded and unaccompanied minors are arriving in large numbers.  But these short-term crises don’t need to mask the long-term issue. 

America has never been and quite frankly will never be a white country. The changing demographics of Worthington represent the changing demographics of the United States.  Until America comes to term with race and its racial history more stories about towns like Worthington will continue to be published.  It’s time to stop being “Minnesota Nice” when it comes to race and have the difficult conversations that differences in race cause.