Polite Words, Quiet Acceptance: How Racism Actually Survives

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-16

[00:00:01]Hey Greenfield.

[00:00:03]I just want to take a moment to uh say hello to everybody.

[00:00:07]Uh I had to share a couple of things about what's going on in the city.

[00:00:11]Um I hope everybody's out enjoying the beautiful spring weather.

[00:00:15]Misha and I are just kicking it here on the lawn right now.

[00:00:20]Um before I go into what's going on in the city, I did want to share something.

[00:00:24]Uh both my wife and I got to watch our daughter compete in the second grade spelling bee this week.

[00:00:30]There were about 25 kids there.

[00:00:32]All of them the top of their class.

[00:00:34]Every one of them should be proud.

[00:00:36]But I will have to admit as a father, I spent felt uh a special kind of pride watching my daughter stand up there and win.

[00:00:44]And there was a good reason. Um you know, this year she actually skipped first grade. And she's had to adjust faster than most kids her age. And also because this week happens to be her seventh birthday.

[00:00:55]So, I'm going to take one brief moment as a dad and say, "Happy birthday, kiddo."

[00:01:00]I am unbelievably proud to be your dad.

[00:01:03]Not just because you won, but because of the kind, stubborn, and compassionate person you're becoming.

[00:01:11]And that's actually why I wanted to talk about something more serious today.

[00:01:16]Because when I look at my daughter, I think about the world that I grew up in.

[00:01:22]And then I think about the world I want her to grow up in.

[00:01:26]Those two worlds are not the same.

[00:01:29]And the distance between them is a big part of why I keep doing this work.

[00:01:35]Even when it gets hard.

[00:01:36]Even when it costs me something.

[00:01:39]And even when people would rather I stay quiet.

[00:01:44]Part of that comes from growing up in a family shaped by alcoholism and abandonment.

[00:01:48]I've talked about that before.

[00:01:51]I know what instability looks like.

[00:01:53]I know what it feels like when adults fail people depending on them.

[00:01:58]So, one of the things I've tried hardest to do as a parent is to give my daughter something different.

[00:02:04]Parents who are present.

[00:02:06]Parents who show up.

[00:02:09]Parents who make her feel safe.

[00:02:13]But, I also want her to grow up into someone strong enough to stand up on her own and fight her own battles when she needs to.

[00:02:21]I think every parent tries to find that balance. And part of why these issues matter so much to me comes from where I grew up.

[00:02:30]I grew up in the South in the 1970s. And yes, I am that old. At 58, I am the father of a 7-year-old.

[00:02:37]I went to school in Central Florida in a school that had only just been integrated.

[00:02:42]Black kids were bused in from a part of town between Leesburg and Fruitland Park.

[00:02:46]And white people in our town openly used a racist slur for that neighborhood.

[00:02:52]They said it casually.

[00:02:54]They said it publicly.

[00:02:55]And they said it in front of children like it was just normal.

[00:03:00]Our town was small, roughly about a thousand people.

[00:03:03]They had two police officers.

[00:03:05]They were brothers. And everyone in that town knew that they were tied to the clan.

[00:03:11]Now, here's the part that's hard for people to understand when I they hear stories like this.

[00:03:15]As a little kid, I didn't experience them as monsters.

[00:03:19]I experienced them as the good guys.

[00:03:22]I remember one day in the park that abutted our property that somebody had yelled out that there was a water moccasin.

[00:03:30]One of those officers walked over, pulled out his revolver, and shot the snake while all of us kids stood around watching.

[00:03:36]And in that moment, to us, he was the good guy.

[00:03:40]That memory has stayed with me because it taught me something important.

[00:03:45]A community can normalize some really ugly things when those things are wrapped in familiarity, authority, and quiet acceptance that this is just how things are.

[00:03:58]That's how racism survives across generations.

[00:04:01]Not just through violence, not just through slurs, but through institutions people are taught to trust without questioning.

[00:04:10]So, when people tell me today that racism only counts if someone is burning a cross or screaming a slur, I know that isn't true because I grew up in a place where respectable people, church-going people, elected people, and law enforcement people could all participate in racist systems while still being seen by most in this community as decent folks just keeping order.

[00:04:35]And if you want to understand more about that history, I invite you to look up Sheriff Willis McCall in Lake County, Florida.

[00:04:41]You'll start to understand the world I'm only glossing over here.

[00:04:44]His 47-year rule in that rural part of Central Florida shaped the culture around law enforcement. It influenced small-town police forces, including places like my own small town of Fruitland Park, Florida.

[00:04:58]So, when I talk about racism, I'm not talking about some abstract idea I learned from a book.

[00:05:03]I'm talking about a world I saw up close.

[00:05:06]A world where racist powers did not always announce itself with a hood or a burning cross.

[00:05:12]Sometimes it wore a badge.

[00:05:14]Sometimes it went to church.

[00:05:17]And sometimes it smiled at children in the park.

[00:05:20]Sometimes it was simply accepted as the way things were.

[00:05:25]That's why I take these issues seriously now.

[00:05:28]Because I have seen firsthand how ordinary communities go blind to what they are a part of.

[00:05:36]When you grow up seeing how fear and division work in real life, you start to recognize the same patterns later.

[00:05:43]Even when they're dressed up in nicer language.

[00:05:47]You know, look around the country right now. In Tennessee legislature legislators drew district maps designed to break up black voting power in Memphis.

[00:05:57]And when black law lawmakers protested it, they were surrounded by white state troopers and physically expelled from the legislature. Not censored, expelled.

[00:06:09]Across the country immigration enforcement has become the political theater concentrated in immigrant neighborhoods in ways clearly designed to scare people to send a message about who belongs and who does not.

[00:06:23]And underneath all of this is something deeper, a real fear running through American politics.

[00:06:29]This country is changing demographically, culturally, and physically.

[00:06:36]And there are people in power who would rather break democracy than accept that change.

[00:06:43]That fear is not new in America.

[00:06:45]Fear has always been one of the engines that drives racism.

[00:06:49]Now, you might be wondering what any of that has to do with Greenfield, Minnesota, a town of about 3,000 people, a community that is overwhelmingly white with a median income comfortably upper middle class.

[00:07:03]Here's what it has to do with us.

[00:07:05]I serve on this council because my neighbors elected me to tell the truth as I see it.

[00:07:11]Even when it makes people uncomfortable.

[00:07:13]In January I wrote publicly about Metro Surge, the federal government's own term for ramped up ICE activity in the Twin Cities and surrounding communities, and how it was affecting our neighbors.

[00:07:26]Part of that involved activity happening near Maple Hill Mobile Home Park in Corcoran.

[00:07:32]What followed was very telling.

[00:07:34]Some people defended ICE.

[00:07:36]Other people started making sweeping statements about immigrants, calling them criminals, terrorists, rapists.

[00:07:44]They even said that all of them, not just some of them, all of them should be removed by our country through any means possible.

[00:07:54]And that language sounded particularly familiar to me because it echoed exactly the kind of talk I grew up hearing in the south.

[00:08:02]Some folks in this community chose direct activism against ICE.

[00:08:07]And as a council member, I took a different approach, not because I didn't support what they were doing. I do.

[00:08:13]But I also had to be careful not to give this council a legal excuse to remove me if I were charged with a federal crime, which has happened to peaceful protesters in this country.

[00:08:25]So instead, I spoke out publicly.

[00:08:27]I shared information, and I pushed for local protections for our most vulnerable neighbors.

[00:08:33]Because when fear starts taking over our community, I believe public officials have a responsibility to speak clearly.

[00:08:42]That eventually led to multiple complaints against me.

[00:08:45]Two of them focused on my post about ICE.

[00:08:48]Another was about comments after Charlie Kirk's assassination a few months earlier.

[00:08:53]And one was about an individual who had repeatedly escalated personal attacks on me and my family online, including comments about parking outside of my home to protect my wife and daughter.

[00:09:06]And this was not just words on screen.

[00:09:10]In the early morning hours, vehicles have sat outside of my house honking, just this last week. Not once, not by accident, but in a a sustained pattern. Pickup trucks have been caught on my security cameras this last week throwing trash out into the street in front of my home.

[00:09:28]When I came outside to photograph their license plates, they peeled out and disappeared.

[00:09:34]These are not random acts. These are old tactics, the same kind of intimidation I grew up hearing about in the south.

[00:09:42]Small enough to deny, big enough to send a message.

[00:09:47]The kind of message that says, "We know where you live.

[00:09:51]We know your family's inside, and we want you to think about that." So, yes, I contacted the sheriff's department. I documented what was happening.

[00:10:01]I asked for help.

[00:10:04]And in the formal investigation that followed against me, the investigator concluded that my fear was not real.

[00:10:11]She called it feigned indignation.

[00:10:14]She suggested I was making up reasons to involve law enforcement.

[00:10:19]I want people to carefully think about what she made in that judgment.

[00:10:24]In June of 2025, just months before any of that started, Minnesota's former speaker of house, Melissa Hortman, was assassinated in her own home in Brooklyn Park.

[00:10:37]So was her husband, Mark.

[00:10:39]The killer was impersonating a police officer, and their golden retriever, Gilbert, was shot, too.

[00:10:48]Less than 2 hours before that, the same gunman shot state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Evette, in their own home in Champlin.

[00:10:58]When investigators searched the killer's car, they found a hit list nearly 70 names, Democratic lawmakers, abortion providers, advocates across Minnesota and other states.

[00:11:11]3 months later, in September of 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated as well.

[00:11:18]And within weeks of Kirk's death, the mayor of my own city, right here in Greenfield, Minnesota, republished a Facebook post that named me, that tied me to Kirk's politics, that made me out be a danger to this community.

[00:11:36]He said publicly that he and his family feared for their lives. So, let me be plain about this. Any year when a Minnesota state legislator had been assassinated in her own home by a man carrying a hit list of nearly 70 political targets.

[00:11:52]And when the mayor of my own town was publicly suggesting that I was the kind of person to fear.

[00:11:57]I had every reason to take that intimidation outside of my house seriously.

[00:12:02]To call that fear feigned indignation is not an honest reading of what actually happened.

[00:12:09]That's the kind of conclusion you reach only if you've already decided what the answer you want is.

[00:12:15]An answer she was paid $20,000 to provide in an official document.

[00:12:21]But here's what I want my neighbors to hear.

[00:12:24]Yes, I had reason to be afraid.

[00:12:27]Anyone paying attention to what was happening in the state and the country should have been.

[00:12:33]But I'm not letting that fear stop me from doing what is right.

[00:12:38]I'm paying attention.

[00:12:39]I'm documenting everything and I am still showing up.

[00:12:43]I grew up around this kind of intimidation.

[00:12:46]I know what it sounds like when people start testing what they can get away with.

[00:12:51]When they're careful not to make a direct threat, but still want to feel one.

[00:12:57]And what happened next matters.

[00:12:59]I was put through a formal code of conduct process over things I had written publicly.

[00:13:05]Things that were factual and documented.

[00:13:07]And at the same time at the same time our mayor was sharing posts implying that I was a danger to the community because my politics did not line up with Charlie Kirk's, someone that he admired.

[00:13:20]He publicly said that he and his family feared for their lives.

[00:13:25]No investigation followed that.

[00:13:28]No hearing followed that.

[00:13:30]The mayor had me removed from committee assignments back in August when I challenged the city on assessments instead of going along with the majority.

[00:13:39]Then in January he doubled down again.

[00:13:41]He claimed that there had been multiple complaints about my work on those committees.

[00:13:47]And when I went and I checked those committees themselves, they told me that they had never spoken with the mayor.

[00:13:54]They had no complaints about my work.

[00:13:57]And when I had brought that back to him, he refused to retract what he had said.

[00:14:03]Again, no code of conduct violation was called against him.

[00:14:09]I think residents should think hard about what that double standard means.

[00:14:13]Because when one person's speech is treated as dangerous, while another person's speech, even when the other person is the one holding power, gets no scrutiny at all.

[00:14:25]People naturally start asking whether the rules are being applied the same way to everyone.

[00:14:33]The council and some very loud voices close to the mayor have gotten frustrated with me.

[00:14:39]They want me to apologize.

[00:14:41]They want me to sound more contrite.

[00:14:44]And I want to explain carefully why I cannot do that.

[00:14:48]Not being contrite does not mean I won't represent every citizen in this city. I absolutely will.

[00:14:55]Even people who don't like me. Even people who think I'm completely wrong politically.

[00:15:01]Their roads still matter. Their drainage still matters. Their safety still matters.

[00:15:07]That's part of the job.

[00:15:09]But there is a difference between serving people honestly and telling them comforting lies.

[00:15:14]If I genuinely believe racism and fear-based politics are real and active in this country right now, and I do, then I'm not going to pretend otherwise just to make political conflict go away.

[00:15:28]Because silence does not fix any of this.

[00:15:31]Silence is how it survives.

[00:15:35]The mayor has publicly said that racism would go away if people just stop talking about it.

[00:15:42]I want you to really sit with that for a second.

[00:15:46]Racism has never disappeared because people stopped discussing it.

[00:15:51]It disappears slowly, imperfectly, when people are willing to confront it honestly, when institutions document it, when communities acknowledge it, when ordinary people are willing to hear uncomfortable truths immediately treating those truths as attacks.

[00:16:10]And one of the privileges of never experiencing racism directly is being able to stay quiet while your neighbors are living in fear every day.

[00:16:22]At the end of the day, this all comes back to my daughter.

[00:16:27]Because I want her growing up in a country where people still have the courage to say uncomfortable things out loud when those things matter.

[00:16:36]I want her growing up in a community where democracy means more than staying quiet to avoid conflict.

[00:16:43]And I want her growing up understanding that public service is not about being liked by everybody.

[00:16:50]It is about showing up honestly.

[00:16:54]I'm not angry.

[00:16:55]I'm not reckless.

[00:16:57]And I'm not a threat. At least not to anyone's life.

[00:17:01]And no, I am not fomenting civil war as one of the mayor's supporters claimed this in this $20,000 investigation.

[00:17:09]I am someone who grew up watching this country struggle slowly, painfully toward the idea that all people are created equal.

[00:17:19]And I have watched institutions built by a white majority cut against that very idea.

[00:17:25]I believe we are at risk of moving backward if people stop paying attention. So, yes, I will keep speaking. I will keep showing up, and I will keep doing this work because I want my daughter and every kid growing up here to inherit something better than fear, silence, and division. That's the job.

[00:17:47]And I hope more people decide that it's their job, too.

[00:17:51]Thank you, Greenfield.

[00:17:53]Have a good weekend.