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Seeing the Bunyan for the Trees: Storytelling and Community in the Twin Cities
Even if it is a metaphor, labeling an area as “white” hardly encourages a community to think about its actual makeup. It’s easy to find strong Scandinavian traditions locally, sure, but it’s not difficult to find East African ones, either. In addition to prominent Latino, American Indian and African American communities, the Twin Cities are home to the largest Somali population in North America, one of the largest concentrated Hmong populations in the United States, and the largest Korean adoptee population in the country. The stories of these communities often get lost behind self-imposed cultural barriers—like labeling a major metropolitan area “white,” which is a label I have heard several times since I moved here in 2007. Often because of a lack of resources and an unwillingness to breach difficult barriers, immigrant populations are left to operate only within their own communities, or treated as token representatives, rather than as co-creators of the cultural fabric of the Twin Cities. If we’re bogged down with the statistics of a historical majority, how do we ever expect to foster acceptance and accommodate change?
Our politics are as varied as our cultural backgrounds, although we aren’t as hesitant to discuss it. The label of “liberal” is certainly up for interpretation. The Twin Cities probably swing left of the national political median (have you ever been to the May Day parade?), but our state legislature has a Republican majority and the recent gubernatorial race required a recount, barely electing our first DFL governor in 24 years. If we’re relying on historical traditions, we should be reminded that our local dependence on large publicly traded corporations shades the word “liberal” slightly differently than perhaps Thomas Van Lear, the only Socialist mayor of Minneapolis, would have thought in 1918. Not all of us are dyed in the wool; for some the word “liberal” is simply a synonym for “affluent.”
