JUST INSIDE THE DOOR
Jordan, June
JUST INSIDE THE DOOR June Jordan Where I Live Now, Part Two Already, November 1994 feels far away. That was a seriously bad moment. And many of us lost morale because we accepted mass-media...
...In the highest echelons of the administration, there are two black men, Lewis Jones and Mike Fagin, who enjoy unqualified respect...
...Well, Mankato is about seventy-five miles southwest of the Twin Cities...
...The average height of a young white man, out there, is six-foot-one...
...In the absence of human authority and regulation, for example, we can choose to preserve or to salvage a civil community...
...We were weak...
...And so we thought we were doomed inside the tightening jaws of racist jeopardy, or worse...
...We did not want to agree or disagree, but we were trying to speak to each other across high barriers of misinformation and visceral response to obvious, and very significant, differences...
...In any case, it was not that cold...
...And above that town of 42,000 residents, you see an enormous stretch of open sky...
...We were few...
...Above all, I felt safe among these strangers...
...To be sure, the majority of the minority of Americans who did vote opted for the ignorant, mean, and self-destructive side of the choices available...
...And with Newt Gingrich chasing giraffes when he's not racing after more and more personal power, and with Bill Clinton as the redoubtable alternative to leadership of any kind, things in Washington continue to look dangerous and dismal—indeed, like a man-made disaster...
...To this golden rule, there are no amendments, no exceptions...
...Evidently, we belong to a species capable of individual initiative and virtue beyond self-serving ambition and desire...
...God knows I was not eager to go there...
...We were surrounded by enemies...
...Furthermore, the anger that drives some of my published writings had predisposed them to perceive me as negative, narrow, and bigoted—and/or "irrational...
...And this willing commitment leads to a reliable meaning of civil community that, I believe, makes possible their commonplace kindness and generous poise...
...This is pretty big, pretty good, news...
...Throughout the wrecked cities of Kobe and Osaka, we have witnessed pervasive displays of dignity and communal concern despite ultimate stress...
...It's cold...
...Most everybody eats beef and cheese...
...It took a little while before we re-examined the arithmetic pertinent to those elections: If only 39 percent of the electorate cast a ballot, and if only 19 percent of the electorate voted Republican, then where was this mythical "landslide," exactly...
...I notice that this absence of "leadership" has not impaired the resilient and noble spirit of the ordinary men and women who have survived...
...I twice visited a class in multicultural literature led by a Native American, Gwen Griffin...
...It is certainly white...
...Are these the people regularly maligned by the American mass media as "ruthless" and "techno-robots" addicted to "incomprehensible conformity...
...We can secure safety and justice and grace for all of our difficult days together without any leadership—besides our own.* June Jordan, the poet, is professor of African-American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley...
...Given the American mass media portrayals of the prairie as grounds for extreme provincialism, white/right-wing Christianity, and die-hard zealotry for the never-never-world of "the way things were," I dreaded my trip as a possibly foolish foray into hostile and unfamiliar turf...
...There has been no looting...
...And it was not that white...
...It's mostly Swedish and Lutheran...
...From day one of my arrival, I was met with generosity and kindness plus the intellectual courtesy of my hosts, who had bothered to read and wrestle with my works beforehand...
...I notice that the elected officials of Japan have not distinguished themselves— through words or deeds—in this hour of devastating and inarguable human need...
...There has been no violence inside that critical context of no water, no blankets, no food...
...There is a Minnesota code of honor that reflects their annual battle with sub-zero temperatures and sudden, blinding snow...
...What was the source for claims of a "monumental mandate...
...That code requires everybody to stop and provide assistance to anyone who seems to be stuck or stranded, outdoors, in wintertime...
...Mankato inculcates a value system that does not kneel to regular goals of greed and domination...
...Ten days before the Kobe-Osaka earthquake, I spent a week in Heartland America...
...During my stay as a scholar-in-residence, there were several occasions when interested faculty and students shot questions at me or declared their own convictions about, for example, public education, or domestic violence, or problems of diversity, or curtailment of police power, or feminism, or urban planning, or the use of knowledge...
...But in these times of boastful cruelty, racist scapegoating, and a virulent recrudescence of white-supremacist activity, in these times of the media's malevolent intervention between peoples, it is heartening to know that, on our humble, fumbling-forward, two feet, we can discover or join or rescue human community...
...Very quickly, I recognized my environment as welcoming, in the best sense...
...The president of the Mankato State Student Association is an extremely persuasive young black man, Kris Hammes...
...We have seen a massive loss of life but no loss of civil humanity...
...I am not saying anything like "perfect" or "paradise...
...This is pretty big, pretty good, news...
...This is the point: the Heartland is no alien enclave, no haven for mean-spirited and ill-informed activity...
...It's a hard place to live...
...But are we talking "Japanese" here...
...But I have been watching the Japanese response to the natural disaster of a 7.2-point earthquake that has taken the lives of more than 5,000 people, catapulted more than 300,000 into homelessness, and lifted bottom-line attributes into tragic and awe-inspiring relief...
...When I met with Mankato State honor students, they told me that so many graduates, male and female, hope to become public-school teachers there is now an astonishing glut: in one instance, 5,000 candidates applied for one opening in a remote school...
...We had been slammed into the realm of the irrelevant...
...As a matter of fact, citizens of Japan donated $2,450,000 in rescue monies for the California Bay Area, following our 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which was horrifying and deadly and, also, a fraction of the fatal force of the Kobe-Osaka ordeal...
...Subsequently, I learned that mass-media projections of my people and my culture had induced corresponding dread among some of my would-be hosts at Mankato State University in Minnesota...
...And many of us lost morale because we accepted mass-media reports of a Republican "sweep" or a Republican "revolution...
...In the absence of social and cultural diversity, it is nevertheless possible to seek and to find bonding information and connections with people unlike yourself...
Vol. 59 • March 1995 • No. 3
