As Minnesota's state senate debates a public school funding bill that would remove funding from integration programs in the major cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and Duluth and shift it to a statewide literacy drive, one freshman Republican has been particularly blunt in his opinions.
“I watched Minneapolis get destroyed,” Sen. Dan Hall stated on Thursday, "so I not only didn’t want my kids in the school system, I took them out of Minneapolis because they ruined our neighborhoods with integration and [de]segregation."
"My best friends are minority, they think integration in foolish," Hall insisted. "It’s a ploy to get more money. ... It’s disrespectful to tell my friends, my minority friends that they can’t make it without extra special help.”
Hall's statements appeared to confirm the worst fears of Democratic supporters of the integration program. “I fear what we see here the is the politics of envy and division and protecting our own,” Sen. Scott Dibblef (DFL-Minneapolis) stated, “not the ‘one Minnesota’ we hearken back to.”
"We have been doing integration aid for decades, and to say that within one year we should dismantle that for a brand-new process seems to me short-sighted," said Sen. John Harrington (DFL-St. Paul). "Have we really made the decision that desegregation and integration isn't a laudable goal for our schools?"
Sen. Hall, however, attempted to cast his position as arising out of his deep concern for literacy, "I am a product of the Minneapolis school system," he explained, "completing all of my years, all the different schools. I graduated with a 6th grade reading ability. I struggled my whole life. We need to teach kids how to read.”
At least the guy is being honest when he says he believes black and brown people are destroying his white state and doesn't want his kids or grandkids to be anywhere near them, blaming them for "destroying" Minneapolis. I used to live in the Twin Cities area. I can tell you that people there are very nice and most of them are not like Dan Hall at all.
But the ones that are have no intention of getting over their racism and bigotry. Ever. It's not just integrated schools this guy hates, it's the idea of minority people being anywhere near his lily-white ass. It really is refreshing to see an ignorant asshole like this guy freely admit that's what his goal is, to rid the state of any minority that's not self-loathing enough to agree with him.
And yes, Republicans are more than happy to push a 50-state Southern Strategy of "White people are awesome, screw everyone else" if it keeps them in political power. When you see Minnesota Republicans making the same kind of arguments that Republicans in states like Alabama and Mississippi made in the 60's and 70's about integration, you know there's something deeply poisonous about the party. The election of a black President has made millions of white people lose their damn minds.
And I don't think there's a cure other than time. Sadly, it's time that we do not have.
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