This is Kameel Stanley's inaugural article for 漏 2024 外网天堂's We Live Here project. We asked her to introduce herself. Here is what she wrote:
Two things have consistently come up since I moved to St. Louis a few weeks ago.
Namely, my roots and my race.
鈥淎re you from here?鈥� Is the question I get almost immediately after meeting someone. (I鈥檓 not.)
And then, after the other get-to-know-you inquiries have been answered, the conversation turns to race relations.
It came up in a conversation I had with a woman at a food truck festival in Tower Grove Park. It came up in the grocery line. It came up with the guy who installed my internet service.
Some people have even asked, boldly, why I would ever come here, given what happened in Ferguson a year ago.
All this should not be that surprising, I suppose.
Race relations is on a lot of people鈥檚 minds. And it is why I鈥檓 here.
Earlier this summer, I left my job as a newspaper reporter at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida to move back to the Midwest (I was born and raised in Michigan) to take a job here at 漏 2024 外网天堂.
Clearly these issues aren鈥檛 unique to St. Louis or Ferguson or, really, most cities in America.
But I鈥檇 be remiss if I did not acknowledge that the state of things in the St. Louis region 鈥攚hile a reflection of the country鈥檚 long and tangled history with racial inequity鈥攆eels intense; maybe even more intense than in Tampa Bay, where I investigated racial disparities in policing and reported on racial tensions in city government.
The difference鈥攁nd maybe the key鈥攊s that there is so much conversation in St. Louis about this topic.
This week鈥檚 show kind of became my introduction of the area.
Our journey started at the historic courthouse downtown. And, because we鈥檙e nerds, we ended up at the library, where Tim Lloyd took me just days after I got into town.
Tim actually was there to moderate a forum about racial justice that instead turned into a giant community conversation.
People like Terrell Carter, a former St. Louis City police officer turned college professor, author and minister, told stories about getting passed up for jobs. Many other people expressed frustration about the divisions in neighborhoods that persist. Others talked about dealing with trauma.
Because we didn鈥檛 have an endless amount of time that evening, we encouraged people to write down their feelings about race relations. Dozens jotted down anonymous answers to this question: 鈥淚f I were to describe race relations in St. Louis, I鈥檇 say 鈥︹��
Here is a sampling of the responses:
鈥淲e have a lot of work to do.鈥�
鈥淭he races are divided by housing for the most part; a partial exception is the central corridor. They are also divided by mode of transportation.鈥�
鈥淣o one is radical enough in their hearts to have disruptive love. The future of racial justice must be intersectional.鈥�
鈥淣onexistent. The races in St. Louis don鈥檛 have relationships. We just tolerate each other because we continue to live on a modern day plantation. It does not exist.鈥�
鈥淚t is deeply rooted. It is complicated. Most people don鈥檛 recognize it in themselves.鈥�
鈥淭oxic to children.鈥�
We thought it would be a good idea, since I鈥檓 new in town, to fill one out too. So here鈥檚 mine.
