Lots of frustrating things happening, but lots of GOOD things happening too, as those three bullet points illustrate.

CHERRY SPOON BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

1.

So, I’m a rapper, and my stage name is Guante, and my last name is Tran Myhre, so at the end of every show, there’s always one person who kind of awkwardly approaches me, like: so… what are you? And it’s not an easy question to answer; it is a complicated and emotional topic. I’m mixed, both by blood and by history, but… if you saw a picture of me in a magazine, what would you see? A white guy. So there’s always a kind of tension between my abstract heart and the more concrete reality of privilege, between internal and external identities.

And maybe that’s why I feel so at home here, in the Twin Cities, a community inextricably bound to that tension. Where the arts and literary and musical scenes are all so diverse and vibrant and beautiful. But if you saw a picture of them in a magazine, what would you see? White people. This is not a question of diversity; it is a question of who… edits this metaphorical magazine. Who funds it? Who profits from it?

Have you ever been in a magazine? Who decided that your story mattered, that your voice deserved an audience? Have you ever hung in a gallery? Have you ever bared your soul to the abyss only to have it chuckle back at you? When asked “what are you?” Have you ever answered honestly?

2.

In a Facebook Q&A, The Ordway’s Artistic Director James Rocco responded to 46 questions regarding the decision to produce Miss Saigon despite community outcry and protest of the musical’s racist elements, by saying: Miss Saigon is a complicated and emotional topic. …and nothing else.

It is one thing to chuckle at their callousness or cluelessness. It is something else to refuse to acknowledge, that this is how just about every arts and media institution in the Twin Cities operates, every day. When they say our programs are open to everyone; it’s not our fault when only white people show up. When they say we’d like to hire more people of color, but they’re just not applying. When they say stop making good the enemy of perfect, and never question who gets to define “good” in the first place.

When every insufferable list of the things that make our community so great, share the same two dozen bullet points: Craig Finn, skiing, hotdish, Joe Mauer, Target, the Coen Brothers, MN NICE, 3M, sculptures made of butter, the Mall of America, the fact that the Oregon trail video game was invented here and, to quote the City Pages, “everyone has a cabin on the lake.”

To my fellow artists: remember: art is a weapon, not the war. Remember, your job is not to make people who look like you chuckle; it is to make people who look like you uncomfortable. Remember… Cece McDonald, Terrance Franklin, Fong Lee, the biggest achievement gap in the country, the foreclosure crisis, teen suicides…

I don’t mean to dwell on the negative. But I dwell here. No cabin on the lake. No helicopter on the stage. A cherry-spoon bridge to nowhere.

3.

It’s a hundred degrees outside, sirens in the distance, Big Quarters in the headphones; where are you? The neighbors are chain-linked, landing punches like mallets on meat; where are you? It’s a literary reading, except the entire audience is people of color; where are you?

I do not doubt that somewhere in Minneapolis, a skinny white guy with an ironic handlebar mustache and aviator sunglasses is riding a fixed-gear bicycle to his favorite coffee shop. Or that at this very moment in St. Paul, a rich soccer mom is power-walking her golden retriever past Café Latte. But I’ve never met them. I’ve never been to a Twins game, never seen a play at the Guthrie, or gone to Rock the Garden. I’m sure they’re all very nice. But the Twin Cities that I know keep me busy.

A kid gets slammed into a locker for wearing a rainbow button; where are you? A group of men pray together in the back room of a mom and pop restaurant; where are you? The students learn the footwork first, internalize the rhythm, save that spinning on your head shit for later; where are you?

Go to Tibet or Central America or India to “find yourself,” if you really think that’s where you’re hiding. As though there weren’t a million stories in every crack in the concrete here, as if the Southside weren’t “exotic” enough.

The things we make invisible do not disappear; we only cloud our own perception— Minnesota nice, Minnesota passive-aggressive, Minnesota gentrifier, closet homophobe, white supremacist, bystander; open your eyes and watch Garrison Keilor possessed, irises burning blue and red, pop-locking down university avenue, his spine a light rail, his voice an empty wind, howling like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A Hmong teenager is shot eight times by a police officer and dies; where are you? That same police officer is awarded the medal of valor; where are you? A planted gun, an all-white jury, not guilty; where are you?

I can’t listen to the Current any more. It sounds too much like history being re-written, basslines diluted, polyrhythms unified. There are days, I forget the dirt underneath the endless white of winter. There are days, I forget that race and culture are not just about blood; they are also about blood. There are days it is easier to believe the lie, to buy into this politely whitewashed, liberal utopia on a stick. But remember: the things we make invisible do not disappear. And the things we choose to see are not everything that’s here.

A cipher blooms in the lunchroom; all of the kids love hip hop, and none of them has ever heard of Atmosphere; where are you? A group of activists march for gay rights, but it’s not pride week, and they’re not talking about marriage; where are you? The difference between Keith Ellison and Michele Bachmann is a single step further up Central Avenue, where are you?

Frogtown, where are you? Northside, where are you? Philips, Eastside, Little Earth, Midway, Cedar-Riverside, Uptown, Downtown, Northeast, suburbs, where are you?

Where are you?

We—all of us—are right here.