Indifference

When I was just seven years old, my brothers and I would play a game that we called war. One year my oldest brother’s birthday gift was a large bag of green plastic army men. The set came with a full array of military soldiers including four tanks. The small green men were no taller than two inches and each piece had a plastic base that allowed the piece to stand on its own. In the summer, my brothers and I would head out to the sand pit, an area that was just far enough from our house that our mother could not hear what we were doing and we would begin setting up the field of play. We would dump the army pieces out of the large bag and begin dividing them up equally between the three of us. When we each of us had the same number of army pieces and tanks, we would step back ten paces from each other and set up our military bases. This process would take some time as we strategically made barricades from left over lumber from the garage. We would then hide the army pieces behind the barricades hoping that we had provided enough coverage for what lay ahead. When we finished, each of us would take a five-gallon pail and walk into the sunflower field and fill the buckets with small hard pieces of dirt that had been made in the spring when my father had plowed the field. 

We were now ready. The battle would begin when my oldest brother counted down, “Ready, Set, Go!” All at once, we would start throwing the pieces of dirt at each other’s bases. “Dirt Bombs” is what we called these pieces of dirt. My brothers and I stood behind our base so none of the incoming dirt bombs would hit us. As the pieces of dirt hit the bases, the small army men would fall over, they were out. The war continued until the pails of dirt bombs were gone. As I reached into my pail to grab the last dirt bomb, I had to determine who had the most army pieces still standing and take aim and try to knock out as many pieces as possible with my last throw.

Once the battle was over, we would walk over to the first base and count the number of pieces that remained standing. We would argue about each piece that was partially knocked over and rule whether it counted as in or out. Finally, the count was tabulated, and we would then move to the next base. My oldest brother’s base was always the last base to be surveyed. When we walked around the base, we would find structures that he had built and then buried under the sand. He would then put men under these structures which protected them from the dirt bombs as they landed. He would proudly dig under the sand and show us enough army men still standing to win the battle. As the summer went on and my one brother and I learned how to beat our older brother’s strategy; we would retrieve larger dirt bombs to throw at my oldest brother’s base which would break through his barricades knocking the army pieces to the ground. Eventually firecrackers were added to the dirt bombs. We each carried packets of Black Cats and a book of matches with us as we headed out to the sandpit. The firecrackers were deadly arsenal. They would land in the base and blow up and any pieces near the landing site would fly up into the air. 

Our birthdays would come around each year and we would ask for more packets of army men to replace the many casualties that were either lost in the sand or were broken by the firecrackers when they exploded. The game would come to and end when winter came, and the army men would be put into plastic ice cream pails and stored away for the winter.

Over the past three weeks, I have sat and watched the protests that have erupted across our country. The senseless act of violence in Minneapolis was the tipping point for so many people across this great nation to stand together and say, “NO MORE!” The pieces that are falling to the ground are not green plastic men that were manufactured in some plant and distributed in bags. These are human beings that are all created equal. Growing up in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, I was never taught about race; there was only one color in the town of 129 people that I called home. It was indifference, not because my parents were racist, but because it was something that I was never exposed to living in rural America. I cannot apologize for my childhood, nor for the fact that I was raised in a small town in the Midwest before there was social media and twenty-four-hour television.

When I was in college, I managed R&B groups for A&M Records. It was during this time on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis that I developed my opinion of race. Every day I worked with artists that were insanely talented. We would work together in the studio and the rehearsal hall all day and all I saw was the talent that the artists displayed. The jokes and laughter we shared when we sat and talked had nothing to do with race, we just enjoyed each other’s company. We all looked forward to the time we had laying down tracks in the studio and making music. We all worked together when we showed up for a gig. I became an expert at hiding cords on the stage with duct tape so no one would trip during the show. In the evening when the band took the stage and performed, I watched from backstage. I only saw talented artists and an audience that was expressing their emotions of excitement as the music played. 

Somewhere our country has lost a direction for humanity. We treat different races like green plastic army men. We throw dirt bombs into communities of color and treat those that fall as disposable pieces that can be easily replaced by the next bag of army men that are received on our birthday. Now when we rise together to protest what has happened for so many years, the country reacts as if this is something new. There are statues that still stand in communities that are offensive to those who recognize what these statues stand for. “They are part of history”, some will argue. But this history is a lesson of injustice. Are we to stand here today and continue to treat race as green plastic army men? It is time to set aside the racial injustice that has existed for centuries and look at those around us through the same lens that God tells us, “All are equal in the eyes of God.”

I look at my own children and I find that they too were raised to be indifferent. The school they attended in Minnesota was very similar to my experience in North Dakota. When we moved to San Diego, I enrolled my daughters in a school whose racial makeup was predominately the same as they experienced in Minnesota. Fortunately, one of my daughters has developed her own voice and stands up for the injustice that exists in this world. She is unafraid to raise her voice, to be heard above the others who tell her to be silent. She will not, and for this I am proud. As crazy as it sounds, she would stand up for those plastic green army men and ask why we are destroying them and point out to my brothers and me that is wrong and a senseless act of violence.

Sometimes even our own family members try to silence her, but she only becomes frustrated in the indifference she sees in us and others and she just raises her voice even louder. The voices of our youth need to be heard; they are the future of our country. They will be agents of change that will lead us to finally understand the importance of life. Yes, Black Lives Matter, and it should not be something we have to protest for, but unfortunately our country has allowed this inequality to exist for so long. It is time for all of us to stand up and be heard and put an end to the injustice that has become an acceptable part of our society.