The Detroit riots were a violent altercation that happened on July 23rd and ended just days later with 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, 300 plus families homeless, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar known as the blind pig.
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan when it wasn’t cool to say you were from Detroit. I didn’t grow up in a pretty suburb of, but actually Detroit. And no, I don’t know Eminem – he actually isn’t from Detroit, but a suburb of. Born 3 years after the 1967 Detroit Riots, I was often told that I missed seeing the greatness that Detroit was. It is said that Detroit is still trying to recover from the aftermath of 1967.
I have a mirror and I know what I look like. I’m as white as they come with the Irish/Scottish/German blood in me. I walk by a pizza oven and I turn a shade of red. My neighbors across the street from where I grew up were what society at the time called a ‘colored’. Although the ‘N’ word was inappropriately thrown around often, ‘colored’ or ‘brown’ was somehow better. Keisha and I became fast friends despite our skin tones. She was fascinated by me wanting to lather baby oil on my skin and laying in the sun to become brown and I was fascinated by her mom cooking up grits for breakfast while her hair was being ironed. Like with a real iron that my mom used on shirts. She tried to tan with me and I begged her mom to iron my already straight blonde hair. Keisha would put her arm up against mine and tell me there was no difference – we both bled and we both loved. And we loved that our names both started with a ‘K’. We were sisters.
The two of us walked to the block store one day to get a treat when a group of older kids began to throw rocks at Keisha.
“Why are you hanging out with a colored?” they yelled at me. “You need to hang with your own kind.”
As I helped Keisha back home, I was confused. She was my own kind. But it was Keisha that was bleeding, not me. Yes, we both bled, but she she was being forced to bleed more. She was forced to have to try more. She was forced to rise above more.
Not much as changed since then. I grew up color blind, at least I thought I did. I believed we could rise above, but maybe I believed that because I didn’t have to watch my back. I didn’t have to duck out of the way of the stones being thrown. Maybe I chose to believe that we’ve progressed because I wanted to see it that way when really I was more privileged than I even realized.
Nothing in life is black and white, even skin color. The issues we are experiencing within these wars aren’t merely based on race, but are based on fear and lack of understanding. Is fear making the wolf bigger than he is? Is the water being muddied to make it appear deeper than it is?
I’m afraid we’ve headed in the wrong direction. Civil war? Is martial law coming? What is happening behind the scenes as we hate, fight, and blame? We are falling apart at the seams and I believe something more is brewing. I want to believe we can rise above it. Please let’s rise above it–not with ignorance and sweeping it under the rug, though. We are all smarter than that. History doesn’t have to repeat. Does it?
Believe,
Kristy Robinett
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