I want to draw attention to a picture that appeared on the front page of the Brainerd Dispatch on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015. The image of hands in handcuffs dominated the top of the paper. These were hands belonging to a person of color. Set aside the fact that Crow Wing County is estimated to be 96.4 percent white and that the story to which the image relates described a white perpetrator, this is unacceptable.
We can easily identify overt racism like slurs, feces in the shape of a Nazi swastika on a college campus, and violent acts of hate. The image on Saturday's paper, while likely unintentional, is more covert. This is the type of racism that is insidiously woven into the fabric of our society.
We must raise our awareness by learning about oppressive systems that continue to perpetuate racism, and by tuning our ears to the voices of people of color. As James Arthur Baldwin, an African American writer and social critic once said, "The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he [or she] is being educated."
Randi Beyerl
Brainerd
