Seeing 'The Other' as Myself
We’re walking through 10 easy, practical steps anyone can take to start to be a peacebuilder in their community (check out Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, Step 6, and Step 7). This is the story of one peace catalyst who took the challenge to connect with “the other.”
by Taylor Johnson
I chose to engage with number 7 of the 10 challenges, to connect with the “other.” This, however, has been a recent and evolving practice in the life of my family. A few months ago, on an unseasonably hot October day, I went for a walk with my son Walter, trying to find a neighborhood park that I had walked by earlier that week and hadn’t seen before. We live right on the border of two neighborhoods, west Frogtown and east Hamline-Midway, and this particular walk led me to the heart of the Frogtown community. It dawned on me as I was walking that I never go this way, and it wasn’t even in my conscious awareness what direction I was turning out of my house each day. We always walk left into Hamline-Midway with its adorable homes, community spots like neighborhood parks, and my favorite coffee shops and library. Hamline-Midway is much wealthier and whiter, whereas Frogtown, on the other hand, is much less socio-economically advantaged and home to predominantly Black and Brown neighbors. This particular day as I was walking past a home in Frogtown with two boys playing football outside, one shouted after me, “Hey Karen,” which I didn’t quite know how to respond to. A rush of emotion swept in with those two words: offense, dread, curiosity, and empathy. I felt suddenly laid bare, exposed, and in the same breath terrified that we live in a world where a white woman can weaponize her fear in her favor, and this Black child would become a Black man that could experience only that.
After processing this experience with my spouse, he encouraged me to see all the ways Frogtown has become re-vitalized - a work of art in our backyard. The installation of the light rail with gentrifying drawbacks, allowed people to travel and get to their destinations with greater ease. Immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses now line the streets that were known in the ‘80’s for their crime, theft, sex work, and alcohol consumption. This led us as a couple to notice the preferences of the places we walk often absent-mindedly and to more intentionally seek out walks through Frogtown like our neighborhood community garden and a local park to push our baby on a swing at twilight.
This was a long-winded history that frames the necessity of the practice I chose for this particular peacemaking challenge. There is a new coffee shop in Frogtown that I have been meaning to go to and hadn’t, a mile’s walk from my home. I decided to bundle up my baby before naptime and take a walk, right through the heart of Frogtown once again, but this time with an eye out for goodness, beauty, art, and wonder. And instead of seeing dilapidated homes tucked inside a loud and whizzing freeway responsible for decimating a community and contributing to untold asthma rates, I saw breath-taking creativity.
I paused to read all of the sidewalk poetry, gazed inside the little free libraries, and marveled at the street art I’d never stopped to take in before. I noticed a peace pole at the non-profit we bought our home from. And the way the church spires seemed to stretch and catch the light. I walked by two community green spaces, one of which had boxes of garden-grown squashes as an invitation to eat of the abundance. I arrived at my destination and discovered I was one of the only white women in the coffee shop and that it was packed with people of color relaxing, working, engaging and connecting in a thriving community environment, crackling with joy, possibility, synergy. Its mission is creative and stunning, working to uplift women of color and gender-expansive youth into opportunities that build communities, cultures, and careers. On my walk home, I passed by a Cambodian restaurant I have been meaning to get to and made a mental note. I acknowledged my Muslim neighbors who were busily transferring equipment into a business I later discovered is a new Ethiopian and Mediterranean restaurant. And I passed by a social service organization I looked up who are empowering individuals in recovery and providing safe and sober housing. Noticing and witnessing the beauty of my neighborhood, participating in its goodness, inspired me to invest in it differently. To want to spend my resources in restaurants owned by diverse neighbors and in hyper-local initiatives working to address poverty, trauma, and addiction - on the block, for the block. It challenged me to see “the other” as myself.
Where once I saw something unclean or all the ways in which it highlighted despair and disparity, I am now embracing a new narrative. There are artists, painting walls across from gas stations that exploit the poor with higher-than-average gas prices. There are poets turned prophets on sidewalks professing a new world. There are neighbors feeding neighbors of pure, holy generosity. There is a community being re-born with each latte, each carefully-placed book, each grateful footfall, and heart wrapped in wonder.
