The following is a letter to the editor I just submitted to the Ames Tribune. Since it does sit at about 600 words and may be potentially volatile, I have no idea if it will be published in its entirety, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone who cares.
If you are reading this and live in Ames, I really do encourage you to do whatever possible to be an advocate for new residents. If their treatment around other parts of town is anything like the treatment I've seen at the library (and by this i mean by the general public in addition to a small amount of staff-most of my coworkers were great) or by the police, then we have a lot of work to do.
I might also take a moment to mention something that there wasn't space to note in the letter- that while racism and classism are certainly gigantic factors in the current state of affairs, there has also been a thread of ageism that I've been conscious of ever since I was 13 and stopped by the police on my walk home for looking suspicious- in this case, it meant having long hair and being young after dark. In other cases it meant wearing a jumpsuit, being near a bonfire, or-heavens, no!- being in Northridge after 10:00pm.
Not that it mattered either way. I should have known it wouldn't be the last time.
To the Editor:
I am a 2008 graduate of Ames High School who recently finished a visit back to Ames for the summer. I worked full-time at the Ames Public Library, where I feel as if I was exposed to a cross-section of Ames residents that is as comprehensive and representative as I could find anywhere in the city. It is through this exposure, along with the quasi-outsider’s perspective gained by nine months away from Iowa, that I was made so starkly uncomfortable by the portrait of race-relations I saw in Ames.
It is no secret that Ames has seen some “demographic changes” in the last few years. In short, this means that the development of Section 8 housing complexes (in which the resident family does not have to pay more than 30% of their monthly income for rent; the rest is federally subsidized) has drawn many minority residents from larger metropolitan areas in the Midwest.
On paper, this trend looks like a tremendous opportunity: Section 8 residents can reduce living costs and potentially escape some of the hazards of larger cities, and Ames residents benefit from the perspectives of increasingly diverse neighbors. While I deeply hope I am mistaken, this was not the impression I received. What I experienced was a tense environment, characterized by fear on behalf of both established residents and new inhabitants. What is so upsetting about this fear, though, is that it seems to originate in attitudes of longstanding members of my hometown.
Paranoia over increased criminal activity (and the subsequent stereotyping of new residents as inherently deviant) and subtle methods of condescension or exclusion (referring to a group of young African-Americans as “those people” really doesn’t hide a lot) are both prevalent issues. I do understand that in many cases, these may be personal biases that decent people are sincerely fighting to overcome. However, this reality cannot supercede the urgency of the problem, as it has real and pressing effects on local law enforcement and on the psyche of any new (or returning) residents to Ames.
In addition to enforcing the law, a primary concern of police forces is to maintain what is considered the normal societal order—they create sanctions to discourage nonstandard behavior. Therefore to the extent that the biases of a city’s citizenry are echoed in how it reports crime, these biases will be reflected and harshly reinforced by the police. If young black males are perceived to be criminals, they will be singled out and treated as such by authorities (often regardless of any practical foundation), which can create dangerous antagonism towards law enforcement and other public faces of authority. Police, like any public entity, are subject to the political power of the people they serve, and the Ames Police Department is in no way an exception. It is imperative that this power is used positively.
Otherwise, the effects of such power can be tragic. If Section 8 residents—or any new inhabitant or any minority inhabitant for that matter—feel as if they are being watched, racially profiled, or looked upon with even a general sense of fear or resentment (both by individual residents and by public bodies), it is only reasonable to expect discomfort or animosity in return. And it is this very same discomfort and animosity that fosters a high-risk atmosphere for crime and explosion of racial tensions. As citizens, our best hope to diffuse such an atmosphere is through conscious self-examination—an evaluation of our attitudes and where they come from, and how they appear to and affect others.
Ames, I know from experience that you are a thoughtful and engaging community. I challenge you, for this purpose, to be just that.
