The Chauvin trial and the tenacity of racism

I watched the trial of Derek Chauvin broadcast from a Minneapolis courtroom. That is, I watched most of it. The trial lasted more than two weeks. Even on days the proceedings started at six in the morning Alaska time, I had conflicts. For one thing, the dogs called with demands that kept me away from my television set.

A televised live trial is not a made-for-television dramatization of a trial. TV directors eliminate the repetition and tedium. They wrap up the story in an hour. In real life, the lawyers have just become comfortable talking in an hour.

Compelling evidence doesn’t appear perfectly scripted. One of the bystanders who watched George Floyd die was an adult black man who was shown on a cellphone recording yelling at Chauvin, whose knee was on Floyd’s neck — “You a bum! You a bum, bro!” and “You a chump! You a chump, bro!” Only after he testified did I realize these insults were moral objections. This bystander knew Chauvin was criminally wrong but was helpless before the badge Chauvin wore. So he spoke from the heart in the language he knew.

The daily testimony included many lawyer-witness exchanges that went, “You live in Minneapolis?” “Yes.” “Minneapolis is in Hennepin County?” “Yes.” “Hennepin County is in Minnesota?” “Ah, sure.” This kind of questioning is inevitable, because lawyers want to make sure the record is clear and complete.

But I once saw a federal judge become so exasperated with a plodding lawyer, he interrupted the guy with “Hey, get a move on!”

The trial interested me for personal reasons. My dad, Fabian, grew up south of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where George Floyd died.

My dad attended Roosevelt High School, two miles from 38th and Chicago. An NBC reporter did a story on the “outsize” role of Roosevelt in the trial. Bystander Darnella Frazier, who recorded the death of Floyd, attended. So did Minneapolis police chief Mederia Arradondo, who testified for the prosecution. And Chauvin’s lawyer Eric Nelson, too. Nelson mentioned the convergence of these Roosevelt alums lives in his closing remarks. Although of varying ages, they had been in the same classrooms during their years in school; now they were on a big stage in a tragedy.

I have driven by Roosevelt High, but never been in it. The Minnesota Historical Society has the yearbooks of the years in the mid-1930s, when my Dad was there, and I easily found him — a member of the track team — when I looked through the yearbook pages.

The most striking thing about the faculty and kids in the yearbooks was how white they were, and how Scandinavian. There may not have been a black face. There were many Nelsons, Johnsons, Larsons, Lindstroms over the years. The principal during my Dad’s time was Mr. Carlson — whom, my grandmother reported rather breathlessly in a letter to Fabian in Fairbanks, had been arrested for embezzling school funds. A Swede gone bad.

Some years ago, I was in a downtown Minneapolis bar-restaurant late on a blustery afternoon. The place was quiet, only the murmur of a couple of voices down the bar. A tall, lanky man sat down a couple stools from me. I recognized him — he was a musician who played polka music and old standards in the bar during the evening. Very talented.

We began to talk, and when he found out I was from Alaska, he asked me a question I have been asked all over North America: “So, you like it up there?” I told him about my connections with Minneapolis, specifically mentioning my Dad attending Roosevelt. The musician blanched. “Oh, Roosevelt,” he sneered. Then he asked me what I knew about Roosevelt. He wanted me to know Black kids went there. Then he turned to various innuendos about who, in his mind, Black people are — what they do, their basic criminality, the “education” Roosevelt was now dishing out as an inferior school.

I was not so much shocked as disappointed. I had heard racist talk before, but not from somebody so talented and admired for his talent. I pushed a $10 bill toward the bartender and put on my coat.

After the jury announced the Chauvin verdict, I began reading essays and stories by a very different talented Minnesota man — novelist and Nobel Prize Winner Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951). Lewis was raised around the nasty ethnic prejudice against Scandinavians that prevailed in the first quarter of the 20th century. The musician’s grandparents would have heard that prejudice routinely.

In 1923, Lewis wrote, “Among all the racial misconceptions, none is more vigorously absurd as the belief that the Minnesota Scandinavians are, no matter how long they remain here ... a tribe humorous, inferior and unassimilable.”

Lewis went on to talk about “those of Yankee stock” who believe the “Inferior Race Theory, which is this: An inferior race is one whose members work for me. They are treacherous, ungrateful, ignorant, lazy and agitator-ridden ... I know this is so, because all my university classmates and bridge partners agree with me.”

Just as the musician no doubt had friends who agreed with him.

Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

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