#162 / A Community For All?

 

The picture above, taken from a New York Times' article, depicts a town meeting in Wausau, Wisconsin. The Marathon County Board of Supervisors was debating whether or not it should declare Marathon County to be a "community for all." The faces in that audience were virtually all white, and the Board was nowhere near agreed on that "community for all" language.

The lone Black member of the county board, Supervisor William Harris, stood up and begged his colleagues who opposed the resolution to change their minds.

“I want to feel like I’m a part of this community,’’ he said. “That’s what a lot of our residents are saying. We want to contribute to our community. We want to feel like a part of this community.”

But a fellow board member was just as passionate at the meeting ... in arguing that acknowledging racial disparities is itself a form of racism.

The Times' story was quite disturbing - and so was the result of the meeting. In the end, the resolution proposing the "community for all" language was rejected by the Board's Executive Committee by a 6-2 vote. And that wasn't the end of the matter. The Times' story, in fact, kicked off even more dissent and discussion in Marathon County, with The Times then doing a follow-up, "The Rift Grows Wider." 

 

I said it yesterday. Let me say it again:

We are in this world together - and we are all different, in lots of different ways. I am pretty convinced that our future prosperity and survival is going to be closely tied to how successful we can be in overcoming our differences and celebrating our diversity.

 

That's true in New York City, and it's true in Marathon County, Wisconsin. 

That's just plain true. Always and everywhere!

 

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/us/politics/race-inclusion-wasau-wisconsin.html