What if ºüÀêÊÓƵ was the answer?
Not Florissant or Ferguson. Not Ballwin or Bella Vista. Not Kirkwood or Kinloch.
Just ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
It was the underlying challenge Vin Ko laid out to several hundred folks gathered at the base of the Gateway Arch earlier this month. Ko, who is on the board of the Asian-American Chamber of Commerce, was one of several speakers at the at the remodeled Arch grounds. By now you’ve seen the picture or heard or read about the slight to people of color at the first ribbon-cutting.
There were key city, county and state leaders preparing to re-open the region’s gem after years of construction and more than $300 million in investment, and the ribbon-cutters were all white.
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In some ways, the mishap was symbolic of the long history of race relations in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. At the center of that history — depending on your perspective — is the simple question that everybody in ºüÀêÊÓƵ asks:
Where did you go to high school?
For some, the question is seen as , a reminder of class, so that a ºüÀêÊÓƵan can immediately make a judgment of the background of the person they just met. For others, it’s simply a necessary question in a geopolitically divided region in which its major city is separated from its major county of the same name, and that county has 88 municipalities, down from 90 a few years ago.
Ko grew up in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. It wasn’t easy, he said.
“Growing up in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, I’ve had to struggle with my place in the region,†he said.
In ºüÀêÊÓƵ, we often define the racial divide as black and white, and more often than not, it is, but it’s so much more than that. Black, white and brown; Asian and Hispanic; Muslim, Jewish and Christian; gay and straight. Like most American cities, ºüÀêÊÓƵ is a melting pot, but it doesn’t always act like one.
A big part of that divide has everything and nothing to do with race.
Ever since the that separated the city from the county, and the white flight decades later that carved the county up into tiny villages and municipalities, unity has been difficult in a city known worldwide for its Arch.
“ºüÀêÊÓƵ isn’t the answer people are looking for when they ask where I’m from,†Ko told the crowd celebrating the city’s iconic national monument.
I believe he was talking about race — as in: “What country are you from?â€
But he just as easily could have been discussing the high school question, which many people of color I know believe is intended to divide in a similar fashion.
The beauty of the second Arch ribbon-cutting ceremony was that it pointed to a path forward for ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
“This is a beginning,†said the Rev. Darryl Gray.
Being inclusive, he said, is intentional.
But it’s not always easy.
“ºüÀêÊÓƵ needs to change,†ºüÀêÊÓƵ Treasurer Tishaura Jones said at the ribbon-cutting. “Not polite incremental change, but change that hurts.â€
It had to hurt Mayor Lyda Krewson just a little bit to sit through what Jones called “The People’s Ribbon-Cutting†— after being one of the participants in the all-white version — and listen to her political rival rev up a crowd that liked what it heard from the treasurer.
But there she was, during the second ribbon-cutting, smiling in the front row, a few spaces from Jones, as unity was the message of the day.
It struck me that among those in the crowd that day was Arindam Kar, a lawyer with Bryan Cave who is part of the put in place by nonprofit Better Together to listen to the greater ºüÀêÊÓƵ community and devise a plan to better unite our divided patchwork of inefficient governmental bodies.
When that task force completes its work, whatever it proposes will hurt, so much so that a handful of municipalities have already passed resolutions to oppose the unifying measure that hasn’t been unveiled.
Unity is hard. Whether it’s about race or lines on a map, unity sometimes hurts.
But if ºüÀêÊÓƵ is ever going to stand alone as the unifying answer to the question, it’s the path a broken region must choose.