How Minnesota Went From Tom Sawyer to Huck Finn - WSJ op-ed

[question everything]

I wrote an August 1973 cover story for Time magazine that praised Minnesota as “the state that works.” The cover photograph showed Gov. Wendell Anderson, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, grinning and holding up a northern pike that he had just caught in one of Minnesota’s 12,000 lakes. The story began with this archaic rhapsody: “It is a state where a residual American secret still seems to operate. Some of the nation’s more agreeable qualities are evident there: courtesy and fairness, honesty, a capacity for innovation, hard work, intellectual adventure and responsibility. . . . Minnesotans are remarkably civil; their crime rate is the third lowest in the nation (after Iowa and Maine).”

Almost 50 years later, I received an email from an old friend who lives in Minneapolis. He began: “Another report from the hinterland. The people of Minneapolis now share online updates of carjackings and other crimes. It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of violent crime throughout the city. Everyone now knows someone who’s a victim. This will be a huge issue in this year’s elections.” More than 650 people were shot in the city last year; 95 died—just short of the city’s record. There were more than 2,000 robberies. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, carjackings in the city rose 537% from November 2019 to November 2020, and then rose another 40% in the 10 months after that.

What happened? Minnesota once enjoyed a high degree of social cohesion rooted in the traditions of previous waves of immigrants. But as the region has grown and become more diverse, the Twin Cities in particular developed most of the problems that bedevil much of the rest of urban America (crime, unemployment, drugs and so on). The reasons for this are complicated and widely debated. In any case, Minnesota now ranks among the worst states in the country when it comes to racial inequality.

(snip)

The great crisis came amid the pandemic. George Floyd died in a gutter outside Cup Foods under Derek Chauvin’s knee. There was endless video of that and all that followed. The summer of 2020 followed. Black Lives Matter emerged. The progressive mayor of Minneapolis abandoned a police precinct and allowed the mob to loot and burn it. George Floyd was declared a saint. Mr. Chauvin, damned as the devil who murdered the saint, was cast into prison. Minneapolis cops left the force in droves and the ones who remained stood down, reluctant to risk any new incident.

(snip)

The difference between my 1973 story and the news reports of 2022 amounts to the difference, as it were, between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Tom gives you the boyish, innocent, sun-shot rendering of Hannibal, Mo., in the middle of the 19th century. Huck’s story is the version of America that includes poverty, murder, alcoholism, child abuse, race prejudice, blood feud and imbecility. Minneapolis today looks a little more like the Huckleberry Finn version, although without Huck’s humor or his rascal charm.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/minnesota-went-huck-finn-derek-chauvin-george-floyd-black-lives-matter-riots-shooting-crime-11642800141 (subscription)

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Obviously biased, but, no doubt, will be talked about.