The Post finally ran my letter to the editor on the Kirkwood City Council shootings. I’m assuming that you know about them, but I’ll just mention that I’m third generation Kirkwood, even if I don’t currently live there. A lot of the coverage now focuses on “the racial divide” in Kirkwood.
I keep hearing about this racial divide in Kirkwood and how Charles Thornton was treated differently because he was black. But can anyone point to actual evidence of this unfair treatment? Can they point to white business owners who have been allowed to park their heavy equipment on residential streets or dump their waste on vacant lots? For instance, I notice that Ray’s Tree Service stores their equipment on a parking lot, not on the city streets.
My father, Kirkwood High class of 1942.5, was the executor of an estate in Kirkwood about 25 years ago. After his second citation for letting the grass grow too high, he started to mow the lawn one evening after work. He was then cited for disturbing the peace despite his whiteness.
I can believe that Mr. Thornton never adjusted to the change from the unfettered days before Meacham Park became part of Kirkwood, but after the protracted fight over a parking lot for the Baptists or the latest brouhaha over the tearing down of an old house to put up a new one that sparked the bumper crop of red “Protect Historic Kirkwood” yard signs, anyone who seriously believes that race counts for more than aesthetics in Kirkwood doesn’t know Kirkwood.
As usual it was edited, but this time I think they went a little far. I understand they edit the letters. I can understand why they edit them. It’s just that I’m not always happy with the edits. They removed “Can they point to white business owners who have been allowed to park their heavy equipment on residential streets or dump their waste on vacant lots? ” which I think is pretty important.
I think it’s important because I prefer to move away from the nebulous to the specific. No doubt people in Meachem Park, like almost anywhere else, can point to events and claim they are not treated fairly. I might even agree with them (amazingly enough, I too was once stopped for Driving while Black despite the fact that I, and all the car’s occupants, were white). But a lot of the continuing response seeks to bridge a racial divide. I wish them all the best but I don’t think the problem is racist in nature. It’s not entirely classist, either And that’s why it’s important to find out the exact complaints, and not be satisfied with generic ones – because reality can hide in that nebulous cloud. But if the reality is flushed out into the open, then and only then can it be examined and addressed.
There is nothing wrong with the dialogue and probably something oddly thereputic in all the hand holding and avowals of love and solidarity, but at the end of all that you’ll still have the majority in Kirkwood imposing its aesthetic values on the rest of the population.
Kirkwood is suffering from a clash of aesthetics and has for a long time. All the big fights for the last 30 years (or more, I can only speak personally to 30 years) have all been over aesthetics. Usually its couched in terms of the effect on neighborhoods and property values but the majority of Kirkwood wants to keep the city a place of high end residential properties (nothing wrong with that) and if that limits what you do with your property, so be it. And that’s when the fighting begins – when you do something with your property that goes against the Kirkwood aesthetic. Tear down an old house to put up a new house – fine if the old house is one of the many old small ones and the new one fits in with the look and feel of Kirkwood. Tear down a charmer to put up a McMansion – Kirkwood explodes in red yard signs “Protect Historic Kirkwood”. Tear down a house to put in a parking lot – don’t even think about it Baptists.
Meachem Park has been thoroughly reconstructed since it’s annexation from Kirkwood. Law and order, and all that that entails, has been provided. And if the order that is imposed doesn’t conform to the locals desires, it does to the wider Kirkwood aesthetic. And no amount of jawboning about race, no amount of representation on the city council will change that.
