ONLINE ONLY: The Real Chris Stewart

CP: Do you think part of this hubbub is specific to Minneapolis? I have a hard time imagining that something like this would become such a source of broad indignation in most other large cities.

Stewart: I've lived in 13 cities. Minneapolis is the 13th. And all cities are different. I do think something like this would play differently in other cities. I grew up in New Orleans, and there's a southern sensibility I brought with me here. And I'll say this: In almost 20 years of being here, it still hasn't been long enough for me to completely understand the landscape, the do's and don'ts. In the South, the racial signposts are very clear. In Minneapolis, they're less clear. As I told another reporter, I went and sat down with my dad and brothers and sisters last Friday night. They're still learning to navigate Minnesota. Their southern thing is fully intact. My son was born and raised here, so visiting New Orleans was total culture shock for him.

So on the couch, you had me, my dad, and my son, all interpreting Minnesota very differently. I'm interpreting as someone who's been here for a time but still has a residual southern mentality. My dad's still fully southern, and a lot of things here are new to him: how you interact with white folks, how you look at them, how they look at you, how sociable you can be, what lines you don't cross—like going to people's houses, maybe—and where you can and can't go. And my son's a born Yankee, and this is what he knows. But I've got a sister who's only two years older than my son, and it's very different for her here.

CP: Can you say more about what the difference in being here is?

Stewart: In my experience, it's that you don't exactly know where people are coming from a lot of the time. You see people with really good intentions, and they behave sometimes in ways that you find perplexing. The values and the actions, the rhetoric and the reality, don't always match each other. People do really nice things for you here that I never would have expected when I first moved here. My first apartment was entirely furnished by people who said, hey, I've got a couch you can have, hey, I've got this or that. People just gave me stuff. And the first two places I rented here were from really nice people who didn't ask me for a first and last month's deposit. As somebody here with new eyes, I kind of wondered at first, what do you want from me?

So you think, initially, that this is like the land of milk and honey. It's really enlightened here. And then I think you bump into things where you have to really re-interpret your place in the world. Because what you've been thinking is not exactly true. In my situation right now, I think, people would prefer me to be more contrite than I am—to completely disavow previous thoughts and attitudes that I've had, to disavow them in writing and in speech. That would be the ticket to my membership.

CP: "Tell us we're okay."

Stewart: Yeah. Make us feel okay. Make us feel good about investing in you. Which—I feel two ways about that. In one sense, it can cause you to become bitter and to think, who really are my friends? Do these people really have my best interests at heart? And the other part of it is, well, if I'm going to live here, I have to know the territory, and how to get along in it. And if I'm going to be an office-holder in Minneapolis, then I'm certainly not qualified if I can't navigate effectively. I won't get anything done. The power base of Minneapolis is such that you have to know who's who, and you have to stay in their good graces. That might be the same everywhere, but here you feel like you have to lose certain parts of yourself for admittance.

I would prefer that we really meant diversity when we said it. Not "diversity" in the sense that once you become a Huxtable, hey, you're one of us. And look, aren't we diverse? I live next door to the Huxtables, and we share barbecues. I'd prefer that diversity mean it's okay to speak Spanish on Lake Street. It's okay to celebrate Kwanzaa—and for white people to attend the celebration. It's okay for Mexicans and Asians and white people to attend Juneteenth. That would be diversity. My son's grown up in a very diverse environment. We attend the Hmong festival they have every year. We might be the only black folks who have ever gone. [laughs]

My son has had those experiences his whole life. My son has been around Jewish folks, white folks, Hispanics, Somalis. I always found opportunities to put him in places where he was the minority and he had to look around and to be, at first, uncomfortable. It's that lack of comfort that I think can train people to operate in different worlds.