The Cruelty of Nice Folks: On Being Black in America's Liberal Heartland

A revelatory look at one of America's most progressive cities—Minneapolis—as journalist Justin Ellis returns to his hometown to grapple with the quiet history of white supremacy there in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and in turn uncovers his family’s story of surviving “Minnesota nice.”

It’s the “North,” they like to say, not the Midwest. It’s different. We’re nice here, progressive; Minneapolis is a city for everyone. But in 2020, George Floyd’s murder by police left many Americans stunned and wondering, “how could this happen in Minneapolis?” To Ellis, the real question is what made people think it couldn’t?

The Minneapolis Justin Ellis knows and loves—where he grew up and his family has lived for generations—is not the idealistic metropolis that its politicians and its most vocal proponents proclaim. The city of lakes was built on discrimination—in its housing, its schools, its politics—much like all other American cities. Black families were systematically cut out of the prosperous neighborhoods, lush parks and pristine lakes that make Minneapolis a haven of the heartland. Because of its image as a liberal ally in the fight for civil rights, Minneapolis has rarely been forced to confront this fact. In reality, as in the rest of America since its founding, the struggles of Black families in Minnesota have been celebrated or erased in an effort to maintain neighborly harmony and the quality of life Minnesotans cherish above all else.

The Cruelty of Nice Folks is both an indictment of the false face of progressivism and a love letter to the ways Black life has thrived despite the forces working against it. From the original theft of land upon which Minneapolis was built, through his family’s journey to establish a life there, to George Floyd’s murder, The Cruelty of Nice Folks is about one place—but it’s also about America. It is the story of a racial reckoning deferred, and of an America that remains tethered to the inequalities it has always been unwilling to confront.

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