In KC, love wins: Biracial Northland family who endured racist attacks is embraced
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThis is where Kansas City first read about the Roland family
Maureen and Jamari Roland have lived all over the world, but they’ve never experienced the kind of racism they encounter regularly in Kansas City’s Northland. Melinda Henneberger first wrote about them here.
We say love wins because it does — but usually not this fast.
On Monday, I wrote about the overt racism that Jamari and Maureen Roland have experienced since their biracial family moved to Kansas City from Southern California two months ago.
It had been a long couple of months since the moving van pulled up to their new home near Parkville, which they’d rented sight unseen on the internet. They’re here because Jamari Roland, a 37-year-old Army veteran who works for the State Department, is training for a year at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth.
But their Northland neighbors, many of whom are in law enforcement, too, never got close enough to find out that Jamari is a special agent to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security who has served in Afghanistan and kept our diplomats safe in Israel. Or that Maureen had been monitoring grants for the State Department before their 3-year-old daughter and 13-month-old son were born. Instead, they shouted slurs, pointed, and in one case, said, “No, thank you,” when Maureen went over to say hi.
The Rolands definitely had reason to be nervous about letting me tell their story in The Star: Would they and their children experience even more hostility from their new neighbors after reporting the shouts of “You’re disgusting!” and “Stay with your own kind!”
After talking about their experience, Maureen wondered, “Are people going to throw bricks through our window? Is my husband going to get in trouble for speaking out?”
Instead, she said, “It’s been the opposite. It’s been wild, Melinda. It’s been shockingly amazing.”
From just after the story published online early Monday, I did nothing the rest of the day but answer kind emails and forward them to the Rolands, who had received more than 600 such messages by Thursday.
Some were from other biracial and multi-racial families, thanking them for “speaking about something we’ve been afraid to say” about the scrawled slurs and the rainbow flags snatched down.
Some were apologies that this still goes on in 2020, and many were invitations, to homes and churches and restaurants. A Muslim group wanted to send a care package, and women from all over the country said Maureen should feel free to call if she ever just wanted to talk.
A heartening number of the emails I forwarded were from self-described “old white guys” who said they’d be honored to welcome Jamari to their porches and VFW hall and circle of friends.
One of the messages I found most moving, from a gentleman in Parkville, said, “If you could please reach out to them for me, tell them I am sorry, and I would like to take them to dinner and become their friends. I am a 24 year retired military officer, so I am sure we would have lots to talk about.” No doubt about that.
How, readers asked me, can we send them a welcome basket? Arrange a playdate? Get our families together?
City Councilman Dan Fowler reached out, as did Jamari’s colleagues in the military and the diplomatic corps, who checked in from all over the world. They heard from senior diplomats and Army brass, all of whom offered support.
But the moment that made Maureen lose it was when “this couple stopped their car in front of our house and said, ‘We’ve seen you before. You were in The Star, weren’t you? We want you to know we’re glad you’re here.’”
“I cried,” Maureen said. “I did. It sucked living here, and now there’s this outpouring. I’ve had neighbors actually approach me now and say, ‘You’re welcome here.’ ’’
We know that racism didn’t shrivel and die yesterday; if only. But even some of those who are frightened by the Black Lives Matter movement seem eager to step up against so obvious a wrong in a way they might not have been before. Just in the mail I’ve gotten in the last 24 hours from readers who never agree with me on anything, I can see that something is happening, and I hope it is something we can build on.
The Rolands are only one family, but they are on their way to having a very different year now, because so many of you reached out in kindness. Because of you, love had a good day in our town.
My own favorite part of this chapter of their story is that one of the neighbors who had been the ugliest to the Rolands, repeatedly yelling, “You’re disgusting!” at them on his morning walk, seems to have revised his route. As metaphors go, I’ll take it.
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
