There is still plenty of residual opposition to Calvin’s openness to immigrants. And in Minnesota generally new immigrants will tell you that the front-end integration of East Africans, Asians and other minorities has probably gone more smoothly than anyone expected, but breaking through to the top has been more difficult. There, things have not been so “Minnesota nice.” Rising professionals of color are still leaving Minnesota, on balance, because they don’t feel welcome or have encountered persistent racial barriers to advancement.

Like I said, it’s a work in progress, much more needs to be done, and it will not be easy. But given the number of people here who want to get caught trying, and the power of America’s melting pot, I am hopeful. Two stories drove that home to me.

The first was from Calvin. He told me he was recently vacationing at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania and stopped at a Pizza Hut where a dark-skinned man was at the cash register. “We started talking and he asked me where I was from. And I said ‘Willmar.’ He jumped up and hugged me and said he was Somali and that ‘Willmar is my hometown.’ I thought, ‘Maybe we’ve got something good going here.’”

The other story was from Hamse Warfa, the Somali entrepreneur and state work force official. He came with me to Willmar, and on the drive back to Minneapolis I asked him if his son had gotten into Minnesota sports. Warfa answered: “My son is 10 years old and I ask him if he is interested in soccer. He says ‘no,’ he’s all about the Vikings.”

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