“I’ve lived in north Minneapolis all my life. I’ve never worked on the new football field; neither have any of my friends…we’re all broke.” ~Robert Johnson, resident of north Minneapolis

By Don Allen with data provided by Matt Johnson (The System Scientist)

It was one of the biggest announcements after the completion of the U.S. Bank Stadium, the new home to the 5-0 Minnesota Vikings…and fittingly so. It seems a public relations campaign launched with an impressive list of talking heads announced to the mainstream and community of color that the new, beautiful and sleek home of the Minnesota Vikings was now people-of-color friendly because the during the construction phase, the prime, sub and other contractors had met the state hiring goal of 32 percent.  The data shows hundreds-of-thousands of hours worked by minorities with only one misstep: If you do the math, the Vikings U.S. Bank had more hours worked than black people in the Twin Cities…of course nobody’s talking about that.

WCCO, KARE-11, MyFox9 and KSTP put their best white-female anchors in a tight shoot close up to tell the mainstream of their viewers, there is nothing to worry about – the black people got work on the stadium…matter of fact, the over one billion-dollar monster met all goals in contract compliance. Since allegedly some of our self-appointed leaders cut deals, the missing jobs are not a break room nor water cooler fodder. Hell, the elected black officials know it’s a lie – but hey, they’re use to cover ups in the black community (any new babies born out there?).

The challenge becomes evident when you search by zip code to see if any of the areas in the “promise land” became abnormal from the goals met at the stadium (if any), or was this just a feel-good public relations campaign to misdirect attention from two black community leaders who both have food establishments inside of TCF and U.S. Bank stadium (more on that later).

So let’s look at the facts. Now let’s refocus and look at the real story; the nefarious story the Star Tribune will not publish. It’s okay to post selfies of you participating in a protest, but now it’s time for you to use your computer to look up the data tables.

In some instances, the unemployment rate was as high as 40 percent in some of the neighborhoods within the 55411 zip code where the population was majority “black” in 2013* according to city-data.com. (*Best available current data.) Although the 55401 and 55405 are only partially in the 5th Ward, whereas the 55411 resides completely in the 5th Ward, the data in this table can still provide us with some inference and intuition between the respective zip codes. In other words, the 55401 and 55405 zip codes reside in multiple wards.

As data illustrates, there was a clear distinction between the three zip codes. Whereas the 55401 and the 55405 expressed an unemployment percentage comparable to the General Minneapolis System (GMS) in 2013, which started off at 5.2 percent early in 2013 and decreased to 4.3 percent late in the year as table illustrate, the 55411 system experienced an unemployment reality three to four times higher than its neighbor zip codes. Clearly from these two pieces of data and the simple systems’ behaviors that represent them, a person in the 5th Ward, depending on where they lived, more than likely experienced a much different reality compared to other residents of the 5th Ward. Why might this be?

You see, if – and I mean “if” the U.S. Bank stadium met its goals, how was the unemployment rate in some areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul near or over 40 percent?

This brings into focus many things including the killing of babies and boys. If there were viable tracts of opportunities in the Twin Cities for under-and-unemployed people – both black and white (all colors), there would not be so many shootings…this is common sense that a five-year old can understand.