As
far back as I can remember I have found myself repeatedly at points of cultural
confluence. As a consequence I have been blessed with an understanding that the
black community has never been monolithic, even when we were largely united
around certain broad public policy goals like ending American apartheid and
promoting equal opportunity. Or celebrating heroes like Joe Louis and Jackie
Robinson.
Yesterday
I was speaking with my youngest daughter about the radical shift that
occurred in Cleveland’s Glenville area when my family relocated here from segregated
Washington DC in the mid-fifties. Cleveland was still a high-energy town back
then. Unbeknownst to practically all of us, the city was just past its high-water
population of 914,808 and about to undergo severe constriction in size and
stature.
Much
of the town’s energy continued to come from its status as a haven for
immigrants and refugees. The renowned Cultural Gardens were less than a
block from my neighborhood elementary school and offered endless out-of-school
lessons in geography and history. Many a weekend, as we rode to Saturday choir
rehearsal or Sunday worship, we passed Lithuanians, Albanians, Italians,
Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and others dressed in native garb celebrating or
commemorating Louis Kossuth or some other hero.
These
experiences helped me to understand that the white community wasn’t monolithic
either. I never thought all white folk were alike. I learned that Dutch didn’t
care much for Germans; that many western Europeans looked at their East
European brethren with disdain; that Turks and Armenians were a combustible
combination; that there was historical enmity between Chinese and Japanese.
Eventually I came to appreciate that Caucasians [and some Latinos!] didn’t even
become white until they emigrated to the United States.
Close
to home, as black people were migrating to Cleveland from the hostile regimes
of Alabama and Georgia to presumed meccas like Hough and Central and Kinsman, the
white folks — with names like Abt, Mishny, Negenborn, Blankenship — were fleeing to
Euclid, South Euclid, and Mayfield Heights.
Of
course, I didn’t understand any of the social forces at the time, even as I
strove to comprehend the lynching of Emmett Till in mysterious Mississippi.
What I came to appreciate later was that there was an establishment in this
town that sought to constrain the movement of black people and to profit from
that constraint. The strategic arenas were political, economic and social. The
battlefields were schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
In
little more than a decade, Cleveland would become the first major city in
America to elect a black mayor. This fact for a time seemed to cement the
city’s national reputation as progressive, consistent with the civic slogan
“best location in the nation.”
But
Carl Stokes’ 1967 electoral victory — historic and transformative as it was — actually
masked the deep conservatism of both Cleveland’s white and black leadership.
Cleveland’s Republicans, for example, were among Barry Goldwater’s staunchest
supporters in 1964. And the evidence seems clear, despite the puppet political
theater of the 1980s and 1990s, that ethnic-based leaders shook hands around
political arrangements that protected interest groups at devastating cost to
civic spirit and growth.
For
reasons that are primarily historic and systemic, many of this area’s
challenges — in housing, education, health, public welfare, criminal justice —
have their greatest and deepest manifestations in the county’s blackest areas. Our
communal failure to address our divisions honestly is a major factor in our
ongoing urban crisis.
The
good news is that as the remnants of old-style local leaders — Dimora, Hagan,
Forbes, Pinkney, Voinovich — fade from prominence, Greater Cleveland at last
has a chance to redefine itself in the public arena. Some of the new leaders
are on suburban ballots this year, while others are likely to appear before the
decade is out. We will be looking at a few of these bright lights in the next
couple of weeks.
• • •
At the end of
yesterday’s post I mentioned that I would be on Civic Commons radio
today talking about the mischief politicians sometimes seek to create with
confusing ballot language. If you missed my dulcet dynamite you can hear the podcast here.
The core of
the program is a discussion about ballot initiatives—their language, intent and affect on
political behavior — hosted by Dan Moulthrop and Noelle Celeste. Featured
guests include Jeff Rusnak, a well-respected local political strategist, and
Daniel Coffey, political scientist and a Research Fellow at the University
of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
The
Civic Commons was created last year with a $3 million Knight Foundation grant.
Its mission is to educate, engage and empower citizens to be involved and
active in strengthening the community using civic journalism, public engagement
and social media. Moulthrop is curator of the conversation for the Commons,
which describes itself as social media for stuff that matters.
One of
CC’s most important issues is to increase northeast Ohio’s collective
understanding of our global society. A key initiative in that regard
focuses on the Middle East, which is more than a notion for any of us to
understand. If your interests, like mine, skew to that sort of thing, check out
this podcast, where Neda
Zawarhi of Cleveland State University and Pete Moore of Case Western
University, both members of the Northeast Ohio Consortium for Middle East
Studies, discuss events in the Middle East. You can also hear Case Western
Professor Dr. Ramez Islambouli talk about how his students perceive the Islamic
world.
The Civic Commons podcast is a regional
effort over the sixteen county Northeast Ohio region. Its podcast is a dynamic half-hour public
affairs program that features more citizen voices and fewer talking heads. It airs Tuesday afternoons at 12:30 on 88.7 FM/WJCU, University Heights and
Tuesday evenings at 7:30 on 88.5/WYSU, Youngstown. You
can
subscribe
to the podcast on iTunes or listen to it on
Stitcher Smart Radio. (
Download iTunes or
Stitcher)
• • •
