Eggshells of Our Own Construction, Or, Race in Cleveland
Maybe someday if I start having aspirations about running for mayor in Cleveland, I'll wish I hadn't written this. After all, one day I will be a middle aged white lady, just like Jane Campbell. Those readers out there who have met me personally - I'll point the finger at you - know that I wouldn't run Cleveland remotely like Jane Campbell does. Yet to many in Cleveland, in twenty years, when I have crow's feet and and the telltale Lily Munster grey streak that runs in my family, though I may be the candidate with the most unique and progressive plan, I will be nothing but Jane Campbell reincarnated.
I'm not in the business of pointing fingers, but to anyone that would want the perspective of someone who's now been away from Cleveland for nearly a year, here it is. Let me just say that I think about Cleveland almost all the time, and I think about it hard and long and turn Cleveland's problems over and over in my mental "hands" looking for the part that's broken, the part that can be pulled off and replaced. I think about what's wrong with Cleveland, what could fix Cleveland, what forces are at work that make it not function at its best. Every new good idea I encounter leads me to think, what's at work here that we could strip away and use to make Cleveland better?
See how much I have invested in this?
So, OK. I worked at the Shaker Heights Public Library for two years. I grew up on the West Side, and because of our bizarre fractiousness, I knew absolutely nothing about Shaker Heights (beyond the fact that it was there) until I was 24 and started working there.
Within a week I had made the vague but crystal clear determination that there were "weird energies" at play in Shaker Heights, and its immediate environs. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Cleveland, or for those Clevelanders who haven't ventured west of the Cuyahoga River, there seems to be more black/white tension on the East Side - where Shaker Heights is located - than the West Side, perhaps for the simple reason that there are more black people on the East Side).
Oh, God. Where do I go from here? The white community thinks, would "you people" just get over it, already? The black community thinks, white folks are still holding us down. Who's right? The best answer I can give is that nobody's right, because when you get down to it, there is no such thing as the white community or the black community, only individual white people and black people, with individual wounds that are either discussed or denied. And mostly, I haven't seen much discussion, just a lot of walking on what I consider unnecessary eggshells of our own construction. In two years at the Shaker Heights Library, racism was never discussed openly, not once. We never had a staff meeting about what to do when the race card got played (by black, white, or whatever kind of people), there was little acknowledgement on behalf of the administration that the public service staff often worked in a minefield of racial incidents waiting to happen.
I'm not saying that to be a bitch, or to particularly criticize the library, as opposed to any other Cleveland area institution. In fact, I fiercely loved my coworkers there - more than they ever knew. But I, as an outsider, wandered into this situation and saw clearly that there was racial tension and that it was not being addressed. Which, in retrospect, could have been a particularly damaging management tactic for me to learn, because at the time I was a new, inexperienced professional.
Am I being too sensitive? Am I imagining these things? Am I being racist by saying them? In Cleveland, we don't know what we can say. In fact, anything we say makes us look bad to somebody, so we say nothing. In the end, it's a stupid game that hurts everybody.
I'll share something I've learned from the Ocean County (NJ) Library, where I work now.
OCL has this big Diversity Initiative. We celebrate and promote every ethnicity possible through our collections, outreach, and programming.
Which seems, on the surface, very weird because Ocean County is about the whitest, most homogeneous place I've ever been to. Seriously, sometimes it makes me want to throw up. You can look at this Diversity Initiative and laugh, or scoff, or scratch your head and say, "why on earth are we talking about diversity and pretending we're diverse when we really aren't?"
I'll be honest with you, I often think that myself.
But really, this initiative is so profound I've really only been able to fully grasp its profundity and the amazing, progressive foresight that must have been involved with its conception a few brief times.
My supervisor, a lifelong Ocean County resident, told me (when I expressed unease at how insular Ocean County can seem) that "civilization came late to Ocean County." As in, blatant acts of racism were publicly condoned and encouraged until relatively recently. She said that the library, a major, major force in the community, has chosen (via the Diversity Initiative) to not just prepare homogeneous Ocean County for the diversity that will, ultimately, become the norm, but inundate it. Get the forces in motion to bombard the generations to come with positive images of diversity, so the roots of fear won't have a chance to take hold. Because if they do nothing, diversity will come anyway - that's just the nature of civilization - and those roots of fear will grow, and create the kind of problems that Cleveland has.
Writing about race in Cleveland is hard, and tiring, and I wish I could make this a fraction as cohesive and persuasive as the piece I wrote about libraries last week. I have to think about this some more, as we all do, and I suppose the one feeble prescription I can offer (and really, who am I to be dealing prescriptions for social ills?) is that someone has to start talking about it. No. Everyone has to start talking about it, all the time, in widely publicized, nonconfrontational fora. This isn't something you can have a symposium on once, and expect it to go away. Maybe once a year, instead.
Or once a month.
Or once a week.
Or every day.
I'm not in the business of pointing fingers, but to anyone that would want the perspective of someone who's now been away from Cleveland for nearly a year, here it is. Let me just say that I think about Cleveland almost all the time, and I think about it hard and long and turn Cleveland's problems over and over in my mental "hands" looking for the part that's broken, the part that can be pulled off and replaced. I think about what's wrong with Cleveland, what could fix Cleveland, what forces are at work that make it not function at its best. Every new good idea I encounter leads me to think, what's at work here that we could strip away and use to make Cleveland better?
See how much I have invested in this?
So, OK. I worked at the Shaker Heights Public Library for two years. I grew up on the West Side, and because of our bizarre fractiousness, I knew absolutely nothing about Shaker Heights (beyond the fact that it was there) until I was 24 and started working there.
Within a week I had made the vague but crystal clear determination that there were "weird energies" at play in Shaker Heights, and its immediate environs. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Cleveland, or for those Clevelanders who haven't ventured west of the Cuyahoga River, there seems to be more black/white tension on the East Side - where Shaker Heights is located - than the West Side, perhaps for the simple reason that there are more black people on the East Side).
Oh, God. Where do I go from here? The white community thinks, would "you people" just get over it, already? The black community thinks, white folks are still holding us down. Who's right? The best answer I can give is that nobody's right, because when you get down to it, there is no such thing as the white community or the black community, only individual white people and black people, with individual wounds that are either discussed or denied. And mostly, I haven't seen much discussion, just a lot of walking on what I consider unnecessary eggshells of our own construction. In two years at the Shaker Heights Library, racism was never discussed openly, not once. We never had a staff meeting about what to do when the race card got played (by black, white, or whatever kind of people), there was little acknowledgement on behalf of the administration that the public service staff often worked in a minefield of racial incidents waiting to happen.
I'm not saying that to be a bitch, or to particularly criticize the library, as opposed to any other Cleveland area institution. In fact, I fiercely loved my coworkers there - more than they ever knew. But I, as an outsider, wandered into this situation and saw clearly that there was racial tension and that it was not being addressed. Which, in retrospect, could have been a particularly damaging management tactic for me to learn, because at the time I was a new, inexperienced professional.
Am I being too sensitive? Am I imagining these things? Am I being racist by saying them? In Cleveland, we don't know what we can say. In fact, anything we say makes us look bad to somebody, so we say nothing. In the end, it's a stupid game that hurts everybody.
I'll share something I've learned from the Ocean County (NJ) Library, where I work now.
OCL has this big Diversity Initiative. We celebrate and promote every ethnicity possible through our collections, outreach, and programming.
Which seems, on the surface, very weird because Ocean County is about the whitest, most homogeneous place I've ever been to. Seriously, sometimes it makes me want to throw up. You can look at this Diversity Initiative and laugh, or scoff, or scratch your head and say, "why on earth are we talking about diversity and pretending we're diverse when we really aren't?"
I'll be honest with you, I often think that myself.
But really, this initiative is so profound I've really only been able to fully grasp its profundity and the amazing, progressive foresight that must have been involved with its conception a few brief times.
My supervisor, a lifelong Ocean County resident, told me (when I expressed unease at how insular Ocean County can seem) that "civilization came late to Ocean County." As in, blatant acts of racism were publicly condoned and encouraged until relatively recently. She said that the library, a major, major force in the community, has chosen (via the Diversity Initiative) to not just prepare homogeneous Ocean County for the diversity that will, ultimately, become the norm, but inundate it. Get the forces in motion to bombard the generations to come with positive images of diversity, so the roots of fear won't have a chance to take hold. Because if they do nothing, diversity will come anyway - that's just the nature of civilization - and those roots of fear will grow, and create the kind of problems that Cleveland has.
Writing about race in Cleveland is hard, and tiring, and I wish I could make this a fraction as cohesive and persuasive as the piece I wrote about libraries last week. I have to think about this some more, as we all do, and I suppose the one feeble prescription I can offer (and really, who am I to be dealing prescriptions for social ills?) is that someone has to start talking about it. No. Everyone has to start talking about it, all the time, in widely publicized, nonconfrontational fora. This isn't something you can have a symposium on once, and expect it to go away. Maybe once a year, instead.
Or once a month.
Or once a week.
Or every day.
posted by Christine Borne at 3:41 PM
11 Comments:
Thanks for thinking and writing about this, Christine. It may not be as concise and persuasive as you'd like, but it's still your powerfully true experience.
Nice post. Now can you imagine any of the mayoral candidates in Cleveland even remotely approaching this level of discourse?
With regards to Shaker and the race issue--yes, there is a very "wierd energy" at work.
It's extremely prevelant within the Shaker schools (though the district won't publically acknowledge it) and the problems are further complicated by some (a handful) of the teachers/staff there. My siblings and I, each of us having spent some time in the Shaker schools have all seen it at work. And well it's no pretty.
Discussing this issue is a great idea, that is of course if you are on the politically correct side. What happens to someone who openly discusses something that may not be racist but harsh to one group or another?
You can not have good conversation and growth of an issue without a dissenting opinion. Unfortunately if you voice that opinion you can be branded a racist and any aspirations of political office, upper management, tenure can be in jeopordy.
I agree that this needs to be discussed however I vote for a forum where all ideas can be expressed, positive and negative.
I grew up on Cleveland's west side and attended public schools there. My experience on the east side is limited to holiday visits with relatives in Cleveland Heights. In my opinion the racial tension on the west side is just as high. In school if I was friends with a white girl then black girls would walk up and ask me why I was only friends with whites. Growing up both blacks and whites told me I sounded or acted white. Even as an adult in casual conversation blacks will say I sound white. If others races think it they now know better than to say it aloud. It never ends. Maybe I'm just a pessimist but I don't think there is much you can do. Like you said, racism is an individual thing, some big initiative isn't going to change what is in each persons heart, what they teach their children. These things will take generations to resolve themselves. I certainly have things better than my white grandmother had with my black grandfather, better than my biracial mother and my black father. My desire to change minds is nonexistent, I rather focus on living my life the best I can. Their hangups are their problem.
sorry for the essay
Wow...and I thought I was the only one to feel that way.
For a city as mixed as Cleveland to talk about race (I mean talk, not yell) as much as they do, it is truly sad.
I do agree that both blacks and whites both blame the other. It's pretty depressing. White folks believe that TV is an accurate mirror of reality. This is dangerous especially with the oversensationalization of news today (I won't mention any names *cough* Channel 19/43 *cough*) geared towards ratings / ad revenue first, journalistic integrity second.
Blacks believe that all white people are part of this cohesive network to screw black people for the hell of it. Most whites have no intention of spending their lives screwing people and, if they do, it's probably not based on race. Blacks sometimes forget that "Hmm, maybe this white person is screwing me because he/she is a jerk and would do the same to someone of a different race in my same situation." Discrimination is real (in all directions) but it isn't the answer for every situation.
Sorry about the long comment but I really appreciated your post. Keep it going!
1 (oh yeah, the racial debate is more than two-sided but that's another post :-) Cleveland has a considerable Latino population and a bigger native population than most American cities its size)
LaDonna- I should have said that I grew up in the west suburbs, which (at least 10 years ago) were much more homogeneously white than the east suburbs - my high school had approximately 500 students when I graduated, exactly *one* of whom was black..... So my experiences with black/white tension on the west side were based on that, and thus, extremely limited! (ps- aren't you writing "the lady" anymore?)
As a Cleveland refugee who got out of Slavic Village back in 1995 (it will be ten years on October 6th since I ran away to get out of the schools in Cleveland and started calling Ashtabula "home"), I have a few notes to offer from my perch in Ashtabula that is still in Ohio yet almost in Pennsylvania. Ohio lacks any sort of common cohesive culture. Really we have no single culture but about five or so competing ones. We have a Toledo culture, a Cleveland-Akron culture, a Youngstown culture, a Columbus culture, and a Cincinnati-Dayton culture that each occupy different swaths of the state. Issues in one area are not issues in others. When it comes to race, though, we are hardly of one accord in terms of our thought and belief. The catch is that if we lack a common culture and identity as a community in Ohio overall, how can we expect to make any strides in reconciliation in just Cleveland which is a fractured area that does not have its own cohesive culture either.
Improving race relations is a great thing. This goes back to the old kids church song about the two men building houses on sand and rock. The one that built his house on the sand saw it wash away while the one that built on the firm foundation of the rock survived the rain. Having a common culture and having at least a community identity is that rock that we need to undergird work at improving race relations. What happenes without that sort of firm foundation? All the work in the world, no matter how wonderful, can be washed away in the blink of an eye.
Think about the foundation used in Canada for keeping race relations together and having at least some sort of common bond. What is it there? "The Crown" is the unifying force as personified in Queen Elizabeth II. "The Crown" is a pervasive part of life in that constitutional monarchy that makes the whole thing work and helps provide unity among such diversity. What is our bond that will let us build up good race relations?
This is good, great even. This is the beginnings of the type of discourse American society needs to have in order to begin the most needed "social ills" we have. Race is an all too important factor in Northeast Ohio that no one wants to talk about. Whether it is because "Well I have no problem with them" (be that a White or Black them.
The taboo factor of race is too powerful in the mainstream which causes all of us to turn the channel whenever an inkling of the subject is brought up in present company. I truly believe that acknowledging it and discussing it as you did on your blog is needed.
stephen asked "What is our bond that will let us build up good race relations?"
One word: humanity.
We are all humans, whether we reside in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Coshocton, Canton, Cleveland Heights, Circleville or Cadiz. In America, the fate of persons of color has been determined by people who aren't people of color, some of these people have open and/or hidden disdain for people of color. America purports itself to be a place where your life is what you make it. If you are a person of color, poor, a woman or of an alternate sexual orientation, this isn't as true as some would have you believe. It isn't beyond your control to succeed if you have any of these attributes so it's not all about "the Man" keeping you down but it's more difficult than it should be.
So, what can improve race relations? Correcting the mistakes of the past is a start. Uplifting the poor is another. I hate seeing poor blacks and poor whites and poor Latinos and poor Asians and poor Natives at each others' throats when they all are poor and there are folks profiting off of their poverty (if you think that all that provide services to the poor are doing it in a spirit of altruism--think again).
Yesterday several teens were kicked out of my library for being loud and disruptive despite repeated warnings. As they walked out loudly complaining to themselves one of them shouted that they were being discriminated against cause they were black. It is accusations like these that are part of the problem. Crying wolf creates racial tension and makes it harder for those actually being discriminated against to be taken seriously. I know in my heart that my coworkers aren't bigots, and I think those teens know it too. They just felt like making everyone uncomfortable. And it worked.
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