The Safest Place in Cleveland
I just returned from a place where you can completely relax, where you can walk around without fear of being accosted …even with hundred dollar bills just hanging out of your pocket or purse. I know, I know, you think I must be smoking my underwear … taking hits on a bong filled with the type of grass you can’t legally grow on the front lawn. But no, I wasn’t visiting some drug-induced utopia of my imagination, nor was I in some jack-booted state like Singapore where citizens can receive 30 lashes for so much as dropping a gum wrapper on the street — I was right here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A., in Cleveland in fact. The only prerequisite for receiving such protection is that your name has to be …Wahl Marte, Bess Bye, or Homey Despot. In other words, you have to be located in that placid and safe commons known by the name of “Steelyard.”
While all Cleveland councilmen beg, scream and throw pretend hissy-fits (but usually only around election time) for a police mini-station to be placed in their wards, guess where the only one to be erected in Cleveland in recent years went? OK, OK, you don’t have to guess — on private property to protect corporate profit.
With crime supposedly running rampant through Cleveland neighborhoods the priority space for protecting (where they already have so many private patrols, spy cameras, motion detectors, eyes in the sky, and every other monitoring device known to man or a Las Vegas casino owner) is, a privately owned shopping mall. Is this a great country — or what?
Yep, right there at the southern entrance to the sprawling complex (so you can’t miss it) is a police mini station, complete with not one, but usually two, City of Cleveland, cop cars sitting with their engines idling. This has to be the best cop gig in the State of Ohio. If they get bored they can always go and flirt with some of the store clerks.
But hey, you never know when some desperate mother is going to try to shoplift a couple of jars of Gerbers for her newborn. However, just in case she proves to be so foolish, there is enough security on site to beat her down and kick off in her ass until she has a hump in her back. Meanwhile, back in the ‘hood …
Stupid Black Folks
Over the weekend I went to a gala fundraiser for an excellent cause where 90 percent of the attendees were persons of color. When I got out of my vehicle at valet parking, I noticed that, like virtually every other valet operation in downtown, all of the car jocks were white. I guess there must be a fear on the part of some white folks of handing over the keys to their ride to a black dude.
But what about all of the black people who attended this event … why didn’t any of them (besides me) complain? Here’s why: Middleclass blacks just love to have what they view as menial services provided to them by white folks — parking valets, servers in restaurants, etc. What they are too stupid to realize is that their failure to demand parity and diversity in these positions prevents minorities for obtaining entry-level employment. Some black college kids could use some of those jobs, but noooo, black folks who could force change if they just spoke out, would rather be catered to and served by white folks; makes them feel …. what? That they have arrived, and now are equal — or maybe even somehow better — than the folks performing these tasks?
Let’s Make a Deal
Here’s the deal: I won’t write reviews of say, a performance by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, simply because, while I do like some classical music, I don’t possess enough knowledge of that genre of music to objectively critique it with authority. In return I would ask that white theatre critics who know little of the black experience in America come to that same realization: They quite simply don’t have the requisite cultural and racial sensibilities to fairly critique black theatre.
Case in point: One white critic recently characterized the current offering at Karamu, “The Great White Hope” as being “aged.” Really? The play, when it was first produced in 1967, was already “aged” because it dealt with events that happened beginning in 1908. So, to this critic, I guess this work is “aged” because it was written over 40 years ago; but many of the racial issues it addresses are still with us today, and if anything some have exacerbated over the decades. To paraphrase the NAACP slogan, “While much has changed, much has not.” This critic was also off the mark with a number of his other observations … but, to his credit, he is a clever chap with words.
Indeed, just as racists did in Jack Johnson’s era, a minority in the country, while sipping bitter and poisoned Tea, are once again looking for a “Great White Hope,” to take back the crown, but this time in the political sense. Black audiences “get” the relevancy of this work in today’s climate (that’s why Director Terrance Spivey produced the play), and it’s quite understandable that many whites don’t.
But, in the words of Bob Dylan, please, “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand,” and in return I won’t make a fool of myself trying to critique the playing of Mozart, Beethoven or Rachmaninoff at Severance Hall. Deal?
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.