The Great Race Begins

The first piece of campaign literature for what promises to be a hotly contested race for the newly-created position of county executive arrived in my mailbox last week, and it only served to underscore African-Americans' legitimate concerns regarding diversity in the process and implementation of the new county structure. I counted over two dozen images of over a dozen people (some photos were duplicates) on the mailer, and all were white. I hate to inform this candidate, but the racial demographic of the county really doesn’t look anything like he’s representing on his literature.

The question that immediately comes to my mind is: Is this guy really that racially tone-deaf, or is he purposefully including only white images on his literature so as to not upset his West Side white base? Obviously he doesn’t care about upsetting me and other minorities, now does he? If he did care about our votes he would not have sent the offensive exclusionary material to my address.

Will this guy (and other candidates) adopt what the Issue 3 folks did, and send mailers to the Westside of the county featuring only images of whites on them, and then send mailers to the Eastside of town that have racially mixed images on them? How racially crass will they get during this contest?

Of course, if candidates adopt these kinds of racially divisive tactics, the persons blamed will most likely be African-Americans like me... for simply raising a question about their shady practices of playing the race card - or in this case, “race mailer.” It’s called, “If don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.”

In an effort to promote fairness and diversity in the upcoming contest, I’m once again asking all of my loyal readers to keep an eye on their mailboxes, and if they receive literature that is questionable in regards to inclusion or statement of facts, please forward it to me at P.O. Box 6031053, Cleveland, OH 44103. I’m cataloguing it and will take the offending material to voter forums and ask the candidates about their intentions up close, personal, and in public. That’s the American Way.

Perhaps, if this column is circulated widely enough, it just might help to stop this kind of racial exclusion from occurring in the first place. Stay tuned.


Reacting and Overreacting

There’s a fine line between legitimately reacting to a given situation, and overreacting for (what often seems to be) the intent and purpose of gaining media face time. The Imperial Avenue killings are a prime example: It’s pretty clear to any reasonable person that systems and procedures were not in place (or were not followed if they were) within the city’s criminal justice system to protect vulnerable women.

Also, city officials sometimes need a nudge from grassroots organizations to get them to focus on their deficiencies... no question about that. But there is a thin line between staging legitimate protests … and going over the top. It’s all very subjective. However, when overly-agitated activists work themselves into a lather and go over the top, they become counterproductive due to a loss of credibility. They can actually do more harm than good. No matter how right or just your cause, no matter how heinous the outrage you are protesting, you can only push people so hard and fast without engendering a backlash and causing people to further entrench in their positions. And when that occurs, no one “wins.”

It’s not about courage, it’s about effectiveness. The grassroots folks who routinely go over the top just love to characterize anyone who refuses to go over the top with them as being weaklings or Uncle Toms.. but that’s just not so. Case in point is Blaine Griffin. As the director of Community Relations he has worked tirelessly for the common good, yet he now had become a target of protestors. Most likely I too will become a target once this piece is published... but so be it.

Grassroots protesting is a very tricky thing. Even when the cause is right the TV camera (and ink in the newspaper) can become very seductive, very addictive; folks sometimes begin to act out in all sorts of strange ways to gain their 15 minutes of fame... with the hope that they can extend it.

If protesters are not careful, their movement can be commandeered by people with their own personal axes to grind, people who want to cleverly use the issue at hand and, via the media, satisfy some deep-seated personal issues that perhaps could better be addressed by a mental health professional. Focusing too much attention on them - and it really doesn’t take very much - can turn them into what is known in the trade as “camera whores.”

Fortunately, there are some folks who are attempting to bring healing to the wound left by Anthony Sowell. Mike Oatman directed local poets and musicians in a multimedia production at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and a group of women volunteers who call themselves “Because of the 11” took to the streets to interact with prostitutes and help them turn their lives around. Now that’s the kind of activism really needed in this situation: How do we prevent women from becoming victims in the first place? That’s not the mayor’s (or any other officials’) job … that’s ours.

The simple truth is, some people are so twisted, so angry, so frustrated in their daily lives that nothing is going to satisfy them, period. They’re not really looking for solutions … they thrive on confrontation.

Are the issues these groups are protesting about legitimate? Sure they are. But what the leaders have to learn is how to raise their concerns in a legitimate manner, or they run the risk of being shunted off to the ineffective fringe. Wild accusations and demagoguery has never solved anything... and never will.

With that said, I can understand how some minorities, due to the untrammeled racism they face on a daily basis, can wind up going over the top, around the bend, and eventually out to lunch. It’s sometimes very tough being black in America, but we can’t continually read racism into situations where perhaps none exists.



A Good Man Goes, and God Bless Him

The email was as brief as it was unexpected: Terry Collins, the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), announced that he was retiring as of January 31, 2010, after spending 32 years with the department, the last three-and-a-half as the director. Collins’ exit will certainly leave a big - and important - pair of shoes for Gov. Strickland to try to fill.

As a branch of government, the ODRC is one state entity the average citizen doesn’t care to think very much about … nonetheless its impact on all Ohioans is incalculable. The major reason is the tax dollars it eats up while providing little — not even real public safety — in return. Bellwether states like California are drowning in seas of red ink due in large part to the necessity of supporting an overly large, ineffective, revolving door prison system and our Waterloo here in Ohio is fast approaching unless we come to our collective senses.

Here’s one great example of our stupidity: Prisons offer classes in plumbing, but the State Legislature, in its infinite wisdom passed a law that states no one with a felony conviction can obtain a license to be a plumber. Yeah, unfortunately, you read that right.

Conservatives love to shout “lock ‘em all up and throw away the key!” but when the bill comes due for all of the wrongheaded, unjust, and counterproductive laws that have led to severe prison overcrowding, those same legislators balk at earmarking the additional money necessary to run these institutions in a professional manner. And then they expect someone else to do what they are unwilling to do: Spend their lives working in these manmade hellholes.

A few months ago Director Collins set aside a few hours to appear in a documentary on prisoner reentry that I produced entitled “The Long Road Home.” It will air on Village TV in late January. Collins probably is on camera longer than any of the other dozen or so professionals who appear in the documentary, and for very good reason: With his vast experience he’s the acknowledged expert on Ohio’s prison system and on prisoner reentry as well. As the person in charge of having to wrestle with shrinking revenues and increased prisoner populations, Collins has been a voice of reason and sanity in regards to reforming our penal system … but all too often his has been a voice crying into the vast wilderness and sometimes seeming insanity of state government. He obviously got tired of being that lone voice.

Godspeed to Terry Collins in whatever he pursues next... he’s simply far too decent a man to continue to put his own personal well-being at risk in an increasingly unhealthy environment. I’ll miss his clear and honest voice, but it is past time for him to let someone else wrestle with this prison beast that will make you old before your time.

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.