Gerry's Kids

Where black is the color, where none is the number
- "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" Bob Dylan, 1963

By now, ex-sheriff Gerald T. McFaul has been accused of everything except being Jack the Ripper... but that might come later. However, the latest accusations deal with the "N" word. No, not that "N" word. This time the charge is nepotism. It now seems that the best way to become a deputy was to be a close friend or family member of McFaul's. The only problem with that construct is that not many Blacks were close friends of McFaul's, ergo, few deputies are Black.

However, even thought he didn't walk the walk, 'ol Gerry sure could talk the talk. Put him in front of a Black crowd, close your eyes and you'd swear that he was born Black and raised on Kinsman Avenue. He was a master of this disgusting and demeaning habit of jive-talking in front of Black folks. However, hiring them was another matter.

Oh, I would suspect that a majority of the employees of the Sheriff’s Department are minorities... but they virtually all are low-level guards at the jail or janitors, jobs few White dudes are willing to take. When you were a kid, you might have heard someone talk about becoming a police officer when they grew up... but you never heard anyone say they wanted to become a jail guard, now did you?

McFaul had 36 highly paid appraisers working for him; four were female, none were Black... yet Blacks make up close to 30 percent of the taxpaying county residents. Also, if you could penetrate the inner-sanctum of the Sheriff’s offices you’d find virtually no minorities employed in clerical or administrative jobs, but the media never reported on this fact.

Why?

Because racist hiring practices in and out of government has never been even a minor concern for local media. McFaul’s practice of excluding minorities is considered standard operating procedure at many places of employment in greater Cleveland... and one of the major reasons our area is behind other parts of the country economically. We’ve yet to get the memo that diversity pays.

Call it willful blindness. What I’d like to know is how many of the 132 deputies currently on the payroll are minorities? But we really don’t want to know, now do we?

Throwing a Rock and Hiding Your Hand

When I first started writing for Cool Cleveland, the publisher, Thomas Mulready, gave me a sagacious piece of advice that I follow to this day: Whenever a reader corresponds with me via email, before reading it, I always scroll down to the bottom of it to see if they were brave enough to sign their name to what they wrote; if they didn’t sign it, I don’t read it. Period, no exceptions. Only cowards throw rocks and then hide their hands.

But the simple fact is, there are moral cowards and mental midgets out there, sitting at their computers (usually located in a bedroom or basement of their parents’ home — didn’t Jesus leave home at age 30?) using the anonymity of the Internet to spew forth all kinds of garbage … offering it up as thoughtful or insightful commentary when, more often than not it’s just smarmy, oftentimes borderline racist bullshit.

Occasionally I do read some of the web postings that are not sent directly to me, and have come to the conclusion that it’s little wonder our area is in such bad shape... we still have a large number of real knuckle-dragging reactionaries out there holding us back.

A cursory reading between the lines quickly revels that the majority of the generators of these often inane postings are flat-out losers — slackers that are so unhappy with their own lot in life they’ve made it their mission — their life’s work if you will (since they don’t really have a real life) — to attempt to rain on everyone else’s parade. Never mind that much of their babblings are juvenile... their thinking is: At least someone is paying some attention to me.

Part of the genius — and popularity — of the Internet, as well as other forms of mass communications, is the connectivity they offer. Some of these inveterate posters are so lonely, so alone, they don’t even have a shadow … it deserted them years ago; they can’t get laid in a whorehouse even if clutching a fist full of fifties. But through anonymous Internet postings they get this opportunity to play a game of mental masturbation — it feels good, but produces nothing of value. If they can’t get a life, at least they should try to get educated.

If we’re not careful a large part of an entire generation will only know how to communicate with the opposite sex via some from of electronic gadgetry, and you can’t meet, wed and make babies that way. Our birthrate is (similar to many Western European countries) falling dangerously close to below the replacement rate, the point at which not enough babies are being born to sustain the number of Americans we need to remain viable as a nation. So, all of you pencil-necked geeks, get up from that computer, try to learn how to go out, meet women, actually talk to them face-to-face, and, hopefully, get laid. I know your chances are slim-to-none, but try anyway. Maybe, just maybe, if you get lucky, get into a real relationship, you’ll quit with the asinine and juvenile web postings. All it takes is having a real life. Try it.

Politics, Cleveland style

The two recent openings on Cleveland City Council promises some interesting contests this fall. Ward 8 will have the opportunity to allow Jeff Johnson to completely rehabilitate himself (he recently got his law license reinstated) by running for the seat he once held, years before his conviction for violating the Hobbs Act.

Talk about wacky federal laws: The way I understand it, Johnson did two things... offer to help a constituent to work through the state laws to obtain a liquor license (this was part of his job duties and not against the law); he also asked for a political donation … which also isn’t against the law. The Hobbs Act states that you can’t do both in the same conversation … that is against the law. It will be interesting to see how the voters in Glenville react to Johnson at the polls. One thing for sure, if elected, he’ll raise the bar a couple of notches in regards to the level of competency on most of the eastside.

Ward 10 offers another interesting set of circumstances. Eugene Miller took over the seat from Roosevelt Coats this past Monday, but holding on to it come election time might be another matter. The folks in the predominately Black South Collinwood neighborhood probably won’t forget that Miller endorsed Hillary over Obama … and said some pretty nasty things about our president in the process. Not real smart, Eugene.

“Sexting”

As a journalist, I love it when a new word hits the lexicon, but “sexting” (young girls sending nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriends or boyfriend wannabe) is disturbing. While the behavior is a horrible reflection of the morals we’ve inculcated into our youth (they didn’t raise themselves, now did they?) the fact that some over-zealous prosecutors are talking about charging these youngsters with a sex crime (that will stay with them forever) is abominable.

It’s my understanding that laws are being proposed that would prevent this miscarriage of justice from occurring, and the sooner they are passed by the State Legislature (or Congress, if need be) the better. No teenager should be branded for life for a stupid, juvenile indiscretion.

But what if the young girls that are participating in this activity happened to be Black rather than predominately White and from the suburbs, what would lawmakers be doing then? My fear is, knowing how our political and criminal justice systems operate (or in the case of Blacks often doesn’t operate), if primarily minorities were impacted the laws would not be changed, and they would be branded for life. If you doubt this, then just look at our unfair and unequal crack cocaine laws that almost exclusively brand minorities.

The point is, we can create reasoned and just laws whenever we care to … it’s just that in too many cases — when minorities are impacted — we just don’t care.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com

Read Mansfield's book From Behind the Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race, and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate. It is available again in hardcover through the author. Visit him online at http://www.frombehindthewall.com.
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