The Observation Deck

Most of us are hard wired for our ideology. We fit the available facts into an existing template.

I am sure I had a different take on this Regina Brett column than most of you:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... thispage=1

As I read through the Reverand's 10 points I kept wondering; Where is individual responsibility and accountability? Does the Reverend think that the worst aspects of ghetto culture are imposed on the residents by sinister outside forces?

I guess so.

While one or two of his points have some merit most of the rest are one long escape from reality. The reality? That we are all constructs of the choices we make. Until people like the Reverend realize that ghetto culture won't change until behavior changes the disintegration of communities will continue.

The good Reverend apparently thinks that some in the ghetto community are victims of the 21st Century version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers.

One of the things that strikes me, and it was something I couldnt quite get across in the other thread, is that we cant get real conversations going as long as we hold to some of our old ideas.

One of those old ideas is that certain individuals speak for entire populations. Was Rev. McMickle ever elected to the title of Spokesman for All Black People? Was Ms. Brett ever elected to the post of Explainer of Black Views to All White People?
So heres Ms. Brett writing a column for a lot of folks whove never actually had a conversation with a Black, Hispanic, whatever, saying "Here's what They're thinking."

Just as bad as our other thread where an exclusively White community of poster discussed the "Black Issue".
I do thank the person in the other thread who linked to some of the sites of different voices within various communities.

On the other hand if the job of "Spokesperson for Middle Aged Women of Mediterranean Descent Formerly Married to Third-Generation Hispanics" pays well, please consider my application <g>

Dee Martinez wrote:One of the things that strikes me, and it was something I couldnt quite get across in the other thread, is that we cant get real conversations going as long as we hold to some of our old ideas.

I have to say that this statement cannot be more true. One of the classes I just finished this past semester was the Sociology of Minorities and it was quite enlightening. But it became clear quite quickly that trying to understand another culture is seriously impeded by continuing to try to fit them within your own social framework.

Not until both sides begin to understand the position of the other and move away from the self-centric model that permeates our culture will we begin to move. Society is what we will choose to make it...and that means all of us.

So how to we get down to squares Bryan?

I have Black coworkers I deeply care for and respect and I believe they love and worry about their children and grandchildren, as I certainly love and worry about mine.
I want all our kids to have every opportunity. I don want another generation of Blacks and Whites bickering and blaming each other. But Im not running the drugs or guns into Black neighborhoods, Im not doing anything to keep them down, Im not the one saying "don't act white" in school or even worse, "stop snitchin".

What do I say that wont make them mad but wont admit guilt I dont honestly feel?

Dee Martinez wrote:One of those old ideas is that certain individuals speak for entire populations. Was Rev. McMickle ever elected to the title of Spokesman for All Black People?

He is the pastor of one of the largest churches in Cleveland and was a one time senate candidate.

I guess the media appoint "spokesmen" for the Black community. I don't know what criteria are used to appoint a spokesman. I am not aware of any official spokesmen for the Hispanic community or any other community.

The media appointed Al Sharpton as a spokesman for the Black community. I'm not sure why. It would be like the media appointing David Duke as spokesmen for the white community.

Bryan Schwegler wrote: But it became clear quite quickly that trying to understand another culture is seriously impeded by continuing to try to fit them within your own social framework.

I never understood sociology. It seemed too much like a "there are no wrong answers" kind of course.

Anyway, what does it mean to say "try to fit them within your own social framework?"

As I believe Bill indicated, people will indeed generally believe what they want to, through the lenses of their own experiences and belief systems. We may well often be "hard wired for our ideology".

That is, until we become better educated by greater constructive interaction.

I do indeed believe that outside forces act upon minority groups, prompting responses that are both valid, and understandable. To believe otherwise would simply be incredulous to me.

To simply pretend, for example, that what happened at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, or with the many trails of tears "ethnically cleansing" the Eastern United States of Native Americans... or what happened at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, are all only ancient historical events; having little present relevance- would be to insultingly ignore the pain and the heritage of a people.

To want to, perhaps, play down the lunch counters, the police dogs, the water hoses...to think that those who remember Birmingham, Montgomery, Anniston, Gadsden and events yes, here in Cleveland, might be all in the past... to think that some might want to dismiss people who remember those events, as perhaps clinging to some "victim mentality"?

Don't ever try that with me. I was in every one of those cities named above. I know what went on there. Don't anyone dare try to tell me about a "victim mentality". I know better.

I've also been involved with assistance to the Greater Cleveland Native American community for close to 20 years now. Don't ever bring up a "victim mentality" with me there, either.

I have seen so many mis-perceptions on this Observation Deck regarding matters racial and economic. It is therefore so important that we continue to dialogue and educate each other, without put-downs, or polemical statements. Lakewood deserves better. We must NOT repeat the mistakes of the past.

I really want to believe, and my experience has told me, that most people of any background just want what's best for their children, want to live in peace with their neighbors, and want to be friends with each other, so far as possible.

So do I. So why not let's try?

Just my opinion...cue up Kumbayah, perhaps?

McMickle is not an asset to any community, he is a dangerous liability.

Read what Powell Caesar has to say in this earlier Regina Brett article -- this guy gets it. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... xml&coll=2

Gary Rice wrote:I do indeed believe that outside forces act upon minority groups, prompting responses that are both valid, and understandable. To believe otherwise would simply be incredulous to me.

What does that mean?

Gary Rice wrote: To simply pretend..... that what happened at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, or with the many trails of tears "ethnically cleansing" the Eastern United States of Native Americans... or what happened at Wounded Knee.... ancient historical events; having little present relevance- would be to insultingly ignore the pain and the heritage of a people.

It is all quite irrelevant, unless you want America to resemble the Balkans where it is said "People remember everything and learn nothing."

Are you seriously saying that I should still be mad about the Spanish occupation of Sicily? My Grandfather once said that his grandfathers father lost his land to the Spanish. How mad should I be about that? Isn't my victim-hood as relevant as anyones?

Rick Uldricks wrote:McMickle is not an asset to any community, he is a dangerous liability.

Read what Powell Caesar has to say in this earlier Regina Brett article -- this guy gets it. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... xml&coll=2

Powell Caesar is absolutely right on. Too bad none of his idea's will every be implemented. Why? It's much easier to sit and stare at your feet and say "I'm a powerless victim!!

Bill,

I'm not sure that it's a question of being angry about anything, and I certainly don't want to engage in any negative dialectic.

I simply believe that conflict resolution would seem to have a greater chance of success, the more we are indeed aware of, and appreciate our different backgrounds and where we are coming from.

I believe that I understand your point, that we don't want to use crutches to win arguments. Still, we must bear in mind that for others to listen to us, we need to listen to them. As you indicate, we all have a story to tell.

Your grandfather spoke with you, as mine did with me, for simple reasons: That we never forget injustice, and that we continue love freedom.

Taking that logic into our own country, we also impart to our own younger generation the great stories of America's history, for the same reasons.

It's a fine line, Bill, to be sure. I would simply hope that we celebrate and remember our own pasts, yet enjoy the enrichment of our common and future present.

How has Ceasar done in Parma?
Funny if you look at it from a distance. A group of white people from the west side (aka the white side) of Cleveland talking about racial issues that pertain to those outside of their race, looking to the community relations leader from Parma. Parma, which is one of the few cities in North East Ohio that has traditionally been viewed as more white than Lakewood and has had it scars from racist individuals.

Stereotypes and generalizations but they all came from somewhere.

Black accusations and demands. White guilt, apologies, and most dangerous of all, resignation and apathy.
The other thread went down this "dog bites man" road and so is this one, which is exactly as Mr. Juris paints it.

What I want to say is that there ARE African-American representatives, and not just JC Watts and Clarence Thomas, who are bringing a different perspective to the square And there are white people who want to have legitimate everyday conversations but cant get past both-sides suspicion and prejudice.
Until that happens, my hands are off the keyboard.

Dee,

I will confess to thinking that my own fingers would be better off, off the keyboard from time to time, as well.

The thing is, ever since I was a boy, I have worked for civil rights.

Whenever I feel that people might need to expand their perspective, it seems to be my lot in life to step in and try to clarify things.

Not that I'm so perfect, of course. I just know personally how much it hurts to have been the object of scorn and ridicule as a child.

I think there remains an misunderstanding regarding our past negative experiences, however. It is not being a perpetual victim that matters, so much as it does using those past negative experiences to effect positive change, and thereby make a better world for others.

Therefore, with sometimes sad, and always tired countenance, I need to continue to rise to try and help the beleaguered cause of true human understanding.

Keep those fingers on those keys, Dee. We need you.

Now where were we? "Kumbayah..."

You'll find that Parma has a larger black population than you might think.

As far as the racial "thing", when working with black musicians in the jazz world some time back, to paraphrase a good friend and great drummer, Paul " All the racial talk is just talk. With all the money the government wastes, why doesn't the government treat the ghettos like war zones and rebuild them, provide all the things to the people that the U.S provided Germany and Japan after the war. Safe streets, job opportunities, medical aide and all that"

Food for thought.

Mark Allan Crnolatas

Bill:

When Regina Brett “challenged African-American leaders to come up with a plan to combat the thug culture that cripples Cleveland,â€Â￾ she framed the primordial cultural fact of race and located the domain of problem-solving inside a particular tribal premise and outside the premise of unity for the whole community.

I think that is a mistake. Living in an empire, I prefer the universal ideological premise located in Pauline Christianity, the Enlightenment and the U.S. Constitution.

Now, let’s imagine African-American leaders can’t “come up with a plan to combat the thug cultureâ€Â￾ that actually works.

So what does Cleveland do?

Is Brett’s challenge Lakewood’s challenge?

Does Lakewood, with an influx of African Americans from Cleveland, act on the plans of any of these African-American leaders? Does Lakewood wait for a good plan? Does Lakewood hire African-American leaders to help us converse over cultural differences?

What manifestations of culture are really particular issues to the whole community?

How does one scope a conversation productive of good community order rather than seat of the pants change-agency?

From ideological and theoretical perspectives, I think McMickle and Caesar frame quite neatly the economic, moral, psychological, political and sociological phenomena that constitute America’s wound-scape.

These prisms are structure and society (McMickle) and agency and the individual (Caesar, to an extent).

As I unpack these black leadership plans, I read Caesar’s pull toward agency and the individual (a rightwing position on the political compass) and McMickle’s pushback to structure and society (a left-wing position on the political compass).

By agent, I mean “a person… who is the subject when there is action.â€Â￾ (see The Oxford Companion to Philosophy p. 18). According to The Oxford Companion to Philosophy “A long history attaches to thinking of the property of being an agent a (i) possessing a capacity to choose between options and (ii) being able to do what one choosesâ€Â￾ (18).

As I read McMickle’s pushback to structure and society, I discern a maximal argument that imposes on the agent causal factors, outside dominant “flow states,â€Â￾ if you will, of material production and distribution and outright illegality.

Let me say that while I understand that institutional racism is one order of relevance to America’s wound-scape, I find McMickle’s plan to stop such “flow statesâ€Â￾ an impossible one for me to achieve.

If my sense of agency, with all the power and privilege marked by my white skin and my male gender, feels enslaved by the structure of illegal flow states I cannot control, then how is agency for a young African American to evolve under McMickle’s maximal plan, with the causal flow states streaming illegally and illicitly from the outside dominant culture.
While McMickle’s plan hints at the detrimental effects of Narco-Empire on the African American community, he lacks any sense of individual psychology, when he suggests “the flow of illegal drugs….is at the root of the problem.â€Â￾

Now the psychological issue was raised back in 1965 with the Moynihan Report: Why are Black Families in Crisis? But the psychological issue (infantile self-defense run amuck in thug culture?) would still be considered a taboo expression coming from the white man.

Perhaps McMickle was only speaking truth to power, telling Brett to back off, hoping to deflect the PD’s heat from the battered victims of the African American experience. Perhaps he did not deem the PD and Regina Brett’s soapbox the proper venue to address the thugs who don’t read the paper but who may batter those who embrace difference with love and disorder with law. These are racial matters and politics.

There remains, however, the individual psychological subject, the agent, if you will, or the thug, if the action so defines him, with drives of aggression and sexuality, riding the outside dominant “flow statesâ€Â￾ of illegal guns and drugs and economic calculations.

Too often these debates boil down to a contest between black and white to define the other as pathological along a structural grid of power and lack of power and criminal in terms of behavior and exploitation.

Alas, as Ms. Martinez suggests, these conversations are dead ends. Yet now in Lakewood our hopes and anxieties are pointed at one another, even if white and black do not speak on the LO Deck.

We are assessing the prisms.

By dealing students from the structure/society deck, with the flow states McMickle cites, we hand them cards they can manipulate until they imprison themselves in hopelessness and the persistence of dysfunctional differences.

There is only one question I would pose in a courageous conversation: What if any are the markers of the African-American culture, African-American identity or the African-American race that diverge from the norms of civil, clean, safe, and smart?

To extend courageous conversations into rationalizations for social difference may be interesting and therapeutic for some. However, the fundamental norms of civil, clean, safe, and smart can be obscured with the cultural instability and relativity flowing from agents of chaos dealing indignation at injustice from the structural/society deck.

Far better to me is to seek the order of unity in community through the norms of civil, clean, safe, and smart. There is hope available to any agent acting in Lakewood that good can be achieved along these simple lines.

At the local level in Lakewood it’s really a simple buy-in: civil, clean, safe, and smart. Let’s keep our eyes on this prize.

Kenneth Warren