I Was Wrong about Bob Dyer

Let’s start near the beginning. Many years ago, ‘our favorite columnist’ Bob Dyer was part of an ABJ team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on race.

It will take me some time to get to how I was wrong about him, and yes, I am getting thoughts off my chest that have been ruminating for years.

Since the Pulitzer, Dyer has written several times on race, usually in response to a recent news event. His stories are nearly always the same: “Your favorite columnist thinks the core problem on race is that non-whites keep bringing up racism,” or some version of this storyline.

He packages that message within his trademark humility and nearly always reminds us (as he did again this week) that he has spent a lot of time thinking about race and unlike most who “are so terrified of being labeled racist for saying ‘the wrong thing’ that they just avoid the subject altogether” Dyer is “not the least bit bashful about discussing race.”

I have always maintained that he should be a lot more bashful; he should even consider silent listening, because he is part of the problem when, as a powerful white man, he insists that our central concern about race ought to be the many white people who are afraid of being labeled racist and feel burdened by this very ordinary expectation that we not offend our conversation partners.

Turns out I was wrong about Bob Dyer.

The ABJ ran a two-part series on their front page this week. Dyer in conversation with a black preacher in town I respect deeply.

In part one, after introducing the conversation he asks the Bishop for his thoughts on a recent incident in a high school locker room. But after the Bishop explains that such actions reveal to him that there is hate in people’s hearts, Dyer does not share his own thoughts on that incident.

Instead, he turns the spotlight on himself. Bragging that he has been having conversations like this for 40 years. Perhaps if he had been sharing, in 40 years of conversations, the same outrage as the Bishop about the manifestations of hatred in the hearts of white youth toward their black peers in our city today, he might have mustered the courage to listen in these conversations.

Instead, he chooses to say nothing to this black preacher about how horrifying it must be to grow up black with such white hot anger directed at you every day and asks the Bishop if there is any reason to feel optimistic. He first avoids being a leader (or a listener) and then actually asks a leader of the targeted group to help him feel better in the shadow of horrifying hatred being perpetrated by fellow whites against blacks for no reason, other than hate.

So, question one asks the black man to make sense of senseless white violence against blacks, and the white man says nothing.

Question two asks the black man to help the white man feel better about this horrible senseless violence.

Question three is prefaced with how impressed the white man was with President Obama being elected, thinking (as no-one who has actually engaged thoughtfully and honestly in conversations about race for 40 years could ever think) this meant we had moved into a ‘race-neutral society.’

Then he asks the black man why the election did not do this? Is the underlying theme here that Bob believes only the black man can explain racism, because concern about racism is not about white people, but about overly sensitive black people? Subsequent questions suggest this is a reasonable interpretation.

Question four: the white man compares racial profiling (traffic stops are the situations Dyer focuses on) to Dyer being pulled over for ‘swerving’ while he was trying to find a safe time to pass a truck. Dyer conclude that had he been black he might have mistakenly assumed this was racism.

Bob’s n-of-one story is contrary to dozens and dozens of studies showing that police and airport security and private sector employers and more all profile on the basis of race…often. And in policing it results in more stops with fewer hits, that is, a waste of taxpayer funds. In airports it overlooks those most likely to be terrorists. In job hunting it results in those with identical resumes (but white sounding names) getting more than 50% more callbacks for interviews.

Yes, Bob, you were pulled over once. Tragedy. Now let’s have an adult conversation.

In part two, question five gets to the meat of this series for Dyer because as he puts it… “going back to our dust-up in January, are you willing to say that most people who voted for him are not racist and sexist but just wanted the biggest possible Washington shake-up?”

Dyer sounds like a classic Trump supporter who wants, here, to be exonerated for over-looking the candidate’s obvious racism, misogyny, bigotry and ignorance of policy in nevertheless choosing to vote for him.

Keep in mind this means, over-looking the fact that this candidate holds strong negative views of citizens on the basis of their skin color, gender, religion, and national origin…over-looking the fact that this frightens our fellow citizens who are not white male Christians born here. And this is not a talking point from the other side; the candidate advertised these views proudly and often.

So, question five was to ask one of the targeted groups if we was willing to forgive him and his ilk, and take back his comment suggesting Trump voters be held accountable for their actions in voting.

His final question, in response to their agreement that a central problem is that whites and blacks do not know each other well, is to ask the black man if the ‘ghetto’ is a result of blacks preferring to live with other blacks?

Again, in this final question, rather than speak candidly about redlining and segregated schools and the GI Bill and more (where the focus would be white agency)…the white man who likes to think he has been in conversations about race for 40 years asks the black man if segregation is rooted in blacks not wanting to live with whites.

Astonishing in the extreme.

Our Bishop somehow remained calm; I am sure that, unlike Dyer’s traffic stop, this was not the first time he has encountered this situation and he is a very good and kind and intelligent man. A real leader.

So, I finally decided to write something about Bob Dyer. Several times over the years I have written letters to the editor, but the paper consistently protects its star columnist. None have been printed.

This leaves a blog no one reads. So be it.

After reflecting on this, it occurs to me that I have been wrong about Bob Dyer. He is not encouraging or enabling others, because he is not a leader. His 40 years of commentary on race…as reflected in the six questions here…reveal him to be an ordinary follower.

I have been wrong about Dyer. I always feared he was mobilizing the worst tendencies within us. Turns out that the questions he asks are likely the questions many of his generation, race, gender, and position do ask. He is not leading readers astray, he is following readers who (like him) are afraid to ask questions about themselves, others like them, or institutionalized racism. Instead, they avoid serious questions and honest conversation as they seek narratives that justify what they already believe and pat them on the back for self-righteously blaming the victims for the cancer eating at the great American experiment: racism.

Here are links to both parts of the two-part story and below that I have pasted the full texts as well.

http://www.ohio.com/news/dyer/bob-dyer-sizing-up-the-racial-divide-1.757654

http://www.ohio.com/news/dyer/bob-dyer-sizing-up-the-racial-divide-part-two-1.757773

Part One

Bishop Joey Johnson and Your Favorite Columnist clashed a few months ago over some statements he made during a public meeting. But on at least one subject, we are of a single mind.

Race relations are terrible.

And they’re getting worse.

And that is bad news for all of us.

Johnson, a 65-year-old African-American, is one of the most influential preachers in the region, regardless of color. On Sundays, his House of the Lord church in West Akron draws about 200 worshippers for the early service and about 600 more for the later one.

He estimates that his congregation, which meets in a gorgeous, sprawling facility very close to the Vernon Odom Boulevard exit on Interstate 77, is about 1 percent white, down from 10 percent a decade ago.

A pastor in this city for 43 years, Johnson has played an active role in trying to ease the clash of colors, participating in public events such as unity meetings and also working behind the scenes, such as talking with the Akron police hierarchy about the enormous divide between law-enforcement and much of the black community.

Johnson is not the least bit bashful about discussing race, and neither am I. That’s not always the case, because many people are so terrified of being labeled racist for saying “the wrong thing” that they just avoid the subject altogether.

At least in public.

Both of us thought it would be worthwhile to sit down and see how things look from opposite sides of the color divide in 2017.

We sat in his well-appointed office and talked for nearly an hour. Because of the newspaper’s space limitations, what follows is a drastically edited version of the conversation, but a version that I believe retains the high points.

Dyer: I assume you read our story about the racial slur written on the door of the boys basketball locker room at Ellet? [A student wrote “f*** n******” next to a Nazi swastika.] What do you think motivates people to do that kind of thing?

Johnson: I really think there’s hatred down inside of people that they’re unaware of. I don’t think most people are consciously racist. I think it’s things that were planted long ago that come out. Sometimes it’s not that they hate other people but they’re having issues themselves, and they express it in that kind of way.

Dyer: I’ve been having these types of conversations for 40 years, and race relations right now are as bad as I’ve ever seen them. I’m discouraged. Is there any reason for optimism?

Johnson: That’s a great question, because I think many people are discouraged. I think it is about as bad as it’s ever been in my lifetime. I think it’s because of the climate in which we live.

But there’s always reason for hope. Here’s what I’ve been saying to people in the city who are discouraged: “If we’re going to be in this struggle, you’re in it because it’s right. You’re in it because there is redemption in the struggle.”

This is a problem that has been going on for so long, I’m not sure what’s going to get done. But we may be able to help people in the long run if we’re doing it because it’s right.

When Martin Luther King said, “I may not get there with you,” I think [he meant], “I’m not going to make it, but something’s going to happen after me.”

And I think that’s the key. If we can do something to help our children and grandchildren be better, we ought to do that.

Dyer: When Obama was elected, I said to myself, “Wow. If this country elects a person of color to the highest office in the land — with Obama winning 43 percent of the white vote, the second-highest figure for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter — isn’t that proof that we’re heading toward a race-neutral society?” But race relations got worse. Why?

Johnson: A black man in the White House does not guarantee equality for all. It’s one person. Obama was exceptional. He does not represent the average African-American. One person can’t change the whole country.

Dyer: But I thought it said something that so many white people were willing to vote for a black person.

Johnson: It did say something. I think it said we recognize that this guy has something and we’re willing to overlook everything that has taken place in our country and vote him to be the president.

He carried a unique mantel. That was the blip on the radar, and it seems like we’ve been going backward ever since.

African-American people are collectivistic people, group-oriented, and we expected him to be our savior. I didn’t. But I think we did in general.

He wasn’t going to do that because he wanted to be the people’s president, not the black people’s president. So he said very little [about racial issues]. That was a problem. It’s like an elephant sitting in the middle of the room and he won’t talk about it.

Dyer: You experienced a traffic stop for the offense “driving while black.” [A 16-year-resident of Copley Township, he was pulled over one night and asked what he was doing “in this part of town.”]

I have friends who are certain they have been targeted for DWB, and I don’t doubt that happens at times.

But I tell them about a night I was on state Route 585, trying to pass a semi, edging out a couple of times to see whether the coast was clear, and got pulled over. The trooper said I had been “weaving,” and wanted to know whether I had been drinking.

I told him I was simply trying to see whether it was safe to pass. He already knew that’s what I was doing. He was on a fishing expedition. What would I have thought had I been black?

I also remember being in a restaurant where my family was getting horrible service. I noticed a black couple across the room getting the same horrible service. I thought to myself, “If I were black, I might well attribute the horrible service to racism.” Do you think there are times when blacks mistake racism for plain old incompetence?

Johnson: Yeah! I think you’re overestimating [its frequency], but I don’t think you’re wrong.

It’s the narrative. After a while, if you get discriminated against a number of times, that’s the attitude that you begin to carry.

I have no doubt in my mind that every instance that people bring up is not necessarily discrimination on the basis of color. But it has been so prominent, and some of them are so egregious, that I think there’s more on that side than there is on the “not” side.

How do we deal with that? What I do, which gets me in trouble, is I deal with both sides.

When I worked with the attorney general’s office on law-enforcement training, I talked about implicit bias and micro-aggressions, the micro insults and invalidations people do without knowing they do them.

Dyer: Can you give me an example?

Johnson: Sure. “You talk very good for a black man.” The person thinks they’ve complimented you. They don’t know they’ve insulted you.

When I go into Acme after church, or Giant Eagle, I’m generally wearing a tie. Invariably, somebody is going to ask me where the ketchup is.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t work here. But I can tell you where the ketchup is. I come here all the time. It’s in Aisle 7.”

I’m not picking a fight. I’m not taking offense. You’ll have to give it to me if you want me to have it.

Part Two

Bishop Joey Johnson and Your Favorite Columnist sat down recently to talk about the sorry state of race relations in 2017.

The black baby boomer and the white baby boomer both believe the racial divide is as wide as it has been in their lifetimes.

Johnson is among the most influential preachers in the region, drawing 800 Sunday worshippers to his House of the Lord in West Akron.

Our hourlong conversation has been heavily edited, but I believe it retains the high points.

About midway through our talk, Johnson revealed that he has arranged for people in the black community to use police simulators to illustrate how tough it is for officers to make split-second decisions with lives on the line — theirs and the suspect’s.

The participants role-play being cops. They are shown videos of various situations unfolding and — as in real life — must make almost instantaneous judgement calls.

The action on the screen changes based on what you say and do. If you shoot at somebody, the machine will tell you how fast you reacted, how accurately you shot and whether your actions were appropriate.

I was invited to try my hand at a simulator many years ago — and failed miserably in two of the scenarios.

In one, I stood idly by while my partner was stabbed to death.

Later, I poured two 9 mm slugs into an old, slow woman who was approaching with a knife. I quite likely could have disarmed her easily without firing a shot — much less two.

Johnson: I said, “Let’s see what the police have to go through.”

I’m on both sides, so people get angry with me. “Well, are you for us, the black people?” I’m for truth! I’m for what’s right for everybody.

Police are in a very difficult situation in our country, and I don’t think all police are bad or racist. Having simulators helps people get a different perspective. All of a sudden, they’re saying, “Well, I wasn’t thinking it was like that.” It shows it’s not that easy.

That kind of viewpoint is often just not dealt with because there’s no middle ground. We need to create a middle ground.

Dyer: Agree completely.

I hesitate to even utter the word “Trump,” because any time I write anything about him people on both sides read things into it and go ballistic. But going back to our dust-up in January, are you willing to say that most people who voted for him are not racist and sexist but just wanted the biggest possible Washington shake-up?

Johnson: I think so. I’m not a conspiracist that all whites are racists.

When I define racism, I define it differently than other people. The personal discrimination, personal prejudice, those are personal things. I define racism on a corporate level, an institutional oppression of people.

I don’t think most whites are racist personally. That’s not their attitude. That’s not their identity. But they are caught in a system which impacts you that way.

I look at racism as a powerful river that flows downstream. It picks whites up and it carries them along. You don’t have to want to go.

Most people are not overt, out-and-out racist. They’re not KKK. They just can’t see the impact of their racism. If you don’t have to face it, there’s no reason to think about it or for it to come up.

Dyer: Actually, I’ve always said that if there’s a race problem, it’s my problem, too, because it impacts my life.

Johnson: I like your attitude. That’s worth talking about. You and I can clear some air.

Not every black person is walking around blaming whites for where we are. It’s more of an institutional problem. Not just with blacks, but American Indians, Chinese, the Japanese during World War II. America as an institution does not want to face those issues nor deal with them.

We have to figure out how we can do it, how we can do it without offending everybody, how we can bring people together. It’s a tough agenda.

Dyer: My theory is that the people who tend to be the most prejudiced have had very little exposure to people who aren’t like them.

Johnson: That’s a great part of it. One of the stats that goes along with that is we’re as segregated as we’ve ever been. People are unaware of it because it’s not necessarily “the ghetto,” but black people still live in a particular section of town and whites live in a particular section — for many reasons.

Dyer: Do you think one reason is that many blacks prefer to live with other blacks?

Johnson: That’s one reason. There’s a powerful book called The Color of Wealth [which argues that] wealth is determined by the ownership of a home. If you don’t own a home, you can’t accumulate wealth.

One of the things people never give any thought to is that the average white person, if they have any history, may have some resources that have been left by parents or grandparents. [Many blacks] don’t have that. There’s nothing left for you. You’re still trying to make it out of the hole.

And when you move out of the area, you face racism — “You need to stay with your people.”

Dyer: Well, I’ve lived in Copley Township for 30 years. The schools are 25 percent minority, and I have no sense whatsoever that any of the white folks I’ve known, even remotely, resented the fact that there were a lot of minorities. I was happy about it. I wanted my kids to interact with people who weren’t like them. So I don’t agree that people in the suburbs are resistant.

Johnson: There are certain enclaves ­where you move in and people paint stuff on your house and do things. I don’t view Copley that way. So it’s not universal, but it can be very powerful.

The other side of that coin is, both of my kids went to Copley High School. My daughter, no problem. My son, problem. I don’t think it was because of Copley High School. I think it was because of him.

Again, the thing I am very concerned about is the narrative. The narrative ends up being played, and people pick it up whether it’s theirs or not. My son picked that up: “I’m being discriminated against.”

[Johnson’s son did well on standardized tests but didn’t apply himself and got ordinary grades. One year, he came to his father and announced he was going to dive into his schoolwork and study hard. The first grading period, he came home with four A’s and a B.]

I’m saying, “Wow! I’m so proud of you!”

He says, “No, I’m not going to ever do that again.”

What? “I had 91 percent and the teacher discriminated against me. She wouldn’t give me an A.”

I said, “You didn’t earn an A! That’s not discrimination. You didn’t earn it!”

He said, “You can’t get ahead in this world, and white people — ” I said, “Whoa! This has nothing to do with white people. This has to do with what you earned.”

I think people pick up the narrative that plays in our country without even understanding it, deciphering it.

The narrative I’m concerned about now in our nation is that “I can just say anything to people, I can do anything I want to do because it’s now open season.”

That narrative we want to attack.

I work with the city of Akron and the police. The narrative of what happened in Ferguson is not what is happening in Akron. But in the absence of an Akron narrative, Ferguson will be the one we will play.

I think the mayor is attempting to write a local narrative that says, “This is Akron. This is what we stand for. We are not going to discriminate, regardless of what anybody else is doing.”

I want the police to drive their narrative with community policing. Start getting articles on how you go to basketball games, how you help young people. But the only thing getting any press is when someone gets shot.

Dyer: That’s mostly just the definition of news. If something unusual doesn’t happen, it’s not news.

Johnson: I agree. But I think we can change news. You’ve got to tell your own story, by having events in the neighborhood — however you want to tell it.

I’ve known some police who are wonderful people. I also know a couple that have issues. But that’s OK. That’s life.

The essential thing is that we not allow this divide that is happening in our country, that we work toward the good of all people.

Dyer: Amen, Bishop.