I've been thinking about East Cleveland ever since the scandal about Mayor Brewer broke. I have to admit, I feel bad for the guy. Being a cross dresser does not mean you're a bad mayor. I do not know much about his record or him personally - but I hope he and his family are holding it together. He just lost the primary. This cannot be easy on him.
Those images have been floating around a lot and I am not sure I want to repost them. Anyway, I think a photo like this is more appropriate when talking about East Cleveland:
This one as well:
Or maybe one like this:
Definitely this one:
(Thanks to La'J's photostream on Flikr's Creative Commons)
It struck me that this mayor's bad decision to take some sexy photos is bringing East Cleveland to the region's and the country's attention. But we should have been paying attention to some very different problems for a while now.
My mother tells stories of visiting her Great Aunt Kitty in East Cleveland when she was a little girl. She was struck by the grand old mansions and the pretty red brick streets. She thought it put her little house on W. 93rd to shame.
In the early part of the 20th Century, East Cleveland was the toniest place to live in the county. The city's Web Site proudly proclaims: "The Home to John D. Rockafeller. The World's First Billionaire."
Today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005-2007 estimates, only 10.9 percent of the nearly 25,000 residents have a college degree. The median household income is $30,600 (adjusted for inflation) - that's just above the poverty rate for a family of four. There are 4,731 vacant houses. Not only that, the city is intensely segregated. Just more than 1,000 white people remain (in what once was home to one of America's richest white families!) and the city is almost 94 percent black.
In my class with dean of the Levin College, Ned Hill, we just read a great book called "American Apartheid" about how racial segregation concentrated poverty and created an urban underclass which is cut off from the mainstream economy and mainstream American culture. It seems to me that their study would lend itself well to what's going on in East Cleveland.
I find it sad that the city's getting attention for a cross dressing mayor rather than the hard truths its telling us about our region and our country. I am looking for better data on the crime rate in East Cleveland, but according to the Plain Dealer's data center, there have been 3 murders there so far this year. According to the map", however, many of the 130 Northeast Ohio murders that have occurred, have occurred near East Cleveland.
I'm officicially fascinated. I want to know what happened here.
Hey, it's Heather from your Monday class. I hadn't thought to draw the connection from American Apartheid to East Cleveland (in my head, I was thinking of around E 55th), but East Cleveland seems to me like it would be an excellent example.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning in another class that East Cleveland had one of the fastest racial transitions in the country. In something like only ten years it changed from predominantly white to predominantly black. That kind of speed cannot possibly be a good start for any sort of community!