Unlike in many other cities, the Cavs victory over Golden State didn’t spark a mini riot in downtown Cleveland as LeBron James hoisted the NBA trophy over his head. Nor was there any negative acting out as fans celebrated into the wee hours of the morning.
While there were reports of a couple of overturned trashcans and a broken window or two, by and large fans celebrated wildly but peacefully. The residents of Cleveland are to be commended, applauded and ultimately respected for their adult behavior.
Of course the question that immediately arises from pundits is, “How can we as a city build on the goodwill, momentum and raised expectations created by this magnificent victory — the first championship in Cleveland in 52 years?” Perhaps a better question is, “What do we want to happen?”
Should the ending of the five-decade championship drought be used exclusively to attract more millennials to downtown Cleveland, or can it be harnessed to bring about more meaningful changes? After all, once all of the debris is swept up after the tickertape parade is over, Cleveland will still be among the poorest cities in the United States.
Coincidentally, on the front page of the Plain Dealer the day after the Cavs beat Golden State, there was an article reinforcing what some of us already are too painfully aware of: Wide life expectancy disparities exist between communities of color in Cleveland and suburban enclaves.
Virginia Commonwealth University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation completed a study that found while Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood and the city of Lyndhurst are less than 10 miles apart, a child born today in the inner-city community has a life span that is 12 years shorter than a child born in that suburb.
This is not surprising to some, and others would consider it an improvement since a decade ago a similar study was done comparing my community of Hough to Lyndhurst, and the residents of the suburban city lived over 20 years longer.
The current study concluded that the “health disparities are not driven by natural differences, but by racial and economic ones.” Can the fact of the Cavs victory help to overcome these kinds of core differences?
In my opinion, yes, it can — but only if this sweet taste of victory inspires Cleveland’s strong philanthropic organizations to rethink their priorities; only if it causes them to redirect a larger percentage of their grant dollars towards addressing the needs of impoverished neighborhoods and peoples — and doing so by asking them what they need, not telling them what they need.
Two days before the Cavs win in Oakland, Forward Cities, which bills itself as “a national learning collaborative among four cities undergoing transformation — New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland and Durham — with the goal of developing and supporting business and social entrepreneurs active in local innovation ecosystems,” concluded its Cleveland convention.
Greg Brown, the executive director of Policy Bridge (a Cleveland think tank), and a Forward Cities Cleveland Council Member, summed up the mission and challenges of the organization in a piece for the Huffington Post.
Brown wrote, “This two-year pilot project gives participating cities an opportunity to explore issues of inclusive innovation and identify effective ways to support and develop leaders and entrepreneurs from low income and minority communities.
“Forward Cities has caused all of us to think more intentionally about how upstream systems, structures, policies and practices that impede inclusive economic innovation. We are also confirmed in the belief that systems and structures do not change without a change in our values. The first step is to acknowledge that the way we currently design economic strategies and tactics in our cities is not inclusive, nor equitable.”
This inequality and lack of inclusion is what drives the disparities in longevity, and in so many other critical areas of health and well-being, that we witness every day here in Cleveland.
On the last day of the convening, during a question and answer session, I challenged members of Forward Cities to develop maps pinpointing where philanthropic funding goes in each of the four participating cities. I already know what the Cleveland map would look like: The majority of the funding from foundations goes to the wealthiest areas of the city.
In other words, the rich continue to get richer, while the poor get poorer. Can the Cavs uplifting win challenge or change that dynamic? I would like to hope so, but we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
Greg Brown quoted Dr. Harry S. Green, a systems change theorist at the University of Chicago, who wrote, “Every system is exquisitely designed to produce the result it gets.”
In Cleveland that system is designed so that in most cases — money goes to money.
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://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.