A Victim of Cultural Disparity

I met James a little over two years ago. Every Saturday or Sunday I go to Skyline Chili for lunch. Skyline, a chain founded in Cincinnati, is an Ohio tradition. It has legions of followers and there is one located about two miles from my house.

After having gone there for a few months, I met this skinny little black kid who was a waiter there. I would estimate him to be about 5’8” and weigh about 135, with close-cropped hair and a flashing smile. He said his name was James. Every time I came in, he would engage me in conversation and make sure he waited on my table.

One day, he saw me getting out of my car and he came over to admire it. I drive a 2015 black KIA Soul with red, “Batman” trim. It’s a nice car, with a full sunroof, and James, who drove a Soul that had been in an accident, could not stop talking about my car.

As the months and years went by, I became acquainted with everyone at Skyline. My two favorites were Rod, a pudgy, bald black guy in his early forties, and James. Every week, they would update me on their previous week’s activities.

James was working multiple jobs. He would often come to work at Skyline directly after leaving his other job at a convenience store. He wanted to learn all he could about business. He wanted to become a businessman. He was hard-working, focused and indomitable.

He reminded me of another young black kid I met thirty-six years ago.

Glen Hall was a twenty-four-year-old sales representative when I first met him. He was working for Baxter and I was the Director of Materials Management at Timken Mercy Medical Center in Canton. Like James, Glen was a skinny kid with a world of enthusiasm and desire to learn as much as he could about healthcare. He became my mentee. I allowed him to set in on meetings so he could learn from the inside how things worked.

Over the years, Glen and I remained close. We both moved out and up in the world and in 2008, Glen asked me to come to work for him at ECRI as Area VP of Sales, with the North and West as my territory. That territory included Ohio, and once, when Glen and I had business in Cleveland, Glen took me on a tour of the neighborhood he was raised in on Cleveland’s East Side. We drove through sections that looked like the aftermath of Armageddon, finally coming to a place on Chester Avenue. Glen pointed to a boarded-up structure among a series of burned-out houses. “That’s where we lived,” he said.

That was when I graphically realized that we do not all start out on an even playing field. Over the years, Glen had told me how he had grown up in the “neighborhood” and how he had to negotiate everything that went on around him- how he got a job at the library and how he tried to keep the lowest possible profile.

It’s interesting how people can tell you things in one environment and you nod your head as though you understand. Then you go to the real place the person was talking about and the entire experience is totally different. I’ve had that happen twice in my life. The first time was Vietnam. The second was on Chester Avenue.

All of a sudden, I realized that Glen’s rise to the top was way more difficult than anything I ever faced. He came from an environment that was created beginning in the mid-60’s when America began losing manufacturing jobs overseas. Cleveland, like Detroit and other northern industrial centers, had seen its population swell during WWII and in the post-war industrial boom created by the fact that Europe and Japan had virtually been bombed back to the Stone Age, leaving the U. S. virtually without competition. For twenty-five years, the cities grew and flourished. Then both Europe and Asia began to recover, and U. S. firms started to farm manufacturing out to other countries with cheaper labor.

In the wake of those decisions, ghettos were created in what had recently been prosperous neighborhoods. Coupled with the move of many inner-city whites to the flourishing suburbs, the accompanying revenue loss from taxes led to a situation in which a Culture of Disparity became the rule of the day. The suburbs had money and the good schools. The inner city had schools with no resources and little control over the behavior of the students, coupled with a “survival culture” ridden with gangs, guns and violence.

Glen made it out and up.

James did not.

I saw James in the parking lot of Skyline two weeks ago. He was down- his normal upbeat demeanor replaced with a head-down saddened face. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that his 24-year-old brother had just died in a freak accident. Evidently, he had been shadowboxing, slipped and hit his head against a table. He slipped into a coma and died a few days later.

Last weekend my son and his husband were visiting from Nashville. On Saturday, we went to Skyline for lunch. I introduced them to Rod and asked where James was. Rod said, “James probably won’t be coming back.” I knew that James was always working toward improving himself, so my first assumption was that James must have found another opportunity. I asked Rod what happened, and he said, “James’ brother died, and he went into a depression and got into an argument. I don’t think we will see him here again.”

I left disappointed, but thought nothing much about it.

Yesterday, I went back for lunch. I looked for Rod to find out how James was doing, but Rod wasn’t there. So, I casually asked one of the waitresses, “What’s the story with James?”

“You don’t know,” she replied. “James is dead.”

I couldn’t breathe. Tears filled my eyes. Somehow, I managed to ask what happened.

It seems James was someplace in a group of people and got into a heated discussion over the death of his brother. The person he was arguing with pulled a gun and blew him away- that simple…

… and that final.

I started crying right there in my booth. James was a wonderful young kid. His life was ahead of him. But he grew up in a survival culture where arguments, no matter how trivial, were settled with violence.

Today I remain stunned and saddened- stunned by what happened to my friend and deeply saddened by the fact that we as a country turned our backs and closed our eyes on our fellow citizens- sold them out, deserted them, defunded them and left them to fend for themselves.

Until we recognize that the inner-city problem is one that was created by industrial profit-seeking, greed and neglect and commit to addressing the problem, things will only continue to devolve and there will be many more James’ in the world- hopeful young men who never really had a chance.

As long as bad things happen to someone else, everything remains in the abstract. Like Vietnam, like Glen’s neighborhood and like the situation when your next-door neighbor loses his job or gets COVID, those things don’t mean anything until they happen to you.

Then you understand. Sadly, as a white person, I will never understand the cultural disparity that black folks face every day. I can only empathize and do what I can to help.

But I can understand what it means to lose a friend to that cultural disparity.

James, you were robbed of the life you should have had.

I grieve for you with tears of sadness.

Farewell, my friend.