By DEDRIA HUMPHRIES BARKER
Kamala Harris says we’re not going back, but these past two weeks has me hearing the refrain to a popular 2010 junkanoo band song by Baha Men. The song refrain was, “Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who let the dogs out?”
The answer is racist politicians. Their bite has sunk deep, tearing a ragged-edged hole in Springfield, Ohio’s, pursuit of community happiness.
Springfield city officials canceled their diversity, arts and local culture celebration set for this weekend in the aftermath of a rumor spreading about people violating American food customs. Hate has descended on the city, threatening safety at the public event.
The event is called CultureFest, but it could be called art fair. Or Pow-Wow. Or Juneteenth. Or Fiesta. Or Tet Festival. Or tailgating. St. Patrick’s Bash. Ox Roast. Blues, or Jazz, or Blue Grass Fest.
We’ve all been to these kinds of events. They are all about community, not politics, though a petition might be circulated or candidates allowed to shake hands. It’s not about them. It’s about getting out of the house. Meeting neighbors and friends, and catching up.
It’s the kind of thing we longed to do after the shut-down, but now these mundane community festivals been chewed by the canine-toothed, foaming-at-the-mouth presidential campaign of the Republican Party, which used racism to eat the heart of Springfield, and America.
JD Vance, an Ohio U.S. senator and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, lied about Springfield’s Haitian residents. Media attention was his goal; racism was his tool.
If it had not been Springfield, it would have been some other town struggling to right itself after an epic fall from industrialism. I feel especially bad that it is Springfield, Ohio, because I owe them.
The event that sparked my book, “Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow,” happened in Springfield. My great grandparents, a mixed-race couple, lived in Springfield. When my great-grandfather died in 1912, my great-grandmother put their three Black children into an orphanage in Springfield. And that’s all my family ever knew about this event until I started researching.
My mother thought the cause was solely racism; I had a different idea, yet while researching I discovered Springfield is as good as it can be, but, like the U.S., not without flaws. Like racism.
America’s efforts to avoid dealing with slavery and the resulting racism has been front-page news for years, and a rock in the shoe of Black people. But now here comes the presidential contest of Beauty and the Beast to fire-up a smoldering unease about the newcomer Haitians, Black people who have achieved critical mass, some 15,000, now composing about 25% of the Springfield population. It can happen to any small U.S. city.
In the early 20th century, Springfield was the straw that stirred the national drink. A prominent player in the formation of the farm equipment corporation International Harvester, Springfield boasted that it was “second only to Chicago.”
But it has not been that in a long, long time, like a century.
What Springfield needs is people. What residents are trying to accept is that those people are Haitians. They settled in a town most Americans would not consider. It’s the same with farm labor. If Americans worked the fields, there would be no work for migrants, but Americans don’t.
Fortunately, some Haitians have good jobs, such as the electrical engineer who owns his home and three other properties. In the midst of this mess, he was quoted as saying, “They hate us.” And so shrinks Haitian pride in their meaningful contribution to their new community.
Most American towns have race problems to rise above. Detroit’s 1943 race riot erupted in an environment of resentment over Black people having good jobs. In that melee, police killed 17 Blacks; 675 people were injured. Then came 1967.
Springfield had twin race riots at the beginning of the 20th century — 1904 and 1906. Those involved a Black man killing a white man. But in both cases the flowing lava was the more than 4,200 Black people living in a city of 45,000. Black kids attending good public schools; Black people owning businesses. Unions barring Black members. A KKK presence.
The result was the Black neighborhood, called the Jungles by people who wrote the history, burned. Like in Tulsa. Hundreds of innocent Black people victimized because they were Black.
No way Springfield, which now makes useful, small-money items like brooms, is supposed to be at the core of presidential politics and national media. But it’s there, shoved by a crudely grasping presidential campaign that seeks to incite national mob tendencies, and heave vulnerable and excitable voters off the cliff.
It ignored and undermined community institutions, which, though imperfect, nevertheless are local. Police, mayor and state governor all said, nothing to see here.
Except community sacrificed, prey to hate and fear and lies, dumped into the volcano of political ambition.
Like most of the U.S., Springfield has a history of intolerance of non-whites. That makes America easy pickings for crooked candidates whose aim for high public office is personal, and only personal.
That’s the tragedy of canceling CultureFest, a community gathering trying to dilute a cauldron of simmering suspicion. These celebrations of diversity, while simple, hold different people together in community, and move them all forward.
(Dedria Humphries Barker is a Lansing author, educator and freelance writer whose column appears on the last Wednesday of each month. She can be reached on Facebook.)
