“It’s time to address the ‘That’s just the way it is’ mentality”

The Community Conversation can be viewed in its entirety on our website or on the Dayton Daily News Facebook page. Find more Black History Month coverage and contributors to February’s 28 Days of Black Excellence project at daytondailynews.com/black-history.

Editor’s Note: The transcript below has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Anthony Head:

What I’m doing with exposing our students to experiences is shortening the gap to greatness. There’s an entrepreneur, Marty Grunder, who has a large landscaping company. When I was in third grade, he came to my class and spoke to me at Jefferson Elementary about his journey. So when you see icons and idols and business leaders at the highest level of success come back to you, what it does is shorten that bridge. Now it doesn’t seem so impossible. Now, it’s just a matter of taking some very strategic steps. So I’ve been very intentional about that, not only in my culinary career, but as an educator to help students see “You can do this, too.” And what people don’t know about that trip where we took our students to a three-star Michelin restaurant in Chicago is the chef/owner is from Ohio. He said “I absolutely will have you guys come in here.” So my students got to go to that restaurant, work in that restaurant, and by surprise enjoy a 12-course meal they had helped prepare. All these glass ceilings — they’re very real. But I’m a former tailback. I know how to hit the hole and keep running. Now I know there are people behind me and they can see me go through that path and they can follow behind. It is that tough, but you got to run fast. You got to be strong. You got to train you got to prepare yourself for the moment. So now we come back to the classroom and I say “Hey guys, you saw what success looks like, here are the steps you have to follow to do that.”

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I have to own the land. I have to own the building. Because putting the fate of my business in the hands of another... they don’t care. Let’s talk about policy and redlining. Ghettos in urban environments are not created by the residents because what are you going to find in most urban areas — renters! And guess who owns the rental? Do a quick search online if you see dilapidated houses and see who owns it and then see where they live. Historically, in this community, it was within 20 miles outside of city, Now you’re getting people from outside the state buying land sight unseen, just to hold on to it for speculative reasons. They’re buying land all around the hospitals, all around the growth centers, and holding on to it. But in the meantime, the residents live in those communities are dealing with that ramshackle house, that eyesore, those poorly kept yards, and then people in the community look at it and think “that’s the people who live there’s fault.” And it’s not. We have to buy back the block and then build it back better. I just bought a bunch of land around my restaurant and we’re going to develop it because otherwise it’s just unkept land and it brings down the entire value of the community. I won’t go into the politics of integration versus segregation. But when you had to do it on your own, we did it on our own. That spirit is still within us. It’s right here in this city.

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My sons think I’m all-powerful, almighty at all given times. So what can I do? Can I recreate the world? I cannot. But I can manage this little piece of it. With these little guys, they’re growing up. They’re growing up and watching their father, they see how he deals with people, how he deals with avoiding violence, having a voice. They see how I deal with business. They’ve gone to the lawyers offices with me. They see me on days that I’m in court and see me in a suit and they see me in a restaurant that I’ve built and now a logo that has their name on it. So it always goes back to legacy and the day-to-day being present by not looking so far forward or looking so far back. The most important thing is my presence in my sons’ life. And that’s why as I move into the nonprofit space myself, it looks to be an organization that helps bolster the importance of Black fatherhood because we’re here, we are present. I was raised by a widowed Black man, a former airman who came from the South and made his way here in the Midwest. The myth of the absent father just isn’t true. But what is keeping fathers out of their homes and being present in children’s lives and how do we repair those relationships? And I think the first and most important piece is showing how important it is for fathers to be present. Maybe not in the home, but least in their children’s lives.

Dion Green: I always tell my my survivors to speak up and share. You’re not alone in this fight. There are people in the room who’ve been through it. To get to the real core of it, I say that we need to create a “brave space.” We always say we need to create safe spaces. We should create a brave space to be vulnerable and be that person to step up, to say hey, “I’m feeling this way.” I just want our communities to be able to address, prevent and support survivors in all realms of trauma. It wasn’t until I started really learning what trauma is that I realized I’ve been experiencing it since I was a kid. This is how bad trauma affects a person. I had a youth program going on two weeks ago. You know how schools would have book fairs? I was never able to afford one. It took me back to that moment when I was a kid and it was like “Wow, I remember I used to want the little strawberry erasers that you could smell.” That little thing really had an impact on my life. I know our thoughts are stuck in their ways and some are willing to change but if I can save our youth, they can be our leaders. I feel like they’re going in the right direction. I just got back from Michigan State after the shooting that happened up there, and it re-traumatized me. I still have to have to take it one day at a time.

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If it’s not national news, or a foot on our neck, or being beaten, our pain means nothing to them. I get invited to talk on CNN all the time, on a lot of national networks. I’m so tired of hearing that community violence is Black and then they make mass shootings to be white. Guess what? There are Black and Brown people being killed in mass shootings as well. And when these mass shootings happen, they only want to go to certain friends of mine, like David Hogg and Fred Gutenberg. They’re not the only ones that experienced that. The same day as our shooting was the shooting in El Paso. You don’t hear them talk about them. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t hear them talk about Dayton, since there were more Black and Brown people, if it wasn’t for me. I have to continue to keep kicking those doors down to let them know that they’re not the only one showing up in those spaces, showing sympathy and empathy. It’s frustrating sometimes because I’d be the only Black male there. In a lot realms around the country, even the police brutality fight, I’d be the only Black male there. We need our fathers to step up. We need to see that. We stand here for one reason, and that’s for our children and for justice and accountability.

Te’Jal: Jaz Stewart with iThrive and I were talking and she was doing some research and she saw that we’ve been having the same meetings around food, redlining, education, since 1919. We’ve been having these conversations in this same system, so now it’s time to create a whole new system. That’s where cooperation comes in, and building a just economy. We can’t make too many changes in what’s already here. It’s about stepping away and creating our own system that we can function in. And that’s what CO-OP Dayton does, we build cooperatives and help support cooperatives that are here. Unity always wins. Individualism, it’s it’s a trap, and it’s something that is forced upon us and we think that that is something that works but it never does. It may work for you, but it doesn’t last. For those of you who don’t know, the definition of a cooperative is basically a model of a business where multiple people own it, so it could be the workers or even the community. You have spaces like the Gem City Market, where it is worker-owned and community-owned. And then you have spaces like the Westside Makerspace. We’re seeing all of these different models emerge and most of these cooperatives have just bloomed in the past couple years. We’re seeing this new economy being created, so don’t miss the boat.

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There’s this energy that I really want us to be intentional about breaking as a collective: “That’s just the way things are.” When we talk about mass shootings or when we talk about racism, or police brutality, it’s this idea of “That’s just the way things are.” That’s something that I experienced as the creator of my podcast, “What’s the Biz.” When I would interview Black business owners, the real conversation was before the interview even started. It would be something like “Oh, my landlord won’t to fix this” or ”I’m working with certain officials to make this thing happen or remove this limit on my business.” Black business owners are experiencing policies that are hurting their business, they’re experiencing slumlords that are hurting their business, and that’s just not the way that it should be. And so you can have all of the marketing, you can have all the financial education workshops, but they could still be held back by banks with discriminatory policies. It’s time to address the “That’s just the way it is” mentality. It can be different and we have to create a different space for Black business owners to thrive.

NaAsiaha Simon: I think racism is everywhere, it just looks different. I’m an outsider in Dayton because I’m not from here, but living here these last four years, I would say my experiences are different than what I experienced in California. And it depends on where I am. Whether I’m in Fairborn or I’m in Dayton or even if I’m at Austin landing, the way people look at you, the way people approach you is different. In California, I will say I had a very blessed childhood, but I will say when I went to other sides of town, people would look at me differently or treat me differently. When I’m walking in a store I was you know, followed or peeked over, you know, the aisle — racism just looks different. However, it’s also how we respond to it. Because it’s ignorance. And sometimes you just have to let people be ignorant and don’t let them take that power away from you.

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Being grounded in love is amazing. And when you operate from a space of love, and also your passion, you operate from a space of abundance. There’s just this overflow, but I also just have this mindset that the work that I do has nothing to do with me. When you serve people from a selfless place, it opens up more doors for you so you’re able to walk through these doors and change people’s lives. And so that’s how I’m always in this space, whatever I do. It has nothing to do with me. It’s about people. And if you stay focused on people, you will always be blessed.

Credit: Jim Noelker

Credit: Jim Noelker