E1: Least Livable

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In January of 2020, Bloomberg CityLab published an article about a new study from Pittsburgh researchers, naming the best and worst cities for black women. Among cities with at least 100,000 black women, Cleveland came in dead last in terms of livability.

In this city, with a nearly 50% black population. This news dropped like a bomb, and reactions were mixed.

[Music Playing:]

Do you think Cleveland is really the worst for black women? And what do you say?

Participant:

I say …

Participant:

It depends on the person.

Participant:

When I dropped it in one of my black girl group chats, the emojis were just eye rolls.

Participant:

I’m not surprised. Not even a little.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Is heartbreaking and also embarrassing.

Participant:

Is it like this everywhere? Is it me?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Like this city will make or break you.

ChiChi Nkemere:

We have a city of black women that are looking around at their outcomes, their future, their past and saying, “This city makes me anxious.”

Participant:

If anybody's out there listening in Cleveland, please get out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On Living For We, we talk to Cleveland's black women from all walks of life. From the CEO of one of our major healthcare systems, to self-starting entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, students, and mothers who've experienced loss.

We share stories from these women as change makers and architects of their own futures. Celebrating their victories, challenges, and personal growth along the way. So, is it really true what they say? Is Cleveland deserving of the least livable title?

And what can we do to make lasting improvements for black women in our city? I'm Marlene Harris Taylor, and this is Living For We, a project of Connecting the Dots Between Race and Health, from Ideastream Public Media.

[Music Playing]

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Hello everybody. Welcome into the podcast. We are elevating voices of black women to find out about their lived experiences here in Cleveland. I don't have to tell people who live here in this former Rust Belt city that it's still very segregated.

Large numbers of black people live in neighborhoods on the east side that many would argue don't receive their fair share of government funding or attention. While across the river on the west side, neighborhoods that are largely white are booming with development and growth.

Cleveland is also a city that seems to be in the midst of redefining itself. There's a relatively new young black progressive mayor, and several new emerging black leaders.

Let me tell you, I've been a journalist for years in reporting and managing health reporters for over six years here in Cleveland. So, the fact that there are health disparities for black people and black women in this city, it's no surprise.

But to find out that Cleveland had been named the least livable city for black women by Dr. Junia Howell and a team of Pittsburgh researchers — well, even I was floored by this news and I wasn't the only one.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Hello, welcome to the City Club of Cleveland at Happy Dog.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It's December of 2021, and here in this neighborhood bar called the Happy Dog, known for hotdog, concoctions, tater tots, and live music: two Cleveland researchers, one white and one black, came to discuss that Pittsburgh study. ChiChi Nkemere and Bethany Studenic were moved to create their own Cleveland based research study called Project Noir.

After listening to hundreds of personal stories of women who responded to their survey, ChiChi and Bethany say Cleveland is failing black women. They came to this forum at the Happy Dog to talk about Cleveland being named the worst city for black women. And to hear from some of the people who packed into the bar, a young woman tentatively steps to the mic in front of the room.

Participant:

So, I just wanted to say my question is, I used to really wear the strong black woman as like a badge of honor, and I really resent it now. And I've had a lot of conversations with coworkers that are black women and I don't want to resent it.

I don't want to be a strong black woman anymore. I'm tired. And I just wanted to know you guys' thoughts on that because I really used to love that, and I don't want that anymore.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

ChiChi takes a moment to gather her thoughts before letting go of breath, before responding.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Woo. As somebody that used to also wear that banner, I don't want to be one either. I'm a soft black woman. I'm a vulnerable black woman. I'm a black woman that should be financially taken care of. I'm a black woman that should be educated. Like I am all of those multitudes.

And to just put me down as strong is to ignore all of the other ways that I am, like Bethany had talked about, microaggressions. I think that your feelings of resenting it are true and they're real.

And there was a tweet that I saw when Stacey Abrams really helped organize and pull off that historic win of two senators in Georgia. Everybody was like, “Black women will save us. Yes, black women.”

And then there was a quote suite that said, “But who saves black women? Who is going to save black women when we're always the saviors?” Put the burden down, sis. That's not your burden to hold at all anymore.

We need to save ourselves. We are constantly in community with each other. And we need to be able to have other people be able to fight that fight for us while centering our voices.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That response from ChiChi is at the heart of this podcast: centering the voices of black women as we consider how to save ourselves. Is there room at the table though for others who want to help? Bethany told the crowd at the Happy Dog that allies are needed to call out racism and microaggressions when they see them.

Bethany Studenic:

I particularly want to call out white women. We understand what it is like to be marginalized. It's time to align behind black women. And so, we start by solving the hardest problems first, and then we work out them then.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Bethany calls what she just described targeted universalism. I'm really intrigued by this idea of solving the hardest problems first as an interesting way to approach issues like racism and equity.

ChiChi and Bethany together make up enlightened solutions. And it's under the banner of this company that they created the Project Noir study. They'll both be with us throughout this season of Living For We.

Bethany Studenic:

People are often confused, I think, or they haven't encountered a friendship like ours. Like I'm from a rural area. I grew up in low socio-economic background. I'm white.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You're white?

Bethany Studenic:

I'm white. I know you're just finding out. There's a lot of pieces that we’re different. I was homeschooled. ChiChi was very much in school and super popular. And so, we can ask that-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Were you a cheerleader, ChiChi?

ChiChi Nkemere:

I was the co-captain of our cheerleading squad for three years running.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How did I know that?

ChiChi Nkemere:

I was also school president like when I say I was Suzi high school.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How interesting. And I guess foreshadowing it is that you guys met at the Justice Department.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And here you are pursuing-

ChiChi Nkemere:

Justice.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Justice.

Bethany Studenic:

And part of it was because in our conversations we saw how the process that is meant to “bring justice” to Cleveland really wasn't. And the ways in which it was, like I said, re-traumatizing the community.

What we saw was that consistently community members were asked to come in, tell us what happened to you, which is tell us about a traumatic experience. And then the response is, “Here's why we can't fix this. Here's a bunch of policies that justify what happened to you.” And it just happened over and over and over again.

And when we looked at it, we realized, there's an opportunity to really channel community frustration, community pain into actual change here. But the actual participants in the system, those in power at the time, weren't really interested.

And so, for us we knew we needed to start some sort of apparatus, some sort of organization to help people organize and help them navigate these systems that are not listening to them, that are not considering their experience, their life, their needs, because they weren't built to.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

When ChiChi and Bethany discovered the Pittsburgh study, it caught their attention to say the least.

Bethany Studenic:

I remember, I think you sent it to me, ChiChi.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Yep.

Bethany Studenic:

And I started reading through it. We weren't surprised in our conversations. I think the first thing you told me was like, “Of course.”

ChiChi Nkemere:

No, I think it was “Duh.” I think my response in text was like, “Duh” with a billion emojis behind it.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

When professor and researcher, Junia Howell shared the study findings at a Pittsburgh News conference in September of 2019, she had no idea that it would connect with people in Cleveland and lead to further research by ChiChi and Bethany.

She also didn't know she'd later partner with a national news publication to create the ranking of cities in terms of livability for black women (the one where Cleveland landed at the bottom). Let's go back to that moment when a group of journalists, academics, and civic workers gathered at Pittsburgh City Hall to hear the results.

Junia Howell:

Pittsburgh's white men are similar to white men in cities across the country. Likewise, Pittsburgh's white women have similar outcomes to those incomparable cities across the country.

However, the story is quite different when it comes to Pittsburgh's black residents. Most notably, among these, is Pittsburgh's black women's maternal mortality rate. Even though black women in Pittsburgh are more likely to seek prenatal care, then black women in other cities, as well as less likely to have diabetes, hypertension, and infection during pregnancy.

Likewise, Pittsburgh's black women are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty than black women in other cities. We are not only not making the city livable for our black residents, but for all of us.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

While the reaction in the room that day was underwhelming, Dr. Howell's study would go on to make huge waves in the city of Pittsburgh, and ultimately, over 130 miles away in Cleveland, Ohio.

Junia Howell:

I compared black, white men, women across a whole long list of livable indexes. Things about our health, how long are we actually physically living? How many people are dying of cancer versus heart attack?

Then a little bit more broadly, your economic outcomes, employment. Who's employed? What sectors are we employed in? And then education. Who's getting education? What are your experiences in education? Who's getting disciplined with police versus just write-ups? Who is passing their algebra test in middle school?

On the health side too, looking at infant mortality, all those kind of things. What are all the components that we could measure empirically with the data we have? And say, how livable are these places for these different people?

And then creating a ranking system. The gender story was just not really there as much as the race story for black residents’ period, but particularly for black women, the city was so much more unlivable.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

This is not what the mayor and others in power wanted to hear. Junia began to get pushback from them. She even began to get hate mail from people outside of City Hall.

Junia Howell:

When reports come out that are not favorable to an administration, it's really easy to bury them. And so, I was very intentional about wanting a press conference, a certain kind of rollout that made sure the community was just as informed at the moment that the mayor was.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Reports like this can often be put on a shelf and forgotten, but as fate would have it, a reporter from a national publication was in the audience and he wanted to learn more.

Brentin Mock was working for what is now Bloomberg CityLab. He reached out to Junia, and they collaborated on a series of articles about the study. It was his idea to focus the first article on the best and worst cities in America for black women.

So, you are the one that's responsible for Cleveland being at the bottom of this list.

Brentin Mock:

I think Cleveland is responsible for Cleveland being at the bottom of the list. When that study came out, I mean, it was powerful in Pittsburgh, like everyone took notice.

First, it put the city's mayor, city council administration on notice. Black people in your city have some of the lowest living standards and outcomes of black people in any other city. What are you going to do about it?

Then there were a lot of grassroots organizations, racial justice organizations, long entrenched, kind of like reproductive and gender black women groups who they kind of were like, “We already knew this, like we've been saying this for years. We've been saying this for decades. Why is attention being paid now to this because of this study when we've been saying this for years again?”

Again, if we hadn't covered this, the city probably would've just swept us under the rug and kept it going. I mean, I did a few stories, now I'm going to keep twisting this dagger until like something comes out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But they couldn't sweep it under the rug this time. The data was there and so was Brentin and it wasn't going away on his watch. There was so much importance placed on the data, the hard facts and metrics, put together by white researchers.

Without their work, no one on a national or even a local scale may have ever known about the inequities in Pittsburgh or in Cleveland. And that's a complicated reality.

Brentin Mock:

As we know, there are people who work in office, who work in banks, who work in finance, who they don't do anything unless there's some hard data there. They're not moved by the stories. They're not moved by the anecdotes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh yeah. Don’t move by the data.

Brentin Mock:

Don’t move by the data.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

As Junia said, that part about black women was not the highlight of her study. You thought, “Oh, it might be interesting to just isolate out black women in this.”

Brentin Mock:

Just the way I approach journalism in general, I try to highlight black women when I'm quoting people in my stories. I'm very intentional about finding black women because I think black women's voices are severely underrepresented in the media.

When people talk to city residents about their city, it's white people or black men. So, outside of like Essence Magazine, you don't really get a holistic view of cities of issues from a black woman's perspective.

Meanwhile, black women carry a lot of the burden of keeping cities together, keeping economies together, keeping democracy together. I wanted to do something that was outside of the norm, which was looking at livability through the lens of the population that is often caring cities on their backs.

Whether they're doing the hard and dirty vulnerable labor at the hospitals, or they're in people's homes taking care of other people's kids, then coming back to take care of their own kids or being the teachers in the schools.

When you go to companies or nonprofits or even city administration buildings, often what you see are some white people at the top who are making decisions who you won't even see.

[Music Playing]

But when you walk into any building, it's usually a black woman sitting behind that desk taking care of all the administrative stuff. For black women to be carrying that kind of emotional and economic and socioeconomic burden, it's kind of baffling that we don't actually hear more from them.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I don't want to get too personal into your business, but may I ask where you developed that sensibility?

Brentin Mock:

So, my father's a Baptist pastor. We would go to a lot of churches. The church that we went to, we had black women pastors. But then we would go to other churches and black women weren't allowed in the pulpit.

I remember that was something that kind of stuck out to me a lot because when you looked out into the congregation in the pews, it was mostly black women.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Hello?

Brentin Mock:

You looked in the choir, it was mostly black women. I mean the ushers.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. Now, you talk about institution that relies on the labor of black women. The black church would not exist.

Brentin Mock:

I was just always like, “How come a black woman cannot be the leader or the representative voice or face of this church?”But they have no problem letting them go down in the kitchen and like serve dinners for everybody. They're always more interesting, anyway.

They tell the truth. I think they're much more candid and usually, because they are, are probably impacted by whatever issue or subject that I'm writing about personally, so-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The realness of black women will continue to be a huge theme of this podcast. How black women sharing their experiences truthfully and candidly has often helped move the needle towards a better world for everyone.

But all this realness can come at a price. What's the cost of black women's mental, physical, and spiritual health when they're the ones always expected to be strong and to speak the truth?

Black women in Cleveland and elsewhere are breaking barriers every day, but the majority remain trapped in low level jobs fighting to survive. Well, I tell you the number that resonated in Cleveland is that Cleveland was the worst.

And so, the headline screamed, Cleveland is the worst place for black women based on this study. For the larger community and the white community, it felt like a gut punch to be labeled that. But for the black community and for black women in particular, it felt like validation.

Junia Howell:

Other cities at the bottom would've still shrugged and been like, “Okay.” But I think it's really testament to the black woman in Cleveland who picked up the mantle and said, “Okay, we will take this moment of feeling vindicated and seen. Our city is feeling a little bit of a gut punch and we will walk with it.”

It's not just being at the bottom it's what you've done with it and who's been at the table to do something with it.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, Bethany and ChiChi, and many others heard about the Pittsburgh study and pondered what they should do with this information.

Bethany Studenic:

ChiChi pointed out something really important. Bethany, did you notice that they didn't talk to any black women? Not one? And the data analyst in me was like, “Yeah, I didn't catch that.” Because I was so distracted by the quantitative data.

I was like, “Ooh, high school graduation. Oh, pay differences.” Like this is all very interesting, but at the end of the day, it doesn't tell us anything really about what it's like on the ground here in Cleveland for the women who are experiencing this.

And as a white lady reading this, it's helpful for me to know that we're on the bottom, but what can I do with this information? Doesn't give me anything that I can actively, tangibly do in order to support my sisters.

Nobody's spoken to these women. We don't know what they're actually experiencing. We know we're on the bottom and everybody's lamenting that, but nobody's asked like, “What’s happening?”

So, we knew we needed to get to the bottom of that. And then, ChiChi was like, “Well, someone here's going to pick it up.” Like so, an anchor institution, someone here-

ChiChi Nkemere:

I was stalling.

Bethany Studenic:

And-

ChiChi Nkemere:

Ooh, I was stalling.

Bethany Studenic:

Educational institution, like they're going to want to do something. But what we saw unfortunately was instead public discussion after public discussion, committees, commissions, just discussing it, but not really, again, not talking to black women. And again, not really getting into what's actually happening. So, we decided, listen, we're going to do this.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Truthfully, it sounds very, very simple, but it's very revolutionary to sit down and say, “We're going to just speak to black women based on their experiences within those three fields.” That's really it. It's how do you talk to black women coming into a room and believing them first and then speaking about these experiences.

Participant:

Court staff are like, “No, you have to be an attorney to come back here.” And I'm just like, “Great. I got on a suit, I got on a briefcase. I got this big file in my hand. You want me to pull out my Supreme Court card?” Like defendants don't come in here looking like this.

Participant:

I code switch when I go to the doctor's office. It's unfortunate, but I do.

Participant:

But I see so many black people that are underemployed, like you have an MBA, why the heck are you on Medicaid and you can't find a job.

Bethany Studenic:

When we outright ask them, “Have you experienced harassment or discrimination in any of the systems?” 90% of them will tell us no. But when I ask them, “Tell me about a time you were uncomfortable at work.” They describe extreme harassment and discrimination.

Participant:

He hated me. I ended up finding out that he would refer to me as a [censored] girl.

Bethany Studenic:

We started asking, “Have you ever had a comment about your hair at work?” A lot of people wouldn't bring it up, but whenever I specifically asked them about it, “Oh yes, I did. Now I remember.”

10 comments about it.

“Tell me about a time that you were uncomfortable with your doctor.” “Now that you mention it, there's been a lot.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The data is comprehensive and damning. For example, according to their research, 74% of respondents said they felt they had been passed over for a job or promotion they were qualified for. 73% felt excluded from key educational opportunities. 60% felt spoken down to about their own health or symptoms. It's demoralizing to hear.

Participant:

Just the kinds of questions that I was being asked by the doctor, they didn't seem like normal questions, like “Do you have health insurance? Are you going to be able to afford this?”

Participant:

It's a birthday picnic lunch or whatever, and the union president was like, “Don't forget y'alls watermelon. You know, y'all like watermelon.” Young black girl, fresh from grad school telling middle-aged white men what they can and cannot do. They did everything that they could to make that experience a nightmare for me.

ChiChi Nkemere:

We have this chip on our shoulder ethos around us where it's always like, “Oh, come on. The folks that live here, we're doing the best we can” is the theme that I keep getting is like, “Oh, we're trying our best.”

Or the bitter side that we've seen from a lot of business leaders and CEOs is, “Well, they don't really understand us. You're just doing this to talk us down.” No, no, no. It's James Baldwin that says like, “I love America more than you would ever know. And that gives me the right to criticize her.”

It's the same way that I think about Cleveland: you will never catch me loving a city more than this. I am a Cleveland evangelist, which is why I need Cleveland to be better for the children that I am going to have here. I'm 34, I want a gaggle of Clevelanders here.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But it's interesting that you say though, that the women, black women were like, “Duh”. And the CEOs were, “You just don't understand us.”

ChiChi Nkemere:

Because they don't talk to us. They talked to us for getting coffee. They talked to us for DEI initiatives that they do not read. They talk to us to be their “pet projects.”

So, you'll see a lot in Cleveland, the 2, 3, 4 black women. They're like, “Oh, have you met this person? Have you met such and such?” And they're telling me like they're telling me a new person.

“Sir, every black woman knows every black woman in this city. You're not telling me anybody new. Like you are not doing anything revolutionary.” And the thing that they're not understanding is that we talk to each other.

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Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And the communal power of black women in Cleveland made their survey a huge success, a purely digital effort. Black women influencers, journalists, and community members shared the survey with fervor resulting in a huge range of responses.

Bethany Studenic:

We had 450 responses from black women in this region. We actually had to shut down the survey because we were getting data from across the nation. People were passing this on. We had 100 responses in our first day. I was dumbfounded.

ChiChi Nkemere:

One participant took the survey and halfway through the survey, called her mom told her mom to take the survey. And then her mom called her mom, so literally the grandmother to take the survey. So, it ended up being very intergenerational. We had responses from people as young as 18 all the way up through their 80s taking this survey.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And none of this would've been possible without the support and enthusiasm of black women in the greater Cleveland community, the community at the heart of Living For We.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Our Latina sisters, our black sisters, those are the individuals that are going to be birthing the next generation. And we need to be investing and thinking about ways that empower the folks that are already here.

That retain the folks that are already here and not looking towards outside of Cleveland to solve our problems. We already know the folks here. The people that are the most proximate to the problem are the people that are most suited to solve it.

[Music Playing]

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On our next episode, A Lay of The Land, we examine the politics and history of Cleveland and how it influences the lives of black women throughout the city. We'll speak with one of the most well-known black women in Cleveland, Samaria Rice, organizer, activist, and the mother of Tamir Rice.

Her son was tragically shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer when he was only 12-years-old. She's working to keep his legacy alive and build a better world through the Tamir Rice Foundation. She'll share her thoughts on Cleveland as a black woman.

Samaria Rice:

At this point, the system is broken. There's really nothing that I can’t think about, is that it's white supremacy work, white supremacy at its best. Nobody's going to listen to you. You a black woman.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's next time on Living For We.

Thanks for joining us. You'll find more episodes of Living for We on evergreenpodcast.com, ideastream.org or wherever you get your podcast. Leave us a review on Apple Podcast, letting us know what you think about Cleveland and what you're interested in hearing us talk about on the show.

And if you're a black woman in Cleveland and want to share your thoughts with us directly, our hotline is open. Leave a voicemail at 216-223-8312, and you may just hear yourself on the podcast.

Living For We is part of the Connecting the Dots between Race and Health Initiative from Ideastream Public Media, produced by Evergreen Podcast and made possible by generous support from the Dr. Donald J. Goodman and Ruth Weber Goodman Philanthropic Fund of the Cleveland Foundation.

The Living For We team includes myself, Marlene Harris-Taylor, host and executive producer, Hannah Rae Leach as our lead producer, and Hey Fran Hey, as producer and creative director.

ChiChi Nkemere and Bethany Studenic of Enlightened Solutions are our researchers, data analysts, and community partners.

We get production help from Stephanie Czekalinski. Original music, including our theme song is by Cleveland artist, Afi Scruggs. Our mix engineer is Sean Rule Hoffman. We'll see you soon.

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