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Don’t Dance to the Tune … Buy the Fiddle
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
“Own the cow and enjoy the milk.” “Buy the fiddle and
call the tune.” “Plant the tree and sell the apples.” “Lease
the loom and make the suit.” “Buy the school and groom the
scholar.”
Now, you can take your pick of the above aphorisms and
apply its principles to what collectively we as a community
need to do in Toledo in order to get rid of a lot of mental
and emotional debris that clogs up the pipelines when it
comes to blaming society for what ails us.
It is obvious to this writer that the following
scenarios need to be developed not as a dream but as a plan
so we can rid ourselves of some excuses of being a
victimized passenger and not the role we should be aspiring
to and which is the owner-driver:
(1) Education. TPS is on a careening course of failing to
educate minority children to reach their full potential
(note: I am speaking collectively and not of the many
individuals who are able to trump the system and
successfully negotiate life) and to be articulate and
morally-sound student scholars. Any education without a
moral component simply makes one an educated
fool. Solution: Community members and
organizations must coalesce to start, fund and maintain
their own schools of excellence from K-1 to high school.
Carping, complaining and bemoaning about what the
public schools did and are doing to our kids is nigh
insanity because the same complaints about the same
conditions over long periods of time are producing the same
results. Either do for self or simply “sit in a corner and
have a tantrum.”
We, the parents, are the ultimate teachers and role
models for our children.
Change can be accomplished but if the will is not
there, then years from now, we will still be carping about
how pitiful Toledo Public Schools are and how bad they are
treating Shauntae and DeMarcus. Enough already! Being a
victim is easy. Doing something about your victimization
takes courage and work and sometimes money.
(2) Police Misconduct. When cops go bad and start bullying
the very people they have sworn to protect and serve,
it is high time that the public servants, which they are, be
reprimanded.
Quickly and thoroughly so as to be an example to anyone
else who believes that wearing a gun and a badge gives you
power to abuse at will.
The citizenry has the final say or power over the
police force, not the chief of police or city council.
The people can petition for redress to the council and if
they fail to act, you vote them out of office and fire the
police chief.
Solution. The need to resurrect a police/citizens
review board with subpoena power and the ability to take
sworn testimony and take their findings to a grand jury.
Only a diligent review board that is populated with
people who are not scared of a blue uniform will be the
proper buffer zone between Gestapo tactics and freedom from
unreasonable searches and seizures (that includes police
misconduct and brutality cases).
Toledo had at one time such a review board but you do
not hear from it at all. It is probably defunct and such
duties, by default, seemingly went to the Board of Community
Relations which needs to be equipped with subpoena powers
and to be able to refer matters to the county prosecutor for
indictments when so warranted.
Even a better idea: study up for the police and fire
classes and become a firefighter or police officer and
become an agent of change.
(3) Yakety-Yak about “others” in our community.
This is a no brainer. Why is it when “others” being
defined as Koreans, Chinese or Mid-Easterners camp out in
the central city and buy up corner lots or
open up carry outs and other stores which always sell the
“community building blocks” of: beer, wine, cigarettes and
Lotto tickets, that some black folks get bent out of shape
when they get shabby treatment in those stores either via
insulting customer service, shoddy goods or unkempt
premises?
Want to correct those problems? Easy as blinking your
eyes: Don’t patronize any store that treats you with
contempt or insults you with high prices or shoddy goods or
crude comments.
Make your complaint and simply walk out (put the goods
back first) and never return. Never. Now, wasn’t that easy?
Better yet and this requires a change in attitude:
gather up some family and friends, pool your resources, form
a corporation, buy up land and buildings and start your own
commercial activities. You want revenge? Success is the best
revenge. Just don’t do or become the same person that you
complained about!
(4) What’s In A Name? Plenty! Quick quiz. What do the
following names all have in common?: Da’taneysaia,
Bosylenzia, Snow White, Caulosandra, Hermenisota, A’moleysia,
Mumdiforba, Kozeeleeta, Jay-Drusolemia, Effornia,
Losquesovea, Ike And Tina Turner (this is just the first
name of the child!) Va-Onsey and Ophrehetta.
You guessed it. Names (?) that a black parent pinned on
a poor black child. Why?
The parents thought they were being “creative” but, in
fact, they were being quite short sighted in their thinking
because such a horrendous moniker will follow that child all
of the days of their life and immediately identify them as
being a minority child.
Parents, quit naming your kids as if they are aliens
from Neptune! Get a baby book of names and quit using that
ouija board.
There is nothing “cute” about ridiculous, hard to
pronounce names. They are laughable…not commendable (I know,
I know…the emails are zinging their way right now!).
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