The Return of the Native Son [1]

 

Cincinnati

Arrived in Cincinnati on May 12^th. Who said you can never return home! In 2001, Timothy Thomas became the fifth African American male to die in Cincinnati Police custody in a six- month period. His killing ignited a racial rebellion centered in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood where it occurred. Five Black men had died in the custody of the Cincinnati police between October 2000 and April 2001. The next several times that I returned to the city every time I hit town the police had killed another Black man. And one time a Black man had killed a cop! You could almost cut the racial tension with a knife. Department of Justice intervention in the form of Consent Decrees had been ongoing since 1981, and after the 2001 conflagration the police force has diversified along race and sexual lines and steadily improved its community relations.

 

But as I arrived this year a Black teenager had been shot and killed by police as he and three others fled from a stolen car. The deceased had a gun, though he was fleeing and not aiming it at the police. The next day the dead kid’s dad drove his vehicle into the security detail at the University of Cincinnati’s graduation, killing a Hamilton County deputy sheriff. The father has been charged with first degree murder. His attorneys have waived a probable cause hearing and entered a not guilty plea. The defense cites the fact that the father had just seen the body camera video of his son’s killing that morning, and that, in irreconcilable grief, he committed the vehicular homicide of the deputy sheriff. What a rude reception for the return of the native son!

 

I mentioned in my last post how the southeast quadrant of Ohio is essentially Appalachia. Cincinnati, in the southwest corner of the state across the river from Kentucky, is “where Appalachia ends and the great midwestern prairie begins.” As such, it embodies a kind of heartland gumbo featuring mixtures of the southern and midwestern culture and politics. Long a city controlled by Republicans, Cincinnati has gone Blue since the campaigns of Barack Obama. I don’t recall any South Asians in the city when I grew up, but we now have a Democratic Indian American mayor, Aftab Pureval. The city also has a woman police chief and the county sheriff, elected by popular vote, is a lesbian: all of the trappings of a forward-looking coastal city.

 

But not so fast! Vice-President J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, grew up in Middletown, thirty miles north of Cincy. He is from the same stock as Appalachian Whites who migrated north during the same period as the more ballyhooed Black migrations from the deep south. Vance’s peeps are all over Cincinnati and he makes the city his home away from D.C. Now his half-brother, Cory Bowman, is running for mayor against Pureval. Bowman gives sermons at a nondenominational church and manages a local coffee shop. He is a longshot after getting just 13% of the vote in the primary, while Pureval garnered 82%.

 

Perhaps more threatening is the fac that former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy turns out to be an Ohioan too! After turning down Trump’s offer to co-manage the Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy is running for Ohio Governor and has already received the state party central committee’s endorsement. The governor’s office has been controlled until now by moderate Republicans like current governor Mike Dewine and the previous one, John Kasich. But Vance’s Senate victory in 2022, and the victory of fellow MAGA man Bernie Moreno over Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown last fall don’t bode well for a Republican primary opponent, or a Democrat in the 2026 election.

 

On a more positive note, I’ve noticed the growing Latino presence in the city in my last few visits; also, not something I grew up with. I had the pleasure of attending a Latino Fest event on Fountain Square. There was a hot band playing Afro-Latin tunes and Salsa dance lessons were offered from the stage to a mass audience. I understand that Latin bands will be playing on Thursday nights on the square all summer.

 

Finally, the craft brewing movement, which started in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s has caught on nationally. Cincinnati is dominated by German immigrants who stopped their sojourns there, because the Ohio River Valley reminded them of the Rhineland. There has been a strong brewing tradition there since the 1850s. The old local brands (Moerlein, Schoenling, Hudepohl, etc.) have been resurrected, and new breweries have popped up everywhere. I stayed at an Airbnb operated by Fibonacci Brewery located near my mother’s residence. Now that’s my father’s Cincinnati! 

 

Reference

[1] The title borrows from the title of Thomas Hardy’s 19th century novel, Return of the Native, originally published in 1878 in installments in the British magazine Belgravia.