A Story From a White Person to White People

I wanted to take this time to tell a story that may help white people like myself understand how we may be exacerbating the current racial divide while not realizing it.

Back in 2012, I was excited to be part of a program to give wireless access to the East 30th Street area of Cleveland, Ohio. For context, this program was to help increase access to technology for an economically challenged area within the city of Cleveland. To do this, we would deploy a wireless network from a local hospital and then provide training and tablets for all that participated.

The program required any family that was provided with the technology to go through several training programs, to ensure that participating families would be able to use and engage with the technology. The training was provided by Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). The vision was to help increase the educational capabilities of the area and the number of local children that would attend college.

The president of Metro Tri-C was an amazing man with a vision to encourage kids and families to take a greater stake in their community. He shared with us a concern that we had never considered: when people in this community get trained and skilled, they look to move out. He wanted to build a program that encouraged people to stay and grow the community. It was an important vision that I had never thought about.

With our vision and mission defined, we assembled a large group of economic nonprofits, businesses, hospitals, educators, and church and community leaders. This team of engaged and intelligent people started the process of helping this community.

I started by meeting with schools in the area to learn what families may be the best to select for such a program. I learned what the schools would want to see from such a program, and I discovered something that I took for granted. The children in this area did not have access to the technology in their homes. My family had direct access to the internet, so my sons could do research and find information with ease. We all know of the digital divide, but seeing it in person made it very different for me. To the question of access to technology, many people saw an answer in community data centers. But something that the students shared with me was that they were scared to be out at night. If they had to go somewhere to complete their homework, they wouldn’t out of fear.

This helped me understand that many of the families in the area were woman focused. In many of the families, the woman was the core adult, working multiple jobs and working to raise children. I wrote several papers on how the program would need to focus on the needs of women in the area. We also used this to connect with churches in the area to create content and value for families.

Everything was going very well at that point, and we had over 100 families scheduled for training and a long waiting list.

That was where my first personal failing came forward.

I took the prejudiced view that being in the area was not safe, and it caused me to be slow in going into the neighborhood. I had been told repeatedly that if I go into the housing areas, I would be in great danger.

My first change in perception happened when I finally went and performed the wireless site survey of the area, which included setting up wireless equipment and using a laptop to test the coverage. I was sure that people would come out and harass and attack me for being there.

Here’s what actually happened.

Over the three days that I did my survey, I was never accosted or attacked. Instead, children came up to me and asked what I was doing. I was excited to show them how I was testing the wireless service. It was amazing to see the kids get so excited about technology.

Now, economically depressed areas can be dangerous, but we who live in safe neighborhoods need to realize that the people who live in those areas face that fear every day. It is unfair of us to say how bad those areas are, and then not help the people who live there have better lives.

Even with all the success and engagement that was happening, the program ran off the rails, and it happened because of unjustified fears. At one of the shareholder meetings, it was shared that we could not provide “these” people new equipment because they would not take care of it. There was no evidence to support this, but in the end, that notion was accepted. Because of this “concern,” the group determined that they could not move forward as it would be a waste of resources. This program ended at that point based on a misguided and prejudiced misconception of the people in this area.

One failure on my part was not fighting that perception as hard as I should have. I had talked and worked with the people from that neighborhood. I saw the excitement they were showing. I knew that they would have respected the equipment given to them, as they have had to take the time from an already overburdened day to get this equipment. I would not have worked that hard for anything in my life, so I found it hard that they would not value this moving forward. A few hours a day for two weeks was a massive burden on a woman that was already working two jobs and taking care of several children. I cannot think of a person who was more committed to a program than one who was willing to take such valuable time to learn how to do it right.

Looking back, I realized that I did not give the people that lived in this neighborhood the respect that I should have. This was not because I truly hated anyone that lived in that area, but because I allowed my own misperceptions to lead me to believe things that were not true.

I’ll end on this thought: remember that it is very easy to not realize that you are prejudging people without giving them a chance, and that can hurt them. The failure of this project could have cost another group of children a chance. Basic opportunities that my sons have by living in the suburbs are not available to the children in these neighborhoods, and that makes it hard for them to advance. It is unfair but true, and we have to put aside the notion that they have to “earn” it and focus on what we all need to do to help them get to a level playing field. That means we are going to have to invest and trust that they also value that investment. We cannot see people in these communities as others, and instead need to think of them as families trying to make a better life. 

Ken Fanger is the President of On Technology Partners and the author of 7 Styles of Emotional Selling. He lives with his wife, Lucy and his two sons.