‘Worthless. Devalued.’ Lexington’s Black community exposes damaging racism, disparity
One question has plagued Jay Calhoun’s mind since trolls hijacked a Lexington public meeting and filled it with racist slurs.
“What did we do for you to hate us, just because of the color of our skin?”
There’s only one explanation he can come up with.
“The answer is always nothing. Nothing. We’re just here.”
Calhoun was one of many residents who tuned in to a June 17 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Council meeting on Zoom to voice concerns about accountability and racial bias in policing. He was also one of many who was subjected to three hours of hate speech that targeted the city’s Black, gay and Jewish communities.
It was a wake-up call for some. For others, it confirmed what they already knew.
“That Zoom meeting not only showed me that racism is still alive and breeding very well, but it also gave the council members an opportunity to see just how real racism is,” Calhoun said.
Skin color can affect how residents live, learn, work, raise their children and interact with police or leadership in Lexington. The Black experience is distinct and rarely explored by the larger community — until police shootings, demonstrations and a pandemic pushed racial disparities to the forefront. Lexington has assembled a Commission for Racial Justice & Equality to try to dismantle systemic racism. At the end of September, It’s supposed to make recommendations to the city on actions to take.
It won’t have to look far to find places to start.
Black people in Lexington get 23 percent of all traffic tickets and warnings despite making up just 14 percent of the driving-age population. Less than 1 percent of the city’s business contracts go to Black-owned businesses. The percentage of Black students who are proficient in reading, math and science at Fayette County Public Schools is lower than students of any other race or ethnicity. Even COVID-19 has exposed racial disparities, as Black Lexington residents make up 20 percent of all cases and one-third of all hospitalizations.
Calhoun, an employee at Champions Kitchen at the University of Kentucky and a Chicago native who moved to Lexington about six years ago, has been a regular at protests around the city. His mother married a white man when he was 3. His stepfather treated him and his mother just like anyone else.
“Racism is something that I never necessarily saw,” Calhoun said of his upbringing. “I never noticed it so tough until I moved to Lexington.”
Calhoun said he never imagined becoming so involved in protests. But the June council meeting is part of what showed him activism is necessary.
“At first, I was very angry, but my anger soon dispersed into pain, you know, and hurt, and frustration,” Calhoun said of the meeting. He couldn’t make it through the whole thing. He still hasn’t gone back to watch it since.
“I just don’t want to relive that moment again,” he said.
Those recent protests have called for changes to Lexington police policies. Protesters have asked for a citizens review board to handle discipline when an officer is accused of abuse of force and more.
From cops to courts, concerns abound in the justice system
After her son’s accused killer got probation, Tonya Lindsey was disgusted.
Police said Ezavion Lindsey was shot by his half brother, Eric Trigg, who was initially charged with manslaughter but got his charge reduced to reckless homicide. Trigg received probation, something Tonya Lindsey couldn’t believe.
Black victims do not get the same treatment as white victims, Tonya Lindsey said. When white victims are involved, penalties appear to be harsher, she said.
“Where is the justice for innocent life that has been taken?” Lindsey asked.
Race and law enforcement have been at the heart of Lexington’s protests over the last couple of months, sparked in part by the officer-involved deaths of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis, as well as the death of Daezon Morgan in a motorcycle crash here in Lexington.
Brandon Means, a Black officer with the Lexington Police Department, said he agrees that there are bigger-picture concerns.
“Obviously, there’s a big problem within the judicial system as a whole,” he said. “We know that. If a minority person commits the same crime as a person that is not, typically the penalties are harsher. How do we fix those things? I don’t have the answer to that.”
While every department can improve, Lexington officers don’t act with racial bias, targeting Black people for arrests more than white residents, Means said.
Other Black community members said they fear being stopped by police because of law enforcement’s violent history with Black people. Many families have survival discussions. It’s referred to as “the talk.”
“From the outside looking in it’s called ‘the talk.’ But that’s just part of regular dialogue,” said Devine Carama, a hip-hop artist and community activist who grew up in Lexington. “That’s just learning to drive in our households.”
“There’s a genuine fear and a history to relationships between law enforcement and people of color,” Carama said.
Rev. Nathl Moore, a pastor at First African Baptist Church, took it one step further. While publicly addressing demands that Black faith leaders had for the city, he said Lexington has an “eroding mistrust that exists between Black citizens and law enforcement.”
Carama’s dad, a former police officer, gave him the talk when he got his driver’s license.
“It was everything from ... where your hands should be if you get pulled over, hands on the wheel, hands on the dash,” Carama said. “When you see the lights, windows should already be down. He told me not to grab anything until the officer got there.”
Carama said he knew his dad had respect for the police profession, but he told Carama it was essential to follow the instructions.
“I specifically remember my dad telling me, like, ‘Son, everything I’m telling you could be the difference of life or death. So everything I’m telling you, I need you to do every time you come in contact with police,’” Carama said.
Carama said his dad had that talk with his brother, and Carama gave a similar talk to his daughters.
He’s put the talk to use. He said as a young man, he once got lost in Wilmore trying to get to Danville and was pulled over by two police officers who made him fear for his life.
They asked if he’d been drinking. Carama said he doesn’t drink or smoke.
“Two officers actually had their gun drawn on me while I’m sitting in my car and asked me to get out of the car. So I got out of my car, hands on the back of my head, walking backward,” he said. ”They handcuffed me, placed me by the police car.”
Carama said the officers had a dog with them, which was barking, so the officers told Carama they needed to search his 1993 burgundy Oldsmobile. He agreed, unaware he had the right to refuse.
“I was thinking two things,” Carama said. “Number one, I might not live. You know, I was literally afraid; we’re in this dark, secluded area. They could kill me, and nobody would know what would happen. But the other thing was like, you know, what if they’re planting something in my car?”
Carama said after the dog searched and found nothing, they let him go, told him how to get to Danville and drove off.
“I just sat in my car probably for 20 or 30 minutes just crying,” he said. “Didn’t get a ticket, was pulled over for no reason, guns drawn on me, dogs going through my car, and I just felt emasculated. I just felt worthless. Devalued.”
He said as a community activist, he feels like he has a good relationship with Lexington Police Department leadership, including Chief Lawrence Weathers. But incidents still happen that make him feel that way.
Some community members said the behaviors taught in “the talk” have to extend beyond police interaction to everyday encounters.
“It’s kind of a checklist that you’re going through when you’re pulled over,” said Christian Motley, a policy strategist for StriveTogether. “Consequently it’s a checklist that you’re going through as you’re walking through the mall, or as you’re walking down the streets of your neighborhood, and gosh, that’s just a crazy way to live. But we have folks every day who are kind of living that everyday sort of struggle.”
‘Schools still look like they looked in 1960.’
Davita Gatewood wants to be a teacher again, but her views on Fayette County Public Schools have her looking at alternatives.
Gatewood is a lifelong Lexington resident and mother who has worked for Fayette County Public Schools off and on for almost two decades as a parent-educator, teacher and cheer coach.
She’s trying to go back to school to get her master’s degree and teach again, but she’s not confident she’d get a job offer in Lexington because the school system doesn’t seem to give minority candidates a fair chance, she said.
“We have lost amazing, phenomenal teachers to other districts because when we come here, and teachers of African-American or diverse descent apply, they don’t get the job,” she said.
“Some of our schools still look like they looked in 1960, and it’s 2020. You might have one black teacher or none at all.”
A lack of Black teachers significantly harms the experience of Black students, she said.
“The message is that I can be your janitor and I can sweep your schools, but I can’t come into your classroom and teach you unless you’re at Carter G, or somewhere else where the staff is predominantly Black. Why is that not the case at Beaumont? Why is that not the case at Jessie Clark? Why is that not the case at Dixie?”
The 2018-19 report card for the district showed that Black teachers make up 7.3 percent of total teachers. White teachers make up 88.3 percent of the roster. Black students make up 22.9 percent of the district’s student body. White students make up less than half.
The results include lower student achievement. Currently, the Fayette school district has significant achievement gaps between white students and their peers.
The percentage of Black students who were proficient in reading, math and science last year was lower than any other race or ethnicity in Fayette County Public Schools, according to school district data.
Elementary-level science was the only subject and grade level in which Black students did not have the lowest percentage of proficiency, outpacing Hispanic students by less than 1 percent (14.4 percent compared to 13.8 percent). However, in middle school level science, the Black proficiency percentage fell to 9.8 percent for the 2018-19 academic year. The percentage of white and Asian students who were proficient in middle school science more than four times higher.
“A lot of our kids are tuned out when it comes to education, and I don’t blame them,” Gatewood said. “They don’t see themselves in what they’re learning. … Every day our kids are learning about what everybody else did, not what they did.”
One of Gatewood’s children, NyAshia Gatewood, said missing one day can leave students feeling like they missed history lessons about Black people.
Davita Gatewood said she has experienced white teachers who make the issue worse by entering the classroom with racial bias.
“A lot of it was stereotypes and generalizations, you know, ‘I can’t get them to sit down,’ and ‘I can’t get them to do this’ and ‘I can’t get them to do that.’”
When white students act the same way, they don’t get the same treatment, Gatewood said. They’re viewed as “eager” or “excited.”
The lack of minority representation extends beyond teachers, Gatewood said. It stems into sports and other extracurricular activities for students.
“We can have a whole football team full of students of color, but sometimes their cheerleading squads don’t reflect them,” Gatewood said.
And when sports teams do properly represent their schools’ racial makeup, it’s not uncommon for athletes to be looked down on by other schools for their diversity. Racially-charged incidents have occurred.
Carama said he remembered people chanting racial slurs at him on the court when he played basketball growing up.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association needs to get involved, Gatewood said.
“As a parent, you’re sitting there helpless because your kid is being subjected to that,” she said. “It makes them feel a certain way, so why are we not addressing it?”
Black people can ‘hit a ceiling’ in Lexington
Opportunities for minority entrepreneurs and young Black professionals are limited in Lexington’s business community, according to Motley, the policy analyst for Strive Together, a national organization that works to improve outcomes for people of color.
Motley said in 2018 he was part of a group that went to Minneapolis to observe why it was considered a “stopover city.” The city found that young Black professionals were leaving because the city didn’t provide enough professional advancement for them to stay there long term.
Young Black and minority professionals, including Motley, met in 2018 and identified racial disparities that still exist in Lexington. People of color often feel excluded in workplaces and from city decision making.
“People don’t feel access, or they don’t feel included enough to participate in those kinds of conversations,” he said.
The discussion also showed minorities feel their workplaces are too insular.
As a lifetime Lexington resident who has been in the workforce since she was 16, Lindsey said she’s seen the problems firsthand.
“Black people are not treated equally,” she said of workplaces. “I see why they don’t want you to talk about pay because I’m sure the pay is not equal. I know the discipline is not equal.”
The rate of employment hasn’t been equal either. The total rate of unemployment in Lexington-Fayette County in 2016 (the most recent year of available employment data by race) was 3.5 percent. But the rate of unemployment for non-white residents was 4.6 percent, according to the Kentucky Center for Education and Workforce Statistics. The unemployment rate of non-white males was 5.2 percent.
Official unemployment data for Black people in Lexington amid the COVID-19 pandemic was not available, but the unemployment rate for all of Lexington was about 11 percent in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employed Black workers face challenges their white counterparts don’t. Calhoun said he gets judged at work because white people don’t expect him to be as intelligent as he is. There is automatic distrust because of his skin color.
When walking to work at Champions kitchen on the UK campus, he waves and doesn’t get acknowledged. “After I put my uniform on and I’m an employee there, now everybody has so much conversation and wants to talk so much,” he said.
“When I’m just a regular guy walking to work in street clothes, I’m suspect.”
While on the job, Calhoun said he feels people interact differently with him because he is Black.
“It blows my mind, you know having conversations with some of these professors or some of these higher-ups at the university and you hear, ‘oh wow, Mr. Calhoun, you’re so articulate, you speak so well,” Calhoun said. “Well, am I not supposed to? Is that not common for someone to know how to carry on a proper conversation?
Those reactions drive minorities elsewhere, to places like Dallas, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Nashville, to achieve more in their career, Motley said.
“Lexington should be right there with those places,” he said. “What you find is folks of color who can find other people of color. Places that are rich in culture and diverse. Places where there are economic opportunities and opportunities for leadership.”
Motley said the COVID-19 pandemic magnified racial disparities.
The Paycheck Protection Program from the Small Business Administration offered loans to companies that used most of the money to retain employees. But those loans were less likely to go to Black-owned businesses, as well as companies in rural communities or owned by “low-wealth individuals,” Motley said.
“It just revealed that typical banking practices leave folks out,” he said. “And that’s not just during COVID. That’s during any other time.”
Cultural exclusion leaves Black Lexingtonians closed off
Like workplaces and positions of leadership, Lexington’s cultural offerings and activities — art, recreation, entertainment and public events — aren’t welcoming enough to diverse races.
“I’ve heard a lot of critique of different festivals and events that we’ve had that, if it’s not the Roots and Heritage Festival, maybe it doesn’t feel like something that actually is open to me, and that’s unfortunate,” Motley said.
Motley said there aren’t enough spaces in Lexington that allow different races to “connect across differences.”
“My experience may be sitting in a restaurant where I’m the only Black person in the restaurant,” he said. “I just think about what are the places in our city where we can connect across differences?”
An artist from Nairobi, Kenya, Kiptoo Tarus hasn’t found Lexington to be racially inclusive. Tarus came to Lexington in 2013 to attend graduate school at UK, where he also taught.
The cultural disconnect has caused Tarus hardship. In 2014, he said he got into trouble at Two Keys Tavern. It started because he didn’t fit in properly.
Tarus said he was dressed “eccentrically” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He wanted to celebrate. He got weird looks from the bouncer and the bartender before he sat down and ordered expensive Pappy Van Winkle. He gave the bartender his ID and debit card, but suspicions continued.
“The waiter was looking at where the Pappy Van Winkle is that has never been opened. It’s up there on the top shelf, and you know, it’s just not believed that I was ordering a Pappy Van Winkle. And it’s just like, ‘yeah, it’s Martin Luther King day. I want to celebrate this.’”
Tarus said he got up to dance because Bob Marley was on. He never got his Pappy Van Winkle.
“The bouncer’s next to me, and he’s like ‘Hey, excuse me sir, you need to come with me.’” An altercation ensued, and Tarus said he was charged with public intoxication.
“It was just like, ‘Oh my goodness, what did I get myself into?’”
In art, Tarus gets frustrated that he’s constantly referred to as a “Black male artist.” He said his work has been creative and exemplary, and he proved himself qualified to teach art. But “Black man” has always preceded any other description.
“I was very prolific at school,” he said. “I would create. I would make award-winning pieces ... It was like, ‘Oh, he’s a Black guy. He’s a Black artist.’ That just got into me big time.
“There’s so much stereotype attached to that. It can’t be like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s just good.’ There’s something about it, every time.”
Tarus has had work featured around Lexington, including in front of the Lyric Theater, Henry Clay Estate, at Castlewood Park, on Short Street and on UK’s campus.
Division has been found in religious circles as well. Means said one of the most prominent racial incidents he can remember came from other members of his church as a child.
“I remember a family that was just very judgmental ... just because I was black, you know, for no other reason,” he said. “I was 9, 10 years old.”
Means said he later found out there were people who told the pastor at the church to kick him out. Means still attends that church.
“Those people that have that negative perception of Black people, they left years and years ago,” he said.
Are racial issues improving or not? ‘It’s become more obvious’
The Black community has attested to racism still existing in Lexington and elsewhere, but some say progress has been made in their lifetimes.
Racism is at least more prevalent now, even if it’s not worse than it used to be, Lindsey said.
“I think it’s become more obvious,” she said. “I think now there’s more light being shed on the situation. I think it’s always been horrible, but now people are just not being discreet about it.”
Everyone “wants some sort of justice,” Tarus said. “I’ve seen it like, just mature. It’s not like it’s getting better. Things are coming to the top ... it’s bubbling up in itself, and we’re seeing all these things all over the world.”
Motley said he’s happy in Lexington, but he doesn’t believe that everyone in the Black community is having that experience.
“I find Lexington to be a great place to live,” Motley said. “But I think in order for it to be all that it should, we have to do all that we can to ensure that any success we see as a city reaches down and across all of our neighborhoods. And I think there are far too many examples of disparities.”
In his everyday life, he said he tries to make Lexington “a place where no one is ‘othered.’”
Gatewood sees similarities in today’s racial issues when she compares them to the past. The hateful language her children and their teammates have been subjected to in sports are the same as what her brothers dealt with when they were football players in school.
“They held up signs that said N-word go home, you’re not welcome here,” Gatewood said of some of her brothers’ opposing fans.
For Calhoun, he thinks racist behavior is being seen more often.
“Will Smith said it best. Racism isn’t getting worse; it’s being filmed,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun said when racial slurs are being yelled in the open, and there’s opposition to demands for justice, it can serve as a marker for change. He wants to see what progress can come from the turmoil.
“I’m a very firm believer of everything happens for a reason.”
This story was originally published July 31, 2020 at 1:12 PM.
CORRECTION: NyAshia Gatewood’s name was spelled incorrectly in a previous version of this story.