{"id":18875,"date":"2026-03-26T15:49:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=18875"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:49:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:49:55","slug":"when-naming-the-truth-becomes-the-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/when-naming-the-truth-becomes-the-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"When Naming the Truth Becomes the Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/em>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

America has a problem. It doesn\u2019t want to know what it has done. – <\/em>Ta-Nehisi Coates\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

The most dangerous thing a community can do is remember.<\/p>\n

When Toledo City Council accepted a $20 million federal infrastructure grant last Tuesday, about 15 members of the African American Legacy Project (AALP) rose united in silent protest as it passed.<\/p>\n

Community leaders had asked for a temporary hold \u2014 not to kill the grant, but to ensure that the Art Tatum Business District \u2014 the central cog of the AALP\u2019s Dorr Street revitalization effort \u2014 was explicitly named in the ordinance language.<\/p>\n

Council refused out of concern for losing the federal funds, they say. One councilwoman called the statements from those who question her commitment to her community \u201ca lie from the pit of hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

That response deserves scrutiny. The community did not obstruct; it remembered, highlighting a historical pattern of harm. Such accurate naming is threatening because it compels those in power to confront their roles in that pattern.<\/p>\n

In the 1930s, federal redlining maps designated the Dorr Street neighborhood too risky to invest in \u2014 because Black people lived there. In the 1960s, Interstate 75 was routed directly through that same corridor, demolishing homes and businesses that had made Dorr Street Toledo’s Black Wall Street. Urban renewal followed, clearing away what the highway had not. By 1977, the city announced that widening Dorr Street would be an economic boon to the neighborhood, even though most of its buildings had already been torn down.<\/p>\n

Drive down Dorr Street today. Where over 130 businesses once operated \u2014 barbers and grocers, insurers and tailors, nightclubs and pharmacies \u2014 four Dollar stores now bookend the corridor without a single historical landmark to honor it. The pattern does not require an argument. It requires only a calendar and a map.<\/p>\n

Of the funding approved in 2023, $700,000 was set aside specifically for Dorr Street. Ask anyone on that street what was built with it. Then ask yourself what $700,000 was ever going to build, anyway.<\/p>\n

Now comes $20 million, with no explicit commitment to the Art Tatum Business District. The community that has read this ominous handwriting on the wall before is now told that its insistence on specificity is the obstacle.<\/p>\n

That is not a misunderstanding. That is the same old pattern, repeating.<\/p>\n

The current political moment is transferring infrastructure dollars from historic Black corridors to downtown bike paths while calling it equitable investment, as previous administrations \u201ctransferred\u201d Black prosperity to the suburbs and are now blaming the people being robbed.<\/p>\n

AALP\u2019s leaders were merely asserting that what is happening now is a continuation of what happened before. That simple reframing transformed a routine infrastructure vote into something council members were unprepared to engage with: a referendum on decades of institutional failure.<\/p>\n

When Toledo City Council can’t answer the factual history, they attack the witnesses. Right?<\/p>\n

Councilwoman Cerssandra McPherson’s response \u2014 a lie from the pit of hell \u2014 is not the language of someone calmly disputing a claim; it suggests feeling personally implicated. McPherson and Council President Vanice Williams both represent the affected area and are Black.<\/p>\n

So, AALP\u2019s naming of the community\u2019s oppressive experience did not land as an accusation against a distant, indifferent power structure. It notably landed on people who have staked their political identity on being champions of this community. That is a more personal wound than a policy disagreement\u2014and it elicited a more personal response.<\/p>\n

Here is where naming gets complicated for Black elected officials operating inside institutions that have historically failed Black communities: it puts their presence in those seats on trial.<\/p>\n

The community’s counterargument \u2014 that representation in council chambers does not guarantee equitable outcomes on the ground \u2014 is harder to make in two minutes of public comment than to feel across 60 years of broken promises.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the defense becomes about identity rather than policy. The question of whether the pattern is real never gets answered, because the energy goes entirely toward rejecting the implication that anyone in that room is responsible for it.<\/p>\n

Council President Williams did not deny the history. She pivoted \u2014 to investment figures, to safety improvements, to an invitation for residents to call her office. But once a community has clearly articulated the specific pattern of harm, generic claims of progress no longer satisfy.<\/p>\n

You cannot respond to ‘you have made us promises before and broken them’ with ‘but look at what we have done downtown.’<\/p>\n

Wood, the former labor leader and a past president of the NAACP, quickly picked up on it. What he flagged was the temperature. The dismissal. He was all too familiar with the old institutional reflex: when you call someone out, and the naming has gotten too close to the bone, shift the story. Make the witness the aggressor. Make the grief the provocation. Make precision look like an attack \u2014 and suddenly the official is the one who was wronged, and the history that prompted the whole exchange never has to be answered at all.<\/p>\n

Again, the most dangerous thing a community can do is remember. And the second most dangerous thing is to say so in public.<\/p>\n

And this matters enormously in the context of the city\u2019s repeated betrayals and broken promises, because one of the most insidious things they can do is produce \u2014 not just material poverty, but a poverty of expectation.<\/p>\n

When a community that once built banks, hotels, pharmacies, nightclubs, and doctors’ offices from scratch is robbed and then disappointed by broken promises often enough, a poverty mindset develops, and survival becomes the aspiration.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the system expects you to stop trying to thrive. Instead, you are being conditioned to negotiate for less, even defending yourself against hope itself, since hope has become a liability\u2014the very thing used against you.<\/p>\n

Yet, the African American Legacy Project remembers. They came to name what thriving looks like on these Black blocks and to insist that it is not nostalgia \u2014 but a standard.<\/p>\n

Hold every ordinance, grant, and every allocation to it.<\/p>\n

And every leader who won\u2019t, should say so plainly \u2014so the rest of us know exactly where we stand.<\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor America has a problem. It doesn\u2019t want to know what it has done. – Ta-Nehisi Coates\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The most dangerous thing a community can do is remember. When Toledo City Council accepted a $20 million federal infrastructure grant last Tuesday, about 15 members of the African American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[340],"class_list":["post-18875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18876,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875\/revisions\/18876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18875"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=18875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}