John Forren and Marsha Robinson

00:03 My name is John. Forren. I'm 52 years old. Today's date is February 20th, 2019 a we're here at the Miami University Hamilton campus and I'm speaking with one of my colleagues.

00:19 Hi, my name is Marsha Robinson. I'm 54 years old today is February 20th 2019 and we are at the Miami University campus in Hamilton, and I'm speaking with one of my colleagues.

00:35 I want Wii U.

00:44 Sure. All right. Well, I grew up in central Ohio. So my most of my extended family still there, so we grow up about 20 miles east of Columbus and in a working-class family, so

01:04 Higher education wasn't something was necessarily on the radar growing up. And so the idea that I've ended up with a college professor is is unusual in that sense. But so had a good childhood family was nearby and but a very Worrell childhood very conservative childhood in a lot of ways, although I wasn't aware of that at the time and when was the first time I really became aware of politics I suppose.

01:33 It's went in the Reagan Administration and and the first clear political memory. I have other than II vague memories of Watergate for instants and and vague memories of my parents really really disliking Richard Nixon, but I wasn't aware really much of what was going on there. But I remember the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and and how

02:02 How my parents reacted to that and very negative way and and then ultimately on my father.

02:10 Who was on Social Security Disability was one of the

02:16 Hundreds of thousands of people cut from that program in the early 80s and that that was very polarizing politically for my family and he like most of the people who were cut at that point ended up back in the program, but it really pretty serious Financial stress during that time and and I'm 52, I would have been

02:39 1516 yeah, I always been interested in history always been interested in.

02:46 3 government 10 and that kind of thing but that was it's as much as you can tell looking back at that was probably the first time I thought I'd like politics matters this really what happens in government who wins election to lose elections really impact people's lives.

03:06 Marsha what do you think? I'm surprised at how close our lives are because I'm also from Central Ohio in Columbus, neighborhood near Highway 70 and Livingston Avenue. So the rage you would take to go to downtown where the highway curves occurs around my neighborhood because traffic is bottled up. That's it. Yeah. So, let's see what I got a chance to go from a public school to get a scholarship to go to Columbus School for Girls education during the day in the neighborhood of mansions and then with Millionaires and then I go home to my neighborhood my neighborhood.

04:01 African-American neighborhood but mixed it was transitioning from a Jewish Community into an African American neighborhood. My parents were what we called Blockbusters. They help to desegregate the neighborhood.

04:15 Some of my neighbors had college degrees. My father got his degree is a non-professional with a non-traditional student in computer programming. There was a dentist across the street a chemist a nurse and accountant. We are African Americans. So I never thought of us as middle class because we're African-American and a middle-class African-American can't exist. So the rest of my neighborhood was income to verse but what was unique about my neighborhood is almost every other Gentleman on the street at the nickname Sarge because of her all World War II veterans and we had a lot of Tuskegee Airmen in our neighborhood whether they were flyers or support crew. My father was a programmer for the unit. I'm just before they disbanded.

05:01 Oh for me politics started around 1971 when there was an idea from the city to build a high-density housing unit on along the railroad tracks in a field near my neighborhood and my parents were part of the organizers of said you're not doing this to our neighborhood. You're not bringing our neighborhood down. We worked hard to build this. So my first inkling of politics is Grassroots watching people meeting our dining room organized the pamphlets plan who's going to City Hall to protest they won, but they also created one of the first neighborhood Commission in Ohio. If not in the country back in 71 and I seen a letter that acknowledge that stuff for me politics is about taking care of the community and

05:57 My neighbors my church two doors away from our house. They all raised me to take care of the community to be a politician. My first Bible would be being governor of Buckeye girls State program from the American Legion to teach young people how to run government. So it what the idea that a thousand young ladies mostly white would elect me governor on an independent ticket was pretty powerful but the lasting impact is that I took the oath of office with the real Governor Jim Rhodes and then when I went to Girls Nation, I took the oath of office again, so I'm doubly sworn in and the wonderful lady said, you know running the government might be fake but the oath of office is real and there's no exit clause

06:51 So for me that's stuck with you. I still take care of politics and I still fight for the Constitution. Whatever way I can Reagan air is interesting.

07:04 I called a lot of things in the question that time. Ketchup as a vegetable for school lunches. Yeah. Yeah a lot of questions.

07:16 TV

07:26 Mine is going to be from outside the United States because of all of those young ladies who let me be a governor. I was able to go to Georgetown University. And while I was there I happened to meet a gentleman from the embassy of Oman while walking across campus and he said we're sending 10 Americans to the celebration in Oman on the Persian Gulf. I work for the king. Would you like to be the 10th American and I thought he was joking or it was a human trafficking question. It turned out to be legitimate.

08:02 So I was one of 500 college students from 50 countries gathered to do a Parade of Nations to celebrate the king's anniversary.

08:11 And I remember being outside of the was a 10-day trip guest of the king. I met the king and his house looked in my eye to eye and I thought this is what it means to be American. I don't bow my head to a King and that was one thing. I knew the other thing is Hazard as we paraded into the stadium like the flags of countries at the Olympics. The United States was last for the end and we listen to Applause for the Gulf State countries. We listen to Applause from for the other Muslim countries. We listen to Applause for the Europeans. And this was just 1983 a few years after the hostage crisis and we just move the Americans were going to be booed. We were totally scared of going into the stadium.

08:57 But when our flag came into the stadium we were the only country that got a standing ovation.

09:04 And that story still makes me cry even now I'm shedding a tear to know that the world loves Americans they may not love our country, but they love that sparkle in RI and that's what makes us different and that's worth fighting for

09:20 Okay, I don't know. I don't know if this is transformative but it's like an interesting moment of acute political awareness. Maybe when I was teaching at this isn't some sort of young person story. This was about this is about 12 years ago or so and I've been in I have a PhD in political science and spend a lot of time. So we're talking about politics thinking about politics that kind of thing. But so I took a group of students to New Orleans after I right after Hurricane Katrina and that basically was alternative spring break and the basic idea was, you know, you're trying to frame some experience where where students can go see people who are

10:06 You know what from a different cultural background different economic background do some service cultural exposure this kind of thing. So we went into it with purely a teacher had on essential and then we were down there and this was pretty early after Katrina. And so we were gutting houses and I had a group of you know, they were honor students like very highly motivated very bright students and some of them were very conservative and we spent the day so we were sitting at this a long story with very little payoff it somewhere but the so we were we just been about twelve hours like going through somebody's house and you could go through their house and they had dad left this house clearly in a hurry and you can't even see the hole in the ceiling where in the the roof where they had they had put a television in the hallway of the second floor and they clearly if you could see what had happened they like the flood waters.

11:06 Coming up the TV goes into that. They're like we need to get out of here to step on the TV go up through the attic and punch a hole in the roof like this very jarring and that sense that you could see what would have been left behind but very emotional for students to in for me. But these are the political moment was we're sitting under a tree after a very long day of of work there. And so I was going to put it on the teacher hat and like what do you think and let's reflect on us and one of my more conservative very conservative students. Just you could tell he was like stewing on something and he said like I can't believe we're waiting on volunteers to take care of this where is government like why is the government not here doing this and it for some reason I got stuck with me and because it

11:58 I guess my go to sort of moment in my own head when I think about like why is government important and it is I guess you could say it informs my political beliefs in the sense of like

12:09 I can't think of a better argument for activist government and so does social justice there. I mean it all sort of was playing out in that that place so

12:27 I'm curious. Yeah, could you talk about like sort of growing up in Columbus and what that was like, oh cuz I grew up in the same. Of time just 20 miles away in a very rural area and I had classmates who are from 20 miles east of Columbus to so being in Columbus.

12:51 It was a city where I never felt racism.

12:55 Really never it was a city where I didn't even realize we had ethnic diversity in my public school. We were just all kids. It was a city where people identified with her high school and you know certain high school students went to one skating rink is in the African American Community, others went to another skating rink people in my church, many of them have moved from the coal mines of West Virginia Beckley in Bluefield are Family from it like that. So I have a lot of conservative values and in the importance of education and my my father became a minister when I was in elementary school, so being raised a preacher's kid it for me life was a goldfish Bowl whether I was wearing my school uniform or whether I was representing my neighborhood.

13:53 It was very much a straight jacket. I could not do anything wrong without someone telling my parents buy Sunday morning. So

14:04 It was always about moving up always about empowerment always about organizing a community and not seeing social class difference. I just assumed either you live in a mansion or you lived everywhere else. So that everywhere else could be public housing projects. It could be you own your own home.

14:23 But I just never learned to see people as different that's something I've acquired.

14:32 When I move to different places, so I don't have in this area. I don't have a southern orientation. I don't even know how to live in the south the two or three times that I've gone there have been very disconcerting to me because in Louisiana African American, I'm African American African American said, I was white in Nigeria when I went someplace. They said I'm not African in New England. I'm definitely African American and so

15:00 Being in Columbus was ethnicity neutral but it seemed that ethnicity was more important than other places. So I'm always confused when it becomes important.

15:13 Oh, that's so growing up 20 miles away the very homogeneous population. I would not have described it in those terms. I pit where I grew up with a very low and it's different now, but it was a farm community pretty isolated in a lot of ways and where

15:37 Families for Generations stayed and tended to sort of piano graduate from high school. Not a whole lot of college-bound folks there at the time and then they just get a job in the local mail or something and it's the story of most of my family today. And so I had very little awareness of like issues of race because we simply were so white as a community that it it's not all though. I look back and you wonder like what was I what was my mindset when I was a teenager or something like that because when I went away to college

16:18 It was so eye-opening in so many ways because I went to college in Chicago and it's really the first diverse environment I ever lived in and said I loved it in the sense that it was it was politically diverse. It was culturally diverse. But yeah, I like it was so eye-opening for me and I did get out and in such a different kind of environment and my attitudes and our political attitudes are so much different than they were then and I occasionally see that I ran across an essay. I wrote on flag burning as a college freshman that was in my my parents basement basic over the box of my stuff and I saw I read this and like

17:07 It was appalling. That's it. Like I could not believe this was me because I basically was arguing like not only a lack of tolerance for flag burning but these people need to be punished night. I definitely for flag burners and like that is so far from where I am and I'd like I don't know the yeah, I act like I would read that I would read that now and thank like I'm frightened by this person, but it was me like I've done I've had some massive shift at some point, but not at any particular moment. I don't know.

17:42 Yeah, I would consider myself pretty far left now and I clearly was not far left at that point. I don't know what go but his far left at the I don't know. I'm not far laugh time. Maybe center-left. It's okay to be far left makes life interesting. What I'm curious about when you're out of wood seems to be visibly homogeneous this thing that in the United States, we call it white, but in other parts of the world, it would break down to german-american Italian-American even in parts of New York where I lived north of New York City. It was not skin color. It was where to come from just that kind of pre migration pre crossing the Atlantic identity to set still exist in Europe.

18:31 Neighborhood at the time you were growing up. I think it did at the time.

18:38 Yai Thai go back home. And it's that it's enter. It is such a different place. Now. It's a bedroom community for Columbus and a lot more sort of folks who have had other addresses outside of Licking County in their past. But like there was a relatively strong in my family. There was a relatively strong ethnic identity that I'm not even sure was real in the sense that my like my grandmother would say like, we're Irish American. I'm not sure that's true and german-american and it will always baffled me even as a kid frankly like why is this so important to them because I couldn't care less kind of thing I would do and they were in the genealogy in that kind of stuff and I'm just I never have been interested in that but I get the sense now because I we go back that my wife and I are both from the same Hometown. So and all our family on both sides still are there.

19:36 So we can go back frequently. I don't get that sense. That's there that is gone away. I think to it to a large degree. I do go back though. Thinking politically get out. There are people that I'm I would have not seen differences growing up. But now I cannot wrap my head around how they think what they think and I think it's it. I have moved a lot not them necessarily.

20:09 Family family friends my other cousin everybody has a cousin story right with Facebook of that adds to its.

20:19 It's disturbing and I really I mean it's it's interesting as a political scientist. It's my job to understand these things and I do not understand these things in the sense of where their ideological beliefs come from and it's part of this brought her story of polarization really but

20:40 Yeah, we we don't this is not true with most of the family but although in most instances. We just agree not to talk about political differences, but I don't understand the worldview. So it was a very strange thing because I grew up in that environment and now essentially, you know, don't feel entirely connected to it all the way under stand it. I take more than a lot of lot of fellow lefties wood and some sense of like, I understand this order the economic challenges and that kind of thing but in it at the gut-level, I don't ya

21:16 Like I'm not the same.

21:18 Yeah, so one of the reasons I wanted to do this interview is to find out what is that emotion of the people you're talking about. Does it connect to the becoming American story? Where does it connect to leaving through Homeland story? I just wonder if leaving the Homeland stories left and emotional Trace but maybe the details of leaving we're lost to you know, if any of those stories remained in your community.

21:54 Now, I don't know why I read a lot of this is just tribal and some sense that.

22:05 Yeah, I have I have a cousin that we are not on speaking terms now and I grew up with him because

22:15 Yeah, we just do not see eye-to-eye on anything and he is now.

22:23 He ascribes.

22:25 Certain things to me that I find to be deeply troubling typical sort of he's a liberal. He must not like family. He must not like, you know, and I'm a pretty conservative socially. I'm not socially conservative.

22:42 Yeah.

22:44 I don't know what I'm going to say there.

22:47 You know doing at same time. When we're talking about polarizacion, I actually found myself moving from center-left to center-right Road. I became more conservative in these last few years because I don't like the direction of what conservative means and I think that what's being conserved anymore is not the American social contract.

23:17 And that's what I'm trying to conserve. I know that's what I want to conserve. What I think is happening is this fear and I think the fear is Mister directed against African-Americans and other people of color.

23:34 And I have this hunch that the fear.

23:40 Is that the protections of being in the United States against the abuse our ancestors suffered in Europe by the government in Europe? There's a sphere that government might make those kind of abuse is happening again.

23:55 And then sometimes I think the anger is misdirected and I think there's this strange dysfunctional relationship with the Union Jack in the Confederate flag.

24:08 Personal experience. Yes.

24:12 During the last presidential election here in Hamilton where I don't live I remember talking to a woman about the Constitution at a store checkout line and this woman was white working-class and she loved the president and she felt comfortable just reaching over and touching my face in a very patronizing way and during that election. I've had more working class white European American descended people ask me. Where were you enslaved did my family own your family freeway, and I've never had this happen before

25:03 It makes me feel that people miss being able to hurt and abuse and rape and kill African-Americans for fun to do nostalgic for the violence.

25:17 And I feel

25:19 That my America in the Preamble to the Constitution is being abandoned for the system of division set up by some long-dead English notable people from the 17th and 18th century that America is being thrown away and that people are worshipping the nobility to who hurt and exported the European Americans to this continent in the first place.

25:48 I don't want to conserve that. I don't want to conserve the Confederate Constitution that preserves that loyalty to long-dead Noble. I want to conserve the America that freeze everybody from that. So I've had to shift to the right to preserve the American Constitution, but I think people are letting it go if it's interesting you talked about when you use the word fear. Like do you do you do you fear?

26:21 Survive a collapse of

26:24 How much do you fear what's happening here? And in terms of like the rise in there the overt acts of racism and and and the insurer example of this that I ate across the political Spectrum people should have been more outraged that that than they were.

26:49 Sure. So yeah, this was what was the date of that but a year ago or so? Yeah, but a

26:59 There was a you could probably explain this better than me. There was a Bible study going on at a church in Charlottesville. And a young man. I believe his name is Devon route, I think or something like that or this is Charleston to Charleston. I'm getting them confused. What are you talking about? Neo-Nazi? Oh, yeah, the neo-nazis. I really don't understand because Nazism led to any relation of Europeans. Nobody was hurt in Europeans other than Europeans under Nazism. So I don't understand bringing that back why I think that's that. So what what happened to those? Basically, it was a a a gathering of

27:45 Neo-nazis and Clan types, basically and ended up with a young woman being killed and the most jarring part about that beyond the violence itself was that I never was really jarring that like these people feel comfortable enough. It's not like that. The the views haven't been there for you do but they feel comfortable enough in society that you know say out loud what they're sort of deepest darkest thoughts are and that that really scares me a lot in the sense that I and you see it in Everson to this on Facebook. You see it this polarisation this

28:28 And that the

28:30 The changing the boundaries of what's acceptable in the way people treat each other and violence and and the president saying like while they're good people on all sides. No, no, no not on that like they're no good Nazis and yet we have this in the public sphere this openness to this sort of hatred that I don't think we've seen for a while overly. I have a different view is that and it's interesting when were talking about situations I go to the one about race and you went to the one about Nazis. I think that's my concern is these are young people who love their grandparents.

29:14 But we have

29:16 Are you in the neo-nazis? Yes, I think they left their grandparents. And I don't know where their grandparents were during World War II what side they were on I've had some people admit to me that their parents were on the Nazi side during their grandparents were Nazis and their grandparents were not aware that bad things were happening at their grandparents present themselves as good people caught up in a bad time with a grandparent admit to a grandchild looking at them with all Innocents that they were part of the bad side. I see what's happening as an intergenerational problem. How do you love grandparents who participated in some form in some of the most awful things?

30:04 And even if we talked about the klansman, how do you love grandparents and great-grandparents? Who?

30:13 We're fighting for a Confederacy that made poor whites compete with unpaid slaves assistant that makes America poorer.

30:23 And it's just really confusing to me that these young people are trying to love a past generation, but don't understand that in both cases it led to the death of Whites by the hundreds of thousands and millions. That's interesting because I frame this and isn't it not an entirely different way but a very different way because the like I look at these and maybe this is a function of my upbringing at some level like the and I love them dearly my grandparents to some extent my parents had views that I now recognize as being racist, although I would not have recognized that as a child and

31:06 Like I can also I can accept that in the sense that but I look at it. I look at it in terms of lack of Education lack of exposure.

31:20 Likes white. Yeah, I've never struggled with that for instance but might yeah like I grew up in a I mean it's not a very race aware environment, but a pretty racist environment I think and

31:35 But I guess I wouldn't see until the people in that environment to 10 to still hold views that people I know I grew up with who still hold these I just deeply opposed to their they're not they're not bad people. They're not.

31:53 They're not.

31:54 Violent people. They're just ignorant people that didn't you see what I'm saying? Like for I mean I had this ghost. I mean, this is the best explanation I can have for like, why did I go into teaching at some level now you a lot of stuff of Civic engagement at a lot of that is sort of like, what's the best cure for?

32:15 The Neo-Nazi types, like expose them to people they they demonize and then they'll figure out like those people aren't what I thought they were.

32:24 So yeah, like I thought I would even say like the the people a lot of the people who are racist today.

32:31 Aren't playing out the fantasies of sort of the good old days or so. Just going to say in some sort of god-awful races sorta way, they're just they don't know better or something. Does that make sense?

32:45 At that's what I thought until I started talking to people and having candid conversations with them and for some reason.

32:53 Racist have no problem opening up their hearts when I ask them questions.

32:59 So sitting in a oil change place just talking to somebody during the election cycle and asking questions and finding how people use religion to use the Bible misunderstandings of the Bible misunderstandings of the social contract of the Constitution.

33:22 How they find Pride because they have no other information and I remember to concur with what you're saying John this gen one particular gentleman said, what is your source of information? And if I were to spell information it would have been italicized in all capitals. There's this worship of information that people don't have access to and when I drive across country and I'm listening to Infowars and I look around in Rural America. The tallest building is not a library. It's not even a church steeple. There are no libraries in too much of America. And so I'm going to agree with knowledge issues and people are just hungry and I think we need to get more information to them.

34:09 Play I would I would describe a little bit in the sense that we are flooded with information. I would argue like, you know, the we can get whatever information we want to get but we are are more Silo than ever before so the Infowars for instance like yeah, so we've lost the we have no curators of information with people don't know what's true. What isn't true and

34:38 Yeah, we don't we've lost that sense of common space that sense of we can disagree without being disagreeable because we agree on the underlying facts. And now that that is gone. I think that's a new thing American history. And so I end that

34:57 I would argue with that.

35:00 The problem isn't

35:02 Insufficient information. It's

35:06 Not its lack of shared understandings lack of shared assumptions that is beginning to pull us apart.

35:18 Sure. Yeah, the my cousin that I referred to a while back conversation. I had to spend quite a while ago though of where he was.

35:30 Yeah, he drew a distinction between Christians and liberals and I consider myself in both of those categories. And I took a pretty deep. I was deeply offended by that done. So kind of went back at him and I'm offended.

35:48 Not only as that's incredibly presumptuous, but but also like it that he's presuming to Define what those terms mean and what that means to me and butt.

36:00 And in it, I couldn't believe it at some level.

36:06 How to make me feel made me mad and some sense because he should know better because he and I have known each other for a long time and has been a while ago, but the but I I would I would say what what produce that that is a media environment among other things were like these definitions are being foisted on him at some level and so don't blame him for that end. But that's not a lack of information that's a lack of exposure to diversity of information and then that case it was in the face of what I mean. It's almost like you want to stop and go like, you know better than that. Can I ask you this because I also get confused by that same to distinction between Christians and liberals. I was a political since the founding fathers were liberals. So that's one thing to think of Christians. Jesus was quite a liberal and I am so confused.

37:07 Because many of the theological arguments that that binary told that people that explain to me are based on ignoring the gospels that its you cannot follow the teachings of Jesus.

37:22 And still be a conservative.

37:26 And I don't understand why they even call themselves Christians anymore because as people explain it to me, they don't like the teachings of Jesus Christ. So the rest of the Bible they like Paul but not Jesus. So this polarity has gotten to the point that it's even ended the ability to identify with the love message of the Constitution and the love message of the gospels and it's the absence of love. How can I love those two things and still love my grandparents values who have these values and so I see pain,

38:01 I see a lot of pain of navigating that and I would say more generally as a I worry I worry in a way. I did not I'm 52 years old have three children and worry about

38:15 Really for the first time I worry about your the standard thing you would say is what country what kind of country they are. They growing up in but I'm I'm worried specifically about what kind of

38:28 Country are they growing up and where people are so fundamentally divided that it makes that common understanding and common sense of identity.

38:41 Blessed life likely Annette that in in in what does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be part of this community? And we're we're losing that in all sorts of ways and that worries me because he can't

38:54 Yeah, I'm not saying we're headed towards Civil War. You can't solve common problems. You can't you can't come to agreements and compromises to to live together and respect one another if you don't.

39:06 Essentially believe that the other person is good and valuable and and not something to be afraid of and polls are showing that like more and more Americans are having the same concern. Yeah, so even though it may look like we disagree on how we label ourselves it you're saying centre-left I'm saying I'm right of Center. I think that Center is larger than what a lot of people want to say and I think those of us in that Center need to reach out to those on the edges and and show them that we love them.

39:38 Listen to their fears and bring them into the social contract at the Constitutional. I think we have a lot of work to do and I think love should be the first thing we do as opposed to fear, but I want to condemn people. I want to listen, and I want to show them love to help them heal people that we are living our lives, and I'm glad we agree to disagree on a Creator you thanks.