Questioning the American Dream: Leola Lynch on Race, Motherhood, and Workplace Culture Part 2
Women of Cincy and the Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation are teaming up to bring you six stories spotlighting the economic mobility of Black women in Cincinnati. “Questioning the American Dream: A Look at the Economic Mobility of Black Women in Cincinnati” supports the Women's Fund's “Historical Analysis of Black Women's Labor Trends and Systemic Barriers to Economic Mobility” study.
These are the stories of Black women navigating life in Cincinnati. We believe telling stories changes things; we believe listening changes things. We promised our community we would tell their stories. It's up to you to listen. Visit womenofcincy.org/economic-mobility for the full series.
Interview by Kristyn Bridges. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
The following Q&A is based on the interviewee’s firsthand account of their experiences and opinions alone.
Look for editor's notes with additional information in [bold brackets] throughout the article.
Trigger warning: This article contains references to violence and police brutality. Note that this interview contains strong language.
This is Part 2 of Leola’s story. Read part 1 here.
How have you, your family, and friends been affected by COVID-19? Do you feel communication about the virus has been clear?
The communication has not been clear. I think it brought to the forefront a very obvious problem in this country: That our government... we cannot trust them to give us all the information. They’re so busy trying to cover their own behinds that they won't put the people's interests first. That's a very scary reality we have all come to realize.
My entire family got sick with this virus. We didn't know what it was, even when I took my son to the hospital around the fourth day of him having the virus. They told me he has a virus and he can go home. Clean everything and just wait for it to pass because we all know viruses don't have cures. I was very frustrated because I told them that before I came, and then I got a very large $500 bill for his hospital visit when we were there less than an hour and they did nothing for my son, or for me. Even our discharge papers don’t disclose what virus he had. This was in the beginning of January; I got sick at the end of January. And for four days, I really felt like I couldn't breathe. But I knew I had what my son had because as a mother, whatever your kids get, you're going to get it. I didn't want to go back to the hospital and waste another $500 for them to tell me nothing. Three weeks later, everyone starts talking about this coronavirus and I'm just like, so... we probably all had this and no one even said anything to us.
I have recently been in contact with the hospital that charged me that amount. I told them my son had coronavirus and I'm willing to take the antibody test. Since they didn’t even acknowledge which virus [we had], why do I have to pay this amount? And they just attributed [the cost] to their system that calculates the normal average of whatever they typed in and “that's just how my bill is.” I don't understand how that's patient care tailored to me. Why is someone allowed to just code and categorize me? Especially in a field as serious and severe as healthcare. You cannot get these kinds of viruses wrong. Because now the country sees the effect of getting that virus wrong.
But what about the effect on my family? What about the effect on my kids, my nieces and nephews? I had to watch each and every one of them suffer through this. It was not a beautiful experience – to get the coronavirus was not pretty. Yes, you can survive. But to watch kids go through that was unacceptable. And to try to put their trust in the health professionals who are supposed to help us get better or help us understand our bodies, but they're allowed to turn a blind eye. So, I just think that the health disparity, the health gap here in the country, it's not good. Coronavirus has exposed something that's been a problem forever. Since the beginning of time, Black people are just not getting the proper care we need, we're not getting the proper resources, and we're not even getting the proper information. That's not fair; it's not right. I really wish I had a solution, but I don't because it's all systemic. I can't penetrate a system I didn't create. And I think that is the point of defeat I'm at. You can't ignore it. But the fact that some people have the privilege of ignoring it is setting us back decades. [Black Americans are twice as likely to die due to complications from COVID-19 and see higher levels of heart disease, stroke, maternal mortality, and other health complications.]
What kind of long-term effect do you feel COVID-19 may have on the Black community?
I think the long-term effects are far-reaching. Coronavirus isn't done. I think it's going to resurface, and when it does, it'll further help people trace our disparities and inequities. But I think African Americans are starting to lose trust in everything: Starting to lose trust in the systems; starting to lose trust in the support. It's either going to create a generation of very tired humans, or a generation of very hardworking humans. We're either going to get to the point where we say forget everyone, let's create our own system, or we're going to fight, tooth and nail, until it's all the way broken down, to the point where someone literally has to rebuild it. And I don't love either of those solutions because I don't think either of them is fair. I don't think it’s our job to rebuild ourselves because we didn't break ourselves down. And if we reach far back enough in our history, it's very clear that we didn’t. This was instilled in us in order to keep us maintained.
I think that this coronavirus has exposed a financial crisis, a health crisis, and now a social crisis. And these three crises mixed together is only a recipe for a disaster, in my opinion. But for the Black community, this is a recipe for change. We should use this opportunity to really reevaluate where we're spending our money, understand our purchasing power, and try to really keep our funds in our community. I think we're going to get in tune with our health a lot more. I don't want to get diabetes; I don't want to get all these diseases we're plagued with.
And then from the social perspective, we're just tired – and there's nothing wrong with that. Because after 450 years, you are allowed to be tired, and you are allowed to express that you're tired however you see fit. I think our level of tired will create a change because it has no choice now. I don't know if it took entertainment to leave T.V. completely – there's no baseball, there's no basketball, there's no performances, there's nothing going on except ten minutes of someone literally killing a person in broad daylight for no apparent reason as everyone cries and pleads for him to stop.
So after the world had no choice but to see that, if this doesn't create change, I don't know what will. I mean, this is not new. What we saw, that's happened to my dad. My dad has been under a police officer’s knee, in my face, as an 11-year-old child. And unfortunately, yelling to them to get off my dad, I had a gun pointed at me. At 11 years old. It's just his little girl in the car and he was not doing anything. This was a routine traffic stop. I mean, just no reason for this man to be applying more pressure to my dad's neck as I'm screaming for him to stop. So, seeing this video [of George Floyd] was such a trigger for me.
It's just wild to me to see people watching us beg for human decency, just to be treated normally. In 2020, we're still talking about police brutality and systemic racism. Seriously? I think I'm just shocked. So now I've been trying to process everything. These last two weeks have been so emotional for me. Especially raising a Black son. And I don't know what anyone is going to do but we can't continue to survive in that kind of toxic environment.
Right now, there's a huge movement happening across the U.S. – it's everywhere. On a systemic level, where do we go from here?
I guess it all depends on from what perspective you're trying to change things. I was part of a call earlier with my company and they just basically got the point of, “Okay, what can we do? We see this problem; what's our solution?” It all came down to most of it being systemic. The only system you can fix is the one that you're a part of. That starts with the initiative at your firm, the initiatives on the boards that you all are on. Take a look at your board of directors. What's that look like? Why does it look like that?
The overall next step, in my opinion, is law/policy change. There are a lot of laws in place that protect the police and allow them to fear for their lives and use that as an excuse to take someone else's. Sam Dubose just resonates with me so much because that was happening at my school. There were a ton of things that should have been put in place, that should never have even happened.
At what point do the police stop being [summoned] by civilians? Because if we're being honest, Ahmaud Arbery only came up because of civilians. George Floyd came about because of civilians. Breonna Taylor, still civilians. We’re still fighting for her. Still fighting for somebody to be held accountable for going into the wrong home. There's no police accountability. It was attributed to, “Oh, that was a mistake.”
Well, why can the police make a mistake and pilots can't? Surgeons can't. There are so many lawsuits holding people accountable for wrongdoing. I know – I’m an auditor; I see them all the time. There has never been a consequence for negligence in police brutality. [We hear] it's okay to use this level of force when this male is a little bigger than you, might be a little stronger than you, or is on some drug that is making them hallucinate. Okay, I have a sister who's a nurse and she spends 70% of her time treating drug victims – people coming in who have overdosed and need Narcan, or who need more drugs – and she can never put her knee on their neck because they're being belligerent. Never. She'd lose all kinds of licenses.
Why did it take a riot, a video, looting, everything to put [George Floyd’s murderers] in jail? It was a bare minimum request. We didn't even ask about charges. The bare minimum we wanted was for them to go to jail. But if my four brothers were holding a man of any other color besides our own – because if it was our own, that's "Black-on-Black crime" and nobody cares, right? So if it was someone who wasn't “our own” under that knee while my brother held one down, and my other brother held one down, and my other brother threatened to kill anyone who came close, they're all going to jail. They're all going to prison. They will all be charged with murder or accomplices to murder. This is a no brainer. Why is this not a no brainer for police? Why are they allowed to continue to do this?
What about when the civilians, not the police, are the ones doing this?
Ahmaud Arbery was killed by two regular neighborhood civilians calling [themselves the] community watch. They watched every person in the community walk into the same house he walked into, but somehow he committed some crime. He was running home with nothing in his hands. So you're allowed to chase this man down in a pickup truck with your other friend recording because this is your right – you are helping catch a criminal – and you're allowed to tell him he has to get on the ground and follow your orders like you're some officer? And when he doesn't, you get to shoot him three times with a shotgun? The same thing you use to kill bears and deer with? You treat this man like an animal, and then when you're done, you call him, and I quote, “f—ing n—er”? But this was not racially based somehow? This was okay somehow? No one did anything for two months, until we got tired.
The police department had all this evidence – nothing I just said was new. This was all known and they’re allowed to get away with that. Why? Because if we chased your son down in our neighborhood, oh boy... “Those thugs. Those tyrants. Those problematic humans.” But somehow this is patriotic and they did some service for their community by literally killing an innocent man for no reason – when it was the police’s job to find that man. It was the police's job to ask him why he went into that home. It was the police's job to exude justice. But I'm very happy the police didn't show up there because we would be talking about him the same way we're talking about George Floyd. Because if the police allowed those two people to go home like nothing happened for two months, I can't say that they were going to help my innocent Black man. And that's how I look at him: He's my innocent Black man. That's my son taking a jog. That's my son being curious because he saw a cool little house and he might have seen something that caught his attention. That's my son.
Why is this okay? And why aren't we allowed to talk about it? That doesn't make any sense to me. They give you all this trauma and then they tell you, “Go be normal.” They tell you to fit into society. “Go be great – the sky's the limit.” How? You have put these barriers on me, all of this weight that I never asked for. You're just putting it on me because you think I have to hold it on my shoulders. This is not my weight to carry anymore. We're ready to transfer the weight. You can't keep making us carry something that you put on our back. Here, you can have it back. We're done being the slaves. That mentality is over. And, apparently, we can't say that anymore but I'm just here to say it because I'm nobody's slave. We have to stop the trauma in our community, the trauma in our experiences.
How did you get into acquiring rental property? Have you or your dad ever faced discrimination while searching for property?
I've been into flipping houses since I was about 19; my dad got into it in 2008 with the market crash, and he bought up some property. I've been watching him transform it and I just love to see old things look new. The power of transformation – I just fell in love with it.
I knew I did not want to spend all five years of college on campus. I did not want to spend $60,000 on room and board when I could probably invest that into a home and fix it up. So, I spent two years on campus and immediately started looking for housing in the Cincinnati area. Our realtor is in the Dayton area and my dad has, I think, 19 or 20 properties in Dayton. Cincinnati was a new area for us, and my dad never really wanted to touch it because he didn't want to deal with another city. So, he's just like, “You go out, you find them, I'll send you addresses, and you kind of go look.” So that's what he did. I probably visited eight or nine before I ended up where I was.
Cincinnati is a very segregated city, I would say. And it's blotchy. Like, you can easily be on one block and everyone is African American, and then be on the next block and it's a gated community. So, it was very weird going around and trying to find property. There were three different houses that we tried to settle on, and we ended up going with the third.
I really thought we were away from the days where you have to be like this to live here, and that to live there, but it's really not.
One of them was out in the Mariemont area – it was like a tiny home – but I felt like the neighborhood was nice. I told my dad I really liked it, so he called his realtor, his realtor got on the phone [with their realtor], and those three met up. Whatever happened, my dad calls me back and he's like, “No, you're going to have to find somewhere else.” I'm like, “Why? This is perfect.” And he's like, “Um, well I just met up with them and it seems like they don't want to sell.” And I'm like, “It's been on the market for two weeks; they had no other buyers; there were no counter offers or nothing.” Historically, we used to counter offers. And we pay cash, so it wasn't like they would have had to wait for their money, or that we were trying to negotiate; I was willing to take the house as is. And he's like, “Yeah, no babe, they don't want to sell.” So, I call our realtor myself. My realtor just broke it down to me and told me Mariemont is a very tightknit community. Basically, she said something about the property value going down, and that just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm like, “Excuse me? How would I diminish the property value?” She's just like, “Well, they don't have any history of you all being property owners in the city of Cincinnati, so they would just like to do further research and background checks and make sure their property is going into the right hands.” I've never seen anyone care about who they sold their property to as long as it sold.
The second one was out by Galbraith Road, a little one level. The property owner met me there to take me through it. It was an older white man; he was very nice at first, and then he showed me the backyard. I was very disappointed because I needed some yard for my kids. So, I was like, “Oh man, I was hoping for a bigger back yard.” And he was like, “Well, you're lucky I'm selling to you.” I was like, “Excuse me?” He was like, “Well yeah, I don't typically sell to your kind.” [Pauses.] “Okay, and what kind am I?” And he was like, “Well, I mean, it's like, no offense, you seem more civilized and together, but most of your people have wrecked my property, damaged my property at some point, and I'm just fed up, which is why I'm selling it anyway.” It was just so derogatory. And I was like, where did this come from? We just had the best house tour; you were showing me everything and as soon as I didn't like one part... So I was like okay, not buying that one because I'm not buying from a racist.
The third property was in Avondale – it seemed like that person was ready to just get out, and I was ready to just get in somewhere. The sellers were African American; they took our first offer. It was no problem – there was no counter offer or anything – and we were able to get right in. I moved in the wintertime, so everyone was inside and I didn't really think much of it. And then in the summertime, I quickly realized I'm in a very busy, very active part of the neighborhood. But I still was very happy with my purchase; I was very happy with the people I was dealing with, the realtors. Everybody was respectful.
If a person saw the three houses I was looking at, they would think I made the lowest choice. But in terms of experience, that was by far the best experience I had. That was my first experience of personally going out and being the person shopping for the houses. So it was a very eye-opening experience and it made me realize that areas still kind of matter. I really thought we were away from the days where you have to be like this to live here, and that to live there, but it's really not. It just made me more cognizant of people's judgmental factors. Even when you're the one with the purchasing power, people will still try and demean or dehumanize you for literally no reason outside of your color.
Can you talk about the importance of creating generational wealth in the Black community? What are some of the challenges Black people face in achieving that?
Generational wealth is my passion. I teach financial literacy for anybody who's willing to listen, but mostly college students, to really try to get them prepared for life after college. I will say the first thing our community has to learn is the importance of ownership. I think that a lot of us have never been in a position where we could own anything. Or if we get into a position where we do own anything, they tend to take out a loan on it or sell it because they realize it has value. The importance of actual ownership and keeping things within our community is just a pivotal lesson.
People always ask me, “Are you going to sell the house?” No. I want to create generational wealth. I want to create residual income. I know that can only come if I rent this house out. The person I sell it to is going to do that. Because if I'm honest with myself, the person I'm going to sell it to will not look like me. And with my house being in Avondale, an African American community, they're going to put an African American in that house. And then they're going to charge them an insane amount of money to live there while they reap the benefits, monthly. And then when that person can't afford to stay, they will kick them out like no one's business and move right on. I don't want to be part of a system that's doing things like that. So, if I buy my property, I keep my property. [In 2016, the racial wealth gap in the U.S. stood at a seven-to-one ratio for white versus Black families. Racist practices, such as redlining and subprime lending, have contributed to this gap over time.]
The second step is to teach them to value their own stuff and theirselves. We are way more valuable than people are ever going to put on us, yet we spend our entire lives waiting for validity from others. We determine our success based on what other people think about us. We care about how we are perceived by other people. And I think we need to get out of that mentality because, if it's not obvious, we're only perceived one way to most until we might spend some time knocking down whatever their biases are. I don't care if you wear a suit, I don't care if you wear worker boots: You're still Black. They still probably fear you. You still probably should tread lightly. So, the second part is to understand our own value and to place value on ourselves.
I would say the third thing is to teach the next generation. Once some of us get there, wherever there is, we tend to move among people who don't look like us, and then forget about our community. It's not helping to build generational wealth within your community and yourself and your family if the first thing you do when you acquire wealth is move and relocate it to another community. So I buy properties in neighborhoods that people might call problematic. But if you watch the trend of anything, ever, gentrification is inevitable. It's going to happen, so you gotta get in front of it or behind it. Our neighborhoods that they call “bad neighborhoods,” they buy them up, move other people in them who don't look like us, and move us out. So it couldn't have been that bad; they made it seem like it was because you were there. So, place the value on yourself. Don't let anybody cheat you out of your seat.
But the most important of all is to understand finances in general. You can never be wealthy if you don't understand finances. I think there's a famous saying that people who understand money are wealthy but wealthy people don't always understand money. And it's very true. You can run into money, but how can you turn it into wealth? Most people don't know how, especially in our community because we never really had money. We're already behind in that aspect. I think we value money over assets right now, and we don't realize that our asset is our wealth. Our money is not our wealth. People are wealthy because of the assets they have. They are not wealthy because they make a paycheck or a salary.
Budgeting. I mean, that sounds simple, but how many people in our community have budgets? None. They're maintaining; they're in survival mode. And when you put people in survival mode, the only thing they do is survive. But if you teach them how to use what they have to get what they want, they become unstoppable. It starts with teaching. Education. And we all know that's something we were deprived of for a very long time, and then we got the education they wanted us to have. We need our own education. We need the education that's going to set us up to be right, that's going to create a system that works for us and not a system that works for them. I hope it works for everyone, but if you're going to keep making it us versus them, then we need to work on us.
What self-care practices do you use to keep your cup full? What makes your soul happy?
Definitely my kids. If you asked me four or five years ago, I was never having kids; I was the auntie on the beach with my Corona. But having my kids and watching their pure joy – seeing what that actually looks like because they haven't been corrupted with the ways of the world yet – is a completely authentic feeling. And it lets me know the things that are going on are just taught. My kids don't pick who they play with based on color; they don't pick it based on hair. I mean, little kids who are white come up and compliment my daughter on her “big, pretty puff balls.” At some point, someone's going to tell them that's nappy hair and then they might go on and say, “Oh, you got nappy hair.” But they don't understand that as kids; they understand big pretty ponytails.
With kids, you can keep it simple, and with God, you can keep it real. I am a very, very spiritual person. I believe in God; I am a Christian. When things don't make sense to me, I already understand it's bigger than me. When things are bigger than me, I give them to God. That keeps me up and going. And the fact that nothing’s forever. You really think whatever's going on or happening to you right now is just, like, your forever struggle, but honestly, in six more months, something else will be the biggest thing going on. So, when things are happening, I really take a moment and ask myself, “What does this look like for me in two weeks? What's this look like for me in 30 days? What about six months?” And if I don't think I will care in six months, then I don't give it the energy now. I'm a very long-term thinker. I already know a lot of short-term events have to happen for you to see the long term, so let those events kind of just take place to understand the bigger picture.
Part of keeping your mental health in check is to always be real with yourself, because if you can't be real with yourself, there's not a chance you can be real with someone else. So even if you never even say it out loud, be honest with yourself. Feel everything you need to feel; bottling up your feelings is not going to help. But you also need to understand that you can't channel your feelings onto other people all the time, because how people interpret your feelings will never be how you interpret your own feelings. With mental health, people can help you to an extent, programs can help you to an extent, but honestly, you need to be your own self-help with your mental health. You have to do it yourself. It's so self-driven to me; I really believe that if you channel into yourself enough to ask what's going on and really address the issues, it just makes you breathe easy. It really makes you understand that everything is out of my control, so let me do what's in my control.
What support systems do you lean on?
Definitively my parents. My mom: She's pivotal in keeping my kids safe and I know they're in a good environment where they're loved, they're supported, and they're with their cousins as day care participants. Family is invaluable. I feel like those are the people God gave you to go through life with. As right or wrong they can be sometimes, I love my family; they're probably my biggest support system.
My church family is important. My sorority family is also important. I'm a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. I really, really enjoy being around other African American women who are educated, who are fighting for the cause, and who really care about seeing us, as a people, do better. They make me realize I'm not the only one fighting for this. My fight isn't on my own.
Tell us about an influential woman in your life.
I really try not to be, like, a role model type of person. I really try to give everything to God. But if I had to say a great person (and I think she's heavily influenced by God), Michelle Obama is my biggest influence. When [Obama] first got elected in 2008, I was in 8th or 9th grade. I remember always being told my whole life, “You're so loud, you're so this, you're so that, you have such an attitude, you have such dominance, blah, blah, blah.” When I saw her as the first lady of the United States, that was probably the first time I ever thought that anything is possible. There is a person who looks just like me in one of the most powerful positions in the world. She's been my inspiration.
I did not love her when she took away the good lunches but that was okay; I survived. But I appreciate her and I look up to her, even more so now because I don't really know too many first ladies who mattered during a presidency. I can think of vice presidents who may have mattered; plenty of presidents who were influential. But the number of things Michelle Obama accomplished just let me know that women are more than capable of being creators and pilots of change. I think that made me realize you don't have to be the one in the seat to have a voice, and that it's important to be with someone who allows you to have a voice. A lot of men are intimidated or scared by women who want their own life. Michelle Obama is a mom and she's still a working woman; she's still this, that, and the other. It always made me feel like, even from a young age, I want to be like her.
When I saw her as the first lady of the United States, that was probably the first time I ever thought that anything is possible. There is a person who looks just like me in one of the most powerful positions in the world.
Even now that they're not the president and first lady anymore, they're still pilots of change. They're still living all those morals and values they campaigned on. And I think Michelle is a person who's remained steadfast. She's been pivotal to my growth. Her ability to remain intentional and [not hide] her personality but still mean what she says, I aspire to that. Becoming has been super inspirational to me, just for her to talk about being at all these tables, and the number of people she didn't even know how they got there or why they were there. Because so many days, I feel like I'm at some of those tables. And I'm like, “Wow, y'all are the people?” So for her to say that and for me now, at 24, it makes me not want to chase the bigger table. I always wanted to do the bigger thing or get to the next level or next role or whatever, but when I've seen the people in those levels and roles, I've been unimpressed at times. So, if she, as the first lady, can sit at some tables and be unimpressed, I can probably be unimpressed in some boardrooms too.
Continue exploring “Questioning the American Dream: A Look at the Economic Mobility of Black Women in Cincinnati” at womenofcincy.org/economic-mobility.