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CHARLES RAMSEY: The Epitome of How Heroism can be Misconstrued By Zena Gray Charles Ramsey, a name that a few weeks ago nobody outside of his Cleveland neighborhood probably recognized suddenly became a name that we couldn’t stop mentioning. In case you don’t recognize the name, Ramsey is the vivacious black dishwasher from Cleveland who is being hailed a hero by many for rescuing three female captives – two white and one Hispanic — from a Cleveland home after they had been held there for a combined time of close to a decade. I’m sure after viewing the video of the animated Ramsey on the news many people were reminded of Antoine Dodson, who became a showy Internet sensation after saving his sister from a would-be rapist in their Huntsville, Ala., housing apartment, and warning people to “hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife” and Sweet Brown who barely escaped a fire in her Oklahoma City complex with “no shoes or nothing” because well, “ain’t nobody got time for that.” While I won’t deny that I did get a chuckle out of these colorful characters and became quite familiar with the catchy phrases of these Internet sensations, I noticed that the coverage of Ramsey took a different turn, one that bought forth his criminal past and caused me to question how we treat a person essentially deemed a hero with a troubled past. But more than that, hoe blacks and whites look at the same event through different spectrums of race. The first place we can look is the videotape beginning with his initial interview with local
Cleveland Hero Charles Ramsey poses with CNN’s Anderson Cooper
Cleveland station WEWS and even his visit with Anderson Cooper. “I’ve been here a year,” Ramsey said in an interview with WEWS, a local television station. Referring to Ariel Castro, the suspect arrested for holding the women against their will, Ramsey said, “You see where I’m coming from? I barbecue with this dude. We eat ribs and whatnot and listen to salsa music… “He just comes out in his backyard, plays with the dogs, tinkers with his cars and motorcycles, goes back in the house. So he’s somebody you look, then look away. He’s not doing anything but the average stuff. You see what I’m saying? There’s nothing exciting about him. Well, until today.” Ramsey explained that Castro “got some big testicles to pull this off, bro.” He added, “I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something wrong here. Dead giveaway.” My sentiments exactly Mr. Ramsey, there was plenty wrong. Ramsey learned all that was wrong when he put down his McDonald’s Big Mac and answered a call for help from Amanda Berry, who had been last seen in
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2002 on the eve of her 17th birthday. The two other women were Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, who had been missing since 2004 at the age of 14, and Michelle Knight, who disappeared in 2002 at the age of 21. While being hailed as a hero, Ramsey was the object of both racism and ridicule. I’ll be the first to admit, the television was playing as background noise in my home when this story broke and before I even looked at the screen I knew Ramsey was a black man and for some reason, I knew he would look a mess. When I actually looked up I wasn’t surprised to see my assumptions were correct and that I may have cringed just slightly at the sight of him. Why couldn’t he be a clean-cut brother returning home from his job as a dishwasher or simply enjoying his day off from work? Why did
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