While driving up to Mr. Ron Hardy’s house, I had some second thoughts about the manner in which I would conduct my interview. When it began to rain badly, I had second thoughts about doing the interview at all. You see, I wasn’t sure what this article was going to be about until after I got there.
Mr. Hardy owns a local lounge called the H&H on Hope Street, and we’ve been acquainted for several months now. He organizes the Circle of Life Drum Gathering on Tuesday nights at the H&H, but the drum circle is currently on hiatus until cooler weather. During the short time I’ve known him, I’ve not only attended the drum circle but I’ve also used the H&H as a shooting location for a short film. Ron and I have shared many good conversations about music, community and life in general. I learned that Ron was not merely the owner of a local venue for all creative types in the area, he was a musician who taught his gift to the younger generation. Whether it was the kids at J.S. Clark Elementary here in Shreveport or a group of kids from Finland during his residence there in the 1980s, Ron is obviously passionate about teaching and passing on creativity. Aside from that, he recently asked me to be a part of the Shreveport Common project and lend my voice to a song he had written to promote the Shreveport Common smartphone App. He seemed like the perfect subject for an interview. With a few basic questions, I could write a decent and simple profile piece about a local artistic guru. As soon as I arrived to conduct my interview, I was reminded that Mr. Ron Hardy is anything but "basic" and "simple."
Having been completely unprepared for the downpour, I found a place to park on the street and ran to Ron’s front door with my notebook covering the top of my head. I knocked and almost immediately saw Ron coming down the hallway through the screen door, clutching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He quickly ushered me into his office and began talking to me about the Shreveport Common song, which, as a phone call later during the middle of our conversation revealed, he had set as his ringtone. It was slightly odd to hear my wailing voice coming out of someone else's phone, but amusing. He was filling me in on how a recent art project designed to spark interest in the new Shreveport Common Park failed at its mission. To Hardy, the answer lies in recruiting local talent, not outsourcing to high-profile celebrities. Suddenly, I knew what this article was going to be about.
Mr. Hardy's sentiment is one I completely agree with, and I'm not alone. In just a few months, we are electing a new president. Talking points from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump include references to "large corporations" and "bringing jobs back here." What does it say about American culture when we complain about migrants "taking our jobs," while we all load up our shopping carts with clothes, food and other goods made in foreign countries? The fact that our culture is so numb to the topic of American goods being produced by enslaved children is actually quite alarming, not to mention strange. Something is wrong, and the Republicans and Democrats have all the answers. The only problem is, they offer completely opposite solutions while promising that death and destruction will follow in the wake of their opponents should they become elected. There is no middle ground. Democratic Presidential Candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has resonated with millions of people in this country because he offers a completely different solution, one that would break up big banks and make Wall Street pay for free college tuition and healthcare. Like Trump, he offers the idea that there is a particular group of people who need to be held accountable for wrong actions. Unlike Trump, he supports the idea that the biggest threat comes from within–not from a foreign invader. Think of him as a political Feng-Shui guru. The idea that you have to organize your own living space in order to have an organized life seems to make sense when applied metaphorically to America. Apparently, there are lots of folks who can dig it. Why do Americans look elsewhere for answers? We are quick to blame outside forces for our woes before we would ever self-reflect. After all, everything's made in China (even the little American flags!), and our phones are probably made by enslaved children. "That's just the way things work around here" is no longer a suitable answer for the majority of Americans.
Society is "coming to a bust" according to Ron. In his opinion, there's a cultural awakening happening and it's becoming increasingly harder for the average citizen to be willfully ignorant. In this melting pot we call the United States, we can no longer afford to blame other races for our woes. We have to forgive the foolish, because everyone is a fool some of the time. Real change begins when we acknowledge and embrace our similarities and cherish our differences so that we can learn to see from other perspectives. In fact, Hardy says the English language itself is causing some of the problem. For instance, he thinks we should eliminate the word "race" from our vocabularies when referring to different ethnic backgrounds because it suggests that we are competing. He says we should replace it with the word "breed" because this suggests that we are all human, just as dogs are all dogs yet different "breeds." Ron is a black male, and blackmail, he stated, is something derogatory. His theory is that we learn negative word associations from a young age and this has repercussions in our behavior when we become adults. Ron is someone who not only loves diversity, but swims blissfully in its waters. At the age of six, he moved to California where his stepfather worked as a janitor. As he tells it, he practically lived in a school. At the age of 9, he gave his first speech to a crowd for a 4H project. I asked him if the diversity he witnessed in his youth gave him an advantage over other Shreveport natives who didn't get the chance to be exposed to other cultures at a young age the way he did. He assured me this was indeed true. In 1992, Ron moved to Finland and experienced yet another unique perspective on life. The people there pay higher taxes, but have more money to pocket on average than you'd expect. The reason for this, as Ron explained, is that the taxes are used to help the people and to ensure that homelessness becomes a thing of the past. In that country, they look within and fix their internal issues so the people can live happily and freely. This is a nice sounding set-up, but America is a melting pot. Finland can easily trace their lineage, as it is limited to one region. Americans have a harder time connecting those ancestral dots, and the hyper-capitalism prevalent in our day-to-day lives has made us more competitive than ever before. Whites, blacks, Latinos and other ethnicities are teams in a big race to the top, and this exacerbates things.
Just recently, a man named Alton Sterling was executed by two Baton Rouge police officers. The viral video of the incident sparked the inspiration for one man to later murder two Baton Rouge police officers who were completely unrelated to Sterling's case. David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan is making another senate run, and he hails from Louisiana as well. In the past few weeks, I've felt a little disheartened by the media coverage my state has been getting. Ron Hardy, however, is not disheartened. According to Ron, larger cities to the North have more racial problems than the south. This stunned me. I just couldn't see how this could be true, given the history of the American South as well as current events. Ron recounted the events concerning his grandfather, Joseph. He had shot a white man, in self-defense, in the 1920s. He was almost killed by an angry lynch mob before knocking out some of his own teeth to disguise himself. When justice was finally served and Joseph was found innocent, he still had to be kept in a prison for protection. As word spread of the news, another mob of angry men attempted to drag Joseph's female relatives behind their cars in an attempt to take what I assume they considered some form of perverse justice into their own hands. White women, the wives of the white men trying to torture Ron's relatives, stood up to their husbands and prevented them from carrying out the act by threatening to leave them. To me, the point of that story isn't to applaud white people for at least having a conscience, but rather to display a rule of nature that Ron calls "justice where there is injustice." "Those people talking about going back to Africa, they need to come back to the South," said Ron. "Most white people and black people aren't enemies here because we're related. And we know that. Somewhere down the line, we're probably related." Ron also mentioned that a lot of white men in the past who had black children, even though they hid it, funded black colleges so their own children could have a good education. He explained to me his belief that there is a spiritual connection we all share. Even though people in the past were restricted by their own cultural climate, humans have been steadily moving toward an awareness to this connection, and though things may look rough now, signs of unrest simply mean we are waking up. People like Strom Thurmond had openly racist views, yet had a black daughter. Ron suggests that this is because our very nature is at odds with our overly complicated political opinions and world-views. He believes we are working toward a better worldview, and racist men who shared moments of love with black women are an example of how our natural state breaks free of the bonds of our destructive world-views. Deep down inside, we already know of our connection, but our worldview can force us to play ludicrous roles. Mr. Hardy says that right now, the majority worldview causes division, but artists and creators have an opportunity to be a force for positive change. Thankfully, we needn't look any further than our own backdoor. We often overlook the amazing originality of the places we dwell in because our culture has been telling us that there's always more to do, and more to see. A fog of anxiety has settled over American consciousness in a quest for more acquisition. Fortunately, Ron says he knows that the spiritual connection we all share will continue to live on forever, and that can only mean that things will have to get better. "Spiritual connection exists and will continue to exist despite world-views and laws," he told me.
Earlier, he showed me his Governor's Award for his local contributions to art. "But I was doing more than art. I was community building," he said. When the interview was over, the rain had passed and the clouds had cleared away for a beautiful sunset. I was left with a sense of hope about the future–a future that the 24-hour news-tainment networks paint as dystopian. If there is a spiritual connection that will go on living, and eventually prevail and transform our harmful world-views, the media certainly sees no profit in it. But as I look around Shreveport and think about my own life, I am reminded of the truth of this spiritual connection. Ron Hardy is right: We, here in the South, can be beacons of light in a darkened world because of our unique history and diversity. After all, who knows more about diversity in Shreveport than Ron?
