Proud

By Kevin Hofmann, Director of the Office of Racial Equity and Cultural Inclusion

When I turned down the long school hallway where the meeting was, I could hear the students before I knew which class they were in. Ahead of me, halfway down the 100-yard hall on the right, was an open classroom door. I could hear music and laughter and activity. The meeting was taking place after school, after most of the students went home to homework, video games, family and social media. We had this wing of the high school to ourselves. As I stepped closer, I could make out conversations that were playful, awkward at times, but familiar. Before I walked through the door I could tell this group was comfortable.

The desks that were once in nice, ordered rows were pushed to the outside of the room and a large open circle was created in the center of the room. In the circle stood 10-15 students dancing and swirling and spinning and existing and exhaling. They were dancing as if no one was watching because I think that is how they felt. In this small classroom, there were no judgmental eyes, no skeptical side glances, no one waiting to pounce. This room and this ground was sacred, and safe and calm.

In this class room, once a week, every Monday, Ms. Mackenzie held space for the LGBTQIA+ group and within seconds of arriving, I knew this meeting was more than a meeting. Over the next 60 minutes the value of this space became more and more valuable. I listened to the students share how important this space was for them. I sat next to Blue, a transgender female student who presented as a natural leader. Blue was her new name and it fit her. She was vibrant. The colors in the shirt she designed came with decibels. The blue highlights in her hair made her memorable – unique but not obnoxious.

She shared with me how she hated Mondays in the past. Typically, she said, the anxiety would begin every Sunday morning and the dread of having to return to school in less than 24 hours grew like a flesh-eating virus. Each hour would consume more and more of her.  

Then Ms. Mackenzie started the group and designated each Monday as their meeting day. Now Blue looked forward to Monday because after school for one hour she could just exist. She didn’t have to worry about the student in the next seat making fun of her or calling her by her deadname (“deadname” is the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning). For 60 minutes she could talk and be heard. Mondays gave her the fuel she needed to get through Tuesday through Friday. Kids are still very mean.

 

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Dad laid in his casket about 30 feet from me. I stood there in my black suit wondering how this suit shrunk so much since the last funeral. My heart didn’t want to accept the reality that I had gained weight.  

I reached into my inside suit jacket pocket and pulled out the program from Todd’s funeral. That was the last time I wore the suit. I went to grade school with Todd in Detroit. He was the crazy kid with the wild hair and a good heart. I crossed the parlor to throw away Todd’s program. I felt guilty about throwing it away. I felt like I owed it to Todd to keep the program. I refolded it and put it back in my suit.

I looked up to see a young man with a determined walk headed towards me. “Are you Pastor Hofmann’s son?”  

“Yes!” I said proudly.

“Can I talk to you?” he said from behind his long beard and tan work overalls with a white badge that read “AL.”

“Sure,” I said. I was anxious to hear what he had to say.

For the next 10 minutes, Al told me what a positive force my father was on his life. It was great to hear about the impact my father made on this young man. Then Al leaned forward and whispered, “I knew your dad before my transition.” He told me he was born female, but it just never seemed to fit. He struggled with finding his true self and once he did, he was concerned how the church he grew up in would see him. He worried if he would be asked to leave.

Al shared that he set up a meeting with my Dad. They met at my dad’s office and he explained to my father that he made the decision to transition to a man. At this point, Al got teary eyed. He said he wasn’t sure how my Dad, who represented the church, would respond. Al said, without blinking, my Dad replied, “I was wondering when YOU were going to come to that decision.” It was the response Al didn’t expect but it was the response Al needed.

We all deserve a safe place. We all deserve to be seen. We all deserve to be heard.
 

Independence Day

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year,
the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
– Frederick Douglass, New York, July 5, 1852

On July 5, 2016, the day after the Fourth of July, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black man was selling CDs outside of his local convenient store. Alton would do this on a regular basis to help provide for his family. He would never make enough to make ends meet but at least this extra income would bring the ends close enough to gaze at each other from a distance.

On July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a day after our nation celebrated its birthday, the police were called to the convenient store parking lot where Alton was selling his CDs. There was also a report that he had threatened someone with a gun. The store owner would later advise the incident with the gun involved another customer, not Alton. The store owner knew Alton and had no issue with Alton selling CDs in his parking lot.

Two police officers showed up, they wrestled Alton to the ground for selling CDs. While pinning Alton to the concrete, one police officer pulled his weapon and fired a single shot into Alton’s torso. The pop of the gun wasn’t like the boom of a gun in the movies. Just a single “pop” and Alton stopped struggling. The deadly act of selling CDs ended his life. The police said they thought he was reaching for the gun he had in his pocket.

On July 6, 2016, two days after we celebrated the birth of our nation, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old Black man was pulled over for a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. In the vehicle with Philando was his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter. Diamond broadcasted a portion of the traffic stop live on Facebook with her cell phone.

On July 6, 2016, two days after the barbecues and fireworks commemorating our nation’s birth, a police officer approached Philando’s vehicle and asked for his registration and license. As Philando was reaching for his license he advised the officer he had a firearm and a license to carry the firearm. The officer told Philando not to reach for the gun and Philando and his girlfriend told the officer he wasn’t reaching for his gun. The officer pulled his gun and shot seven rounds into the car hitting Philando five times. Philando died 20 minutes later in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter, still being live streamed on Facebook.

On July 7, 2016, three days after children ran through the streets with ice cream and sparklers celebrating the birth of a new nation, I drove to work listening to the radio and thinking about the two young black men who were killed for selling CDs and carrying a legal and licensed firearm. I thought about the image of seeing Philando slumped over in the car laboring to get air into his leaking chest. I thought about the image of Alton being pressed into the parking lot with the two officers on top of him and hearing the single gunshot. I thought about the possibility of the lives of my two black sons ending in a similar fashion. Consumed with grief, amid mourning the loss of two young black lives as if they were in my family, I reached for the radio to distract me. On the radio was Marvin Gaye singing his 1971 song, “What’s Going On.” The reality of the words slapped me across the face.

Mother, mother,
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here to stay

A few verses down, Marvin continues to sing:

Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
Oh, what’s going on…

These 45-year-old lyrics were so timely and so painful. Forty-five years after he cut this record, we were still dealing with the same senseless targeted violence. Those words smashed the dam in my eyes, and I wept and mourned and grieved.

I pulled up to the small mutual insurance company where I worked; the company that had about 100 employees and I was the only Black employee. I parked my Honda Civic in my usual spot, dried my eyes with my shirt sleeve, checked my face in the rearview mirror and prepared myself to walk into the office. I said a silent prayer, “Lord please don’t let anyone come at me sideways today.”

Eight hours later I returned to my car. I had survived the day. No one said anything and I was devastated. I don’t know which was worse, someone saying something offensive, or no one recognizing this tragic set of events that me and my community knew so well. We had lost two members of our family and not one person at work noticed. 

I drove home in silence afraid of the radio and what other decades-old song might come on and shatter me to pieces.

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Four years after Alton and Philando took their last breath, many of us watched in horror as Officer Chauvin knelt of the neck of George Floyd. As the crowd pleaded for the officer to get off George’s neck, I will never forget the exact second the soul of this man left his body. In that second George went from pleading for his life to… nothing. 

During the trial, I scheduled a meeting with the CEO of the same small mutual insurance company where I still worked. I asked if the company was going to make a statement about the George Floyd murder. I was told the company wanted to make a statement but didn’t know what to say. So, they choose to remain silent. I left that meeting and as I got back in my car I heard Dr. King whisper, “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”

Six years later, after Alton and Philando took their last breath, a 18-year-old white male walked into a grocery store in Buffalo. He had researched the demographics of the area and settled on this store because it had the highest concentration of Black people. Like a hunter, he looked for the most fertile place to kill his prey. He traveled three hours to stalk, hunt, and kill. In under a minute, he would change the lives of 13 families forever, then be escorted out of the store as if his only crime was shoplifting a Snickers bar.

I still hear Marvin.

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way 
To bring some lovin’ here today

My skin is tougher now. My emotions have calluses from the constant rubbing out of Black lives over the last six years. I didn’t weep on the way to work after Buffalo. I didn’t pray when I pulled into my new parking spot at my new job with the Adrian Dominican Sisters, but I wondered if I would hear the silence of my new friends.

By 10:00 a.m. there was statement issued by leadership denouncing white supremacy and the heinous act that occurred in Buffalo. Later in the day, two Sisters from leadership stopped by my office and asked how I was doing, and we talked about what happened and those simple acts of kindness were like balm to my calloused emotions. I felt seen and understood – I no longer must mourn and grieve alone. 

Independence Day came early this year.

By Kevin Hofmann
Director, Office of Racial Equity and Cultural Inclusion

Nineteen and Hopeful

In 1990 a large hailstorm hit Denver, Colorado. I was working as a homeowner adjuster for the Allstate Insurance company and trying on my adult shoes. I was less than two years removed from living on the campus of Alma College, in Alma, Michigan as a student protected and guided by real adults. Now I was in the work world living on my own and doing my best to fill the shoes that didn’t quite fit.

The day after the storm hit in Colorado I was called in to my manager’s office in Toledo, Ohio and informed that in less than 12 hours I would be flying to Colorado to help manage the damage sustained by our policy holders from the storm. I was making $19,000 a year, being flown by the company across the country and given an additional $100 a day to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for 30 days straight. If I wasn’t a king, I sure felt like prince at least. 

I stopped by the bank to get money for my trip and to say goodbye to my teller and girlfriend, Shilease. Two years after this I would convince this teller to marry me. On this day I had to break the news that I would be gone for 30 days. We hadn’t been dating that long at this point, but we had grown close quickly and I already knew she had wife potential. The question was, could I get my life together enough to be considered husband material? When I told Shilease where I was going, she told me her aunt Deborah lived in Denver and told me I should give Deborah a call when I got there. Politely, I assured her I would but had no intention of contacting a stranger.

After being in Colorado for two weeks working 12 hours a day, going back to my lonely hotel room, getting something to eat, and going to bed only to do the same thing again the next day, I missed companionship. I pulled out Deborah’s number and called her. She invited me out to a Juneteenth celebration. I agreed to go even though I had no idea what Juneteenth was or what we were celebrating but it had to be better than siting in my room alone eating fast food in bed.

On our way downtown, I asked Deborah what Juneteenth was because I had never heard of it. She explained it was a celebration commemorating the end of slavery. The celebration would start with a parade in downtown Denver. At the beginning of the parade each year many Black people would walk side by side shackled to each other. As the parade progressed more and more would remove their shackles and by the end of the parade the shackles were replaced by shouting and dancing and singing and celebrating our freedom. What started out as somber, ended in an amazing celebration of who we were as a people and what we came through as a people. The tears and cheers were pain and joy, energizing and exhausting. It was life lived out loud and so beautiful. 

Since its inception, Juneteenth has largely been a celebration restricted to the Black community. Some say Juneteenth is the Black community’s fourth of July, our Black Independence Day. Now that this has been made a federal holiday my hope is it will evolve into a celebration we can all take pride in and celebrate. 

I wonder what it must have been like to go to bed on the June 18, 1865, in Texas as a slave and wake up on the 19th a free person. On the 19th there was a promise that the emotional, physical, and psychological trauma of slavery was no longer a threat. On the 19th the ability to dream, the opportunity to plan, and the freedom to hope were all new possibilities. Unfortunately, the future would rename slavery and limit the lives of many with new laws and restrictions under Jim Crow, but for a short time hope made the air smell different. Hope made the world’s colors seem brighter. Hope made the sweet southern tea taste sweeter.

Let’s cling to that hope in a time when it seems there is a new mass shooting every eight hours. Let’s grab on to hope like a life preserver keeping us afloat when it seems like partisanship decides the answers to questions that haven’t been asked yet. Let’s cradle hope knowing we aren’t where we should be but that could change with the dawn of a new day. 

By Kevin Hofmann
Director, Office of Racial Equity and Cultural Inclusion

Clockwise from left: Kevin and his wife Shilease along with sons Zion (left) and Tai (right); Kevin and his siblings Lisa, Paul, Richard, and dog Trixie during Christmas 1968; Kevin and his adoptive parents, Pastor Richard and Judy Hofmann.

Purpose

“The company has decided to close the Toledo office. You have the option to take the severance package and separate from the company or move to Columbus.” This was how the phone call started. A phone call I was told I should be a part of while I was enjoying summer vacation with my wife and two sons. After 10 years of working for Nationwide Insurance company as a casualty adjuster, my job was gone in two sentences. We had recently purchased a new house and just got our boys settled into a new community so moving to Columbus was not an option.

In September of 2009 I began a new journey. I had started writing my memoir in between handling auto claims that involved injuries. Over the prior two years I would write when the claims were slow or on nights and weekends. Now, without asking, I had a lot of free time to write. A lot of free time!

So, I sat and I wrote. Writing helped chase away the fear and uncertainty of being unemployed. I wrote about the unusual way I was raised. I wrote about being born a biracial child, the result of an affair between a white woman and black man. At the insistence of my white mother’s white husband, I was put up for adoption immediately. I wrote about the white family who adopted me at three months old. I wrote about being born in Detroit two weeks after the 1967 riots. I wrote about the smell of burning property still in the air when I took my first breath. I wrote about dreams deferred for a city that was so defined by race. I wrote about what it was like to grow up in a home where I was a minority, in a city where I was part of the majority. I wrote about what it was like to grow up a child of color in a country founded on building wealth on the backs of Americans whose skin matched mine.

When I set out to write the book, my audience was women like my adoptive mother. I was writing to white woman who had adopted children of color… at least that is what I thought. As I wrote more and more, the desire to simply share from my experience as a person of color became greater. The call to speak to a larger audience only got louder and louder. The focus of the book evolved, and I began speaking to white Americans sharing how I translated the world around me as a Black child, teenager, and man.

My biggest issue with race and racism in this country was that often my experience, my perspective as a person of color, was denied, dismissed, or disrespected. My writing was a way to share and simply be heard and understood. But to truly be heard and understood it would mean finding a way to be passionate but not bitter, impactful but not devastating. It meant paying close attention to how I worded things and how I set up stories to share my experience. If written in a specific way, I understood that the book could help bridge the gap between the races that pump through my veins. The challenge was to talk about race in an honest and disarming way.

Six months after the phone call dissolving my job, the book was completed, edited, and published. In March of 2010 my memoir, Growing Up Black in White, took its first breath and I exhaled. My hope was to share about my experience in a way that drew people in instead of pushing them away. My hope was to talk about race and racism in a way that made people want to lean into it instead of run from it. The challenge was to talk about race in an honest yet disarming way. For the most part, it did just that. Through the power of storytelling, a gift I inherited from my adoptive father, the Lutheran minister, I found sharing from a personal and vulnerable place created a unique opportunity to connect, find common ground, and see each other.

Then the coursework began. I began creating, speaking, and learning. I studied things like America’s racial history, the system of racism, engagement, inclusion, belonging, racial identity development, and I looked for personal experiences to drive home the lessons. I went back to insurance after the book was published. I took the position of homeowner adjuster with a smaller mutual company founded by Mennonites in Pennsylvania with an office near Toledo. In between hail losses and water backup claims, I studied online taking Diversity and Inclusion courses through accredited universities including Cornell University and Case Western Reserve. I partnered with my best friend whom I have known for 45 years, and we created a business to train school administrators and staff (K-12 and universities) and organizations in the area of Diversity and Belonging. The racial tension in the country was on the rise again and business was picking up. We worked for two years together working with communities creating space for many who felt unheard then my phone rang again. It was my business partner and best friend. He shared with me that he had been offered a job as CEO of International Samaritans out of Ann Arbor. The job was a perfect fit for him working with communities in Africa and Jamaica who live in extreme poverty. I was excited for him because I understood when your purpose calls you must answer. I went back to doing my life’s work solo and continued to create change. 

Then my phone rang again. I’m surprised I was still answering my phone at this point. This time it was the CEO of the insurance company where I worked. He had been made aware of my side job and thought it was important that we talk. I assumed I was going to be told to let the second job go or be fired. Instead, he wanted to know if I would work with the insurance company in the area of Diversity and Inclusion. The George Floyd murder forced the CEO to see a lot of what he was blind to in the past. He now felt called to address racism and inequality and wanted me to lead the charge. I accepted and my role with the company shifted. Now I handled claims in between my special assignment. The plan was that eventually I would move to doing the diversity work full-time and transition out of handling claims. That was the plan, until I saw the post for a position with Adrian Dominican Sisters. I applied and began researching who the Adrian Dominican Sisters (ADS) were and I was floored. There were so many personal connections to ADS and Adrian. One of my brothers graduated from Adrian College. I was recruited by Siena Heights University in high school to run track for them. I worked with Siena Heights University a few years ago with their First Year Experience Program. My father’s first church was in Blissfield where my sister was born. My mother is an Associate with The Sisters of Saint Francis in Tiffin, Ohio. I had worked with the sisters in Tiffin during the pandemic. I created an 8-hour training course for them that we did on Zoom over two days. I greatly enjoyed working with the sisters and was so impressed by their knowledge and desire to learn. I went to a Catholic high school in Detroit, Benedictine. My principal, Sister Jackie, was a Dominican sister. She was one of the biggest influences in my life at that time. This job was a perfect fit and when purpose calls… you answer.

I’m so happy to be here and ready to join so many of you in doing this amazing work. Thank you to all who had a hand in creating this position and bringing me here. I’m so excited to see the work we can do together. 

By Kevin Hofmann
Director, Office of Racial Equity and Cultural Inclusion