The First Presidential Debate: How Cleveland Is a Microcosm of America’s Reality

Education, Racism, Immigration, Healthcare — all things that matter

When I noticed that Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland was the chosen venue for the first Presidential Debate, I felt quite privileged to have spent an exchange trimester at the University back in 2011 during my MBA.

As an exchange student who got to spend three months in the United States of America and live the American Dream, I got to observe many little things that now resonate so much as I’ve grown in my understanding of the world and its affair.

For most outsiders, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or Miami are the dream cities people want to visit as “tourists” in America, but the true representation of the country lies in cities like Cleveland.

Roughly equidistant from Chicago and New York City, Cleveland in many ways is described as the city where the East Coast meets the Midwest. While not a big melting pot like New York, it does have everything that you can expect from a “big city” to cater to all sorts of people and aspirations.

And yet, like the rest of America, it also suffers from the same issues that plague the whole of the country. Hence, I felt that Cleveland being chosen as the venue of the first debate was in many ways the perfect poetic justice to this critical election that lies ahead and its importance for the future of the USA. We’ve all heard enough from the First Debate and its analyses, so I’ll skip that but will focus on the city of Cleveland for the purposes of this article.

The Healthcare Debate — Cleveland Clinic

In addition to hosting the First Debate in conjunction with CWRU, Cleveland Clinic will also serve as Health Security Advisor to the Commission on Presidential Debates for all four 2020 general election debates.

With the pandemic and the repercussions around public gatherings, the Health Advisor role is a critical one for this critical part of the Presidential Election process to be run smoothly.

Cleveland Clinic is one of the top medical institutions in America. With the Healthcare debate as one of the central topics of disagreement between the Republican and the Democrat nominees, there isn’t a better representation of that ideal. The below announcement on the Cleveland Clinic website sums it up beautifully.

The Commission on Presidential Debates retained Cleveland Clinic, an objective authority in healthcare, to serve as the Health Security Advisor for all four 2020 presidential debates. For this reason, the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic was selected to host the first 2020 presidential debate.

What happens with the future of healthcare protection for the average American is hugely dependent on the election outcome. As a leading nation of the world on many accounts, access to basic, affordable healthcare is a right that Americans are owed, no matter what policy the incoming President chooses to implement.

Racism and Equality — The Black Population

The Unidentified Black Male — Over my stay of 3 months, our CWRU campus email had 7 different messages of incidents of “mugging” that were flagged to us.

The first line of each of those emails was so similar, you’d mistake them for the same one.

“Unidentified black male suspect mugged a <add mugging incident description>…”

While this may simply be a factual description, the fact that all emails began with this surely makes people have a subconscious bias against the Black population.

There must be a better way of dealing with this?

This form of stereotyping essentially creates a sub-conscious connection in people’s minds that makes them associate crime with Black men, which is a horrible and factually flawed thing to do.

Why was this the case? There’s probably more to it than meets the eye — so simply believing that most criminals are black men, we should get the facts straight.

I researched a bit and found some facts that made the reason clear to me.

• About 50% of Cleveland’s population is formed of African-Americans
• A quick ride on the public transport system — buses, and the subway, will show that the ONLY people you see using the public system is the African-Americans. Well, them, and the students. Wait, there are still about 35–40% other people in the city, why don’t they take the public system? The answer is because they can afford cars.

The economic disparity clearly is a reason why the “unidentified black male” has to resort to mugging to steal a phone and a wallet to get by. It is a systemic issue and not a choice — no one chooses to be a criminal.

My personal experiences — Black people in general are the most wonderful bunch of humble and kind people you’ll ever meet.

I had a few classmates who were Black — one a lawyer by profession and one of the smartest girls in our class. Another, a male nurse at the Cleveland Clinic also pursuing his MBA on the side — married to a Caucasian woman. He was the most gentlemanly guy in our class.

Additionally, I had a chance encounter with another black woman.

I was on an overnight bus returning from a weekend trip to NY, back to Cleveland.

A Black woman, probably in her mid-30s, stepped into the bus with a massive bag and was struggling with it, so I lent her a hand for which she was thankful and took the empty seat next to me.

We only chatted occasionally during the trip as it was an overnight journey and we spent most of our time catching some sleep. When we got down at the Cleveland Bus Station, I noticed she had a lot of luggage, so I decided to wait for her and help her with it.

After I’d collected all the luggage for her, she thanked me and gave me the warmest of hugs, as a kind gesture to express her gratitude for my help.

Like the other encounters with the Black population of America, she was yet another beautiful person!

Education and Immigration — University Circle

University Circle is a district in the neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, and has one of America’s densest concentrations of cultural attractions and performing arts venues. It is home to world-class institutions like Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall, Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland Institute of Music, and University Hospitals/Case Medical Center.

Thousands of aspiring people, from across the country as well as outside of the USA come to CWRU to pursue an education that will be the building blocks of their aspirational careers. My MBA class at CWRU had about half Americans from all over the country and from all walks of lives and age-groups. The other half was comprised of foreigners, mostly Chinese and Indians, in addition to other ethnicities such as Europeans.

This is what really distinguishes America from the rest of the world — it is where dreams are made and nurtured. People from across the world come to the US to pursue their dreams via access to world-class education and unparalleled exposure.

With the “MAGA” movement trying to curb immigration (not just the illegal kind) in the name of giving Americans more opportunities, the very core of this American Dream is under threat. If anything, immigrants and people of the world have only been additive to the USA, and the idea that they’re taking away jobs and opportunities from the locals is a misrepresentation.

Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and other top American companies have Indians at the helm as CEOs. A number of scientists and doctors in the USA who are doing breakthrough research and saving lives are immigrants.

As we head into the final stretch ahead of the Presidential Elections in November, these are some of the key issues and questions that the people of America need to address and weigh both candidates around. Based on what they want the future of America to look like, they must vote for the one that represents the ideals that make America truly great.

It isn’t an easy decision, but it is a decision that needs to be made.