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“White racists, black racists, they’re all the same,” Dianna Brewer says under her breath.
She’s on the phone responding to a caller looking for a woman of color to hire. When Brewer instead offers the name of a white woman, the caller is hesitant even though Brewer says she’s “good people.”
Brewer’s at work at the Unity House World Peace Center in Northside, a regular-looking two-story with a dog barking out back. Inside, it’s sparingly furnished with more chairs than anything else, but noticeably tidy and clean. Pine-Sol fills the air.
She’s a founding mother of this community center, now in its third year. Its mission statement focuses on increasing awareness of diversity and dialogue between all people.
Brewer has stepped down as director and now goes by the title Youth Program Director. She’s finally doing what she wants to do.
Born in the small Appalachian town of Hazard, Ky., Brewer spent her teens and 20s — which she refers to as her “me-me-me years” — in Louisville. She often visited her sister in Cincinnati.
“Cincinnati was too cold of a city for me, a very inhospitable place,” Brewer says of her first impression. Despite that, she moved here six years ago, the same day her son was born.
“A single parent and a child? You have to have a backup system,” she says. She found that by moving closer to her sister.
Brewer ran a day care center in Forest Park when she first moved here but wasn’t satisfied with her life.
“I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do, which was be involved in city life and help kids,” she says.
She comes from a family of educators and activists. When she was younger, her mother started a petition to get speed bumps on the street where they lived so people wouldn’t drive so fast.
She also comes from a family of racists. Her grandmother initially refused to talk to her biracial grandchildren.
But Brewer saw her family change.
“They went from shunning me to calling up all the time to check on the kids,” she says.
And she knew if they could change, so could others.
Brewer’s move here did little to improve her impression of Cincinnati.
“Not only do I see the outskirts of bigotry,” she says, “but I see the core of it — politicians making racist and homophobic decisions.”
She and her friends didn’t feel there was a place they could volunteer and feel comfortable with who they were.
“There wasn’t much that brought everybody together — black, white, gay, straight,” Brewer says.
Unity House was born. The group ended up buying a house in Northside.
Brewer envisions it becoming the melting pot of Cincinnati, but calls it “a work in process.” The Unity House is funded through private funds and donations. They host workshops and seminars, such as their bi-annual anti-violence workshops, and they organize block parties to get neighbors talking.
The house also serves as a meeting place for social groups like Sista! Sista!, which brings together African-American lesbians.
Brewer, meanwhile, focuses on the children.
“Children learn to be activists, they’re not born activists,” she says. “And there’s a big need, especially with young African-American males. By the time they reach fourth grade, they give up.”
Brewer wants the kids to remember three things: Have their own voice, choose a strong and reliable mentor and always have conviction of their actions.
Tell Brewer she’s perceived as a woman with power, and she’ll laugh. She smirks, almost. She’ll dismiss it.
“Power is perceived,” she whispers, repeating it again softly to herself, eyebrows raised.
Sitting on a chair missing its back and wearing an apron, jeans and tennis shoes, she’s not the image of power. That is, until you notice her ease with herself, her confidence and security. She looks you in the eye and doesn’t look away.
Brewer says there are two kinds of power: perceived and actual. Her name becomes linked with perceived power when talk turns to Stonewall Cincinnati, the traditionally white, gay, male-run human rights group.
Last September she spearheaded the effort to diversify the Stonewall board. She’s now one of two female African-American board members.
“I see that as me trying to see that everyone is included,” she says, dismissing her significance to the effort.
She’s more interested in what she calls actual power. That is, “the power we have to get up in the morning and do what we have to do and not get paid for it, or get paid very little for it,” she says. “I’d like to say I have some of that.”
She talks excitedly about the start of her summer reading program at Unity House. Neighborhood kids meet to learn beginning reading skills to creative writing. She’s working to add more programs in areas like music and theater.
When she talks about the current racial climate in Cincinnati, she sits back, pauses and tilts her head.
“When you’re sitting in comfort and life’s easy, there’s probably 100 people who don’t have that comfort,” she says finally. “Ask yourself why.”
Her advice for everyone in the city is to make an effort to surround themselves with a diverse group of people.
“People don’t realize that there is such a big difference in disparity in this city,” she says.
Although she has the opinions and the will to make a difference, she’s not even considering getting into politics.
“I’m great behind the scenes,” she jokes. “I speak from emotion and sometimes I say things I don’t really mean. My power rests in the fact that I know I will make a difference. And I will.”
This article appears in May 8-14, 2002.