We Creatives for Common Sense have long followed the impressive community story of Lexington Creative icon Griffin Van Meter. So we were both shocked and saddened to hear the news last July 4 that Griffin’s father, Tom Van Meter, had been publicly convicted of being a racist.
Shocked, because who could have guessed that Father Tom, described as one of the horse industry’s “leading consignors of bloodstock” and member of what the Lexington Herald Leader has called “an old and storied Bluegrass family” with solid ante-bellum plantation roots, could be capable of describing African American athletes as part of a “n___ Football league” in need of defunding, or of expressing a desire to “[p]ut’em back in their cage”!
Saddened, because being a convicted racist, as we Creatives well know, is a known brand killer. While this is certainly the case for the racist her/him/them/itself (thertself) committing the racist comments, racist convictions also run the risk of impacting any adjacent brands related to therts kin and business partners. Like a little hooded KKK butterfly flapping its wings on some Scott County horse-breeding farm, Father Tom’s statement threatened to bowl over not only the time-worn Van Meter family brand, but also the many northside Fayette assets and partnerships that Griffin had put together in over 15 years of siring his own NoLi brand.
As we know here in Lexington, Griffin is not your average Creative. When confronted with the news of his father’s conviction, the son quickly put out an authentic Facebook statement for the local media to widely circulate and report on.
Here’s the TL;DR version of that post: Griffin acknowledges being aware for some time that his father had committed multiple racist acts while still an in the closet racist, and then thanks the community for allowing his father the leeway to commit these racist acts out of the closet so that he, Griffin Van Meter, can begin to help his father along on his journey to becoming an anti-racist.
The post was roundly considered an elegant, we dare say iconic, Facebook act: an acknowledgement, a thank-you, and a pathway forward. It just may have saved both the Van Meter and NoLi brands from any credible accusations of racism.
How to be anti-racist like Griffin Van Meter in 10 easy steps: the community grassroots of a CfCS policy paper
Six months removed from Father Tom’s act, we Creatives for Common Sense wish Griffin well on this most important of family trips. Though we confess to not being aware of any follow up media reports, we feel certain that the NoLi ambassador and Kentucky4Kentucky entrepreneur is well on his way to a successful unlearning of his father’s racism–perhaps, one may hope, in time for this year’s Fall Yearling sales.
But for other Creatives forced to deal with the toxic fallout associated with racist convictions, the pathway guiding Griffin’s multi-cultural journey may not seem so clear-cut or sure-footed. To help these less-fortunate Lexington Creatives, we at CfCS feel it important to develop and circulate a blueprint for how to become an anti-racist community leader like Griffin Van Meter.
As one of the most successful of community-minded northsiders to arise from a neighborhood known to be packed with community-minded artists and people, Griffin’s story–the steps and the path taken on his journey, as it were–offers a working, community-endorsed model for future like-minded creative northsiders.
We would like to thank our community media partners at North of Center for encouraging us to expand our one-off article into a 10-step policy paper that will be published serially over the next several months. As long-time students of Griffin’s work, we at CfCS are the perfectly credentialed community activists to pull off this ambitious and needed niche project, and as a local paper long interested in the doings of Lexington’s Creative Class, North of Center is the perfect community partner. If you value our niche community work, please support our media partners.
In the meantime, keep a lookout on the NoC site for Step 1 on the journey to becoming anti-racist like Griffin Van Meter. As any life-coach worth their scheduling fees will tell you, Step 1 may be the most important of steps on any journey–and you can read all about it in next week’s North of Center.
Step 1: Buy a low-income neighborhood
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