Duane Campbell, who has lived in Louisville for decades, is an author who explores psychological aspects of traversing society’s largest hurdles as a Black person. In his latest book, Campbell touches on how trauma can impact families for generations, whether socially, economically, or psychologically.
In LEO Weekly’s latest Limelight, Campbell shared what brought him to write his latest novel, and what has pushed him to fight for social justice while exploring experiences of all races in today’s American society.
Parts of the interview between LEO Weekly and Duane Campbell have been edited for clarity.
LEO: Who are you?
Campbell: My name is Duane Campbell. I've worked with a entity called TIS, therapeutic intervention services, that's my conventional job. I work with special needs clients predominantly, and have been there for about three years. But my passion and my main work is what we're talking about today, pretty much just writing. This is my third book, my latest and most controversial book to date, Hostile Takeover: Systematic and Psychological Manifestation of a Cultural Reality. I do lectures, seminars, motivational speaking and currently working on a college tour by negotiating with numerous institutions for the coming school year. So that's pretty much where I'm at today.
LEO: Tell me about Hostile Takeover.
Campbell: the book sprung from a lot of different areas: frustration from seeing the condition of our culture and where it's been, denial for people on both ends of the economic, racial and social spectrums, not facing up to the reality of what the cause and effect of our condition is, and I've been doing this work a long time. I worked with street gang intervention for years here in the Louisville area back in the 90s through the early 2000s, worked at JCPS 10 years with behavioral students. I've seen a lot. So I think this book came from a desire to speak the truth, for one, and to expose the façade of how we're living, and to expose the reality, really, of what we're dealing with. So I know it's kind of hard to explain, but that's pretty much why I wrote the book.
LEO: What are some themes you’re pulling from locally to incorporate into your work?
Campbell: I think a lot of it comes from my experiences from seeing both ends. I've sat in the rooms with past mayor's teams, Housing Authority leaders and different organizations here in the Louisville area. I've seen that level of dialog and outreach initiative from that end of the spectrum. I've also been at the bottom, where I've walked the streets and even lived in the streets to see the reality of the condition that people live in.
So to an extent there, I don't want to say there's a hypocrisy of initiative, but I do want to say that maybe there's a naivete that is attached to outreach services and what really needs to be done to try to improve upon the condition that many of the oppressed, economically deprived people live in. So that's pretty much what's spurred it on. I think I have a good lens to be able to see different areas of the spectrum and to blend them together, to expose the truth. I'm not saying there's a fear to talk about it, but I'm saying there are… certain taboo issues for the sake of people getting their grant money or keeping their job, or things of that nature that do not want to speak on it. I think I have stepped out to speak on those issues.
LEO: What are some of the effects of systematic and psychological conditioning that you're seeing locally and more broadly on the national stage?
Campbell: There's a saying that says if you can't think right, you sure can't act right. And I take that very literally, so I try to look for the foundational aspect to the condition before I go off trying to find topical solutions to solve some of our problems. I think that stems from a lot of things that have happened, not in the deep past, but in the recent past. There's a level of thinking that is conditioned by circumstances and environmental circumstances and by psychological circumstances that shape behavior, and we don't see on the executive levels to search those things out.
We're looking for a lot of tangible remedies to fix these conditions. But a lot of times, I think that we are, I don't know if it's purposefully or not, but sometimes we ignore the root cause and effect as to why people behave the way they do. Just to give you a quick example, I live here in the West End. I see so much deprivation. I see so much lack of hope. I'm not saying there is no hope. When you walk around and you have that look on your face that you're lost and your head is down, that means something. That means that you're stuck in an environment that you might think that you will never get out of, and you adapt to the terrain of that environment. And what is that environment? You don't own anything. You don't own anything. You have no businesses. You don't have any power base to speak of that builds up your community. You live here, but you're sweeping out the parking lots of store owners who don't act like you, don't look like you, don't come for you where you come from, who might not even come from America originally, and recently, are the owners of where you live. And those profits from those entities do not get recycled back into the community to uplift the community or perpetuate the community.
So it's a constant cycle of poverty and the neglect that is fed into that, and that leads to a lot of things. And I try to get intricate with this book, and I think that that is one of the touching points that I think that this book possesses. It goes deep into the cycle of events, the rage that people have, and why they have that rage. What are people angry about, and whose fault is it really?
I'm trying to get inside of both ends, from the hierarchy end to the oppression, those who are oppressed perspective, to use my lens to explain those conditions.
