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New Day for North Carolina: On Tolerance, Reform, and the Overwhelming Anguish
At UNCW’s Kenan Auditorium on Tuesday, January 16, area citizens saw the kick off for what may become, or ought to become, a new movement to realize the better potential that lies within North Carolina society. Julian Bond, a leading early participant in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—one of four major civil rights organizations of the 1960s—spoke to a packed assembly filled with enthusiastic supporters who frequently stood upright to applaud him. In one sense, the event was a community event for African Americans in Wilmington—and yet the implications went much further. Blacks in Wilmington today share a common experience with those in the state of Georgia, as elsewhere across North Carolina and the nation. They are feeling the impact of the irresponsible social and economic policies of the Bush administration. And Julian Bond’s scathing criticism of Bush, which made reference to the growing problem of unemployment, poverty, and the lingering effects of racial discrimination among Blacks, ought to have received greater recognition here from the area press. But it is typical of the conservative bias reflected in area TV news and newspapers that the real thrust of the speech by Bond was largely ignored. Julian Bond should know of the reality of political and social repression in America. He served at the front lines of one the greatest mass popular movements for reform in the nation’s history. As a student at Morehouse College in the 1960s, Bond became, as he described it, one of a handful of those who could actually claim to be a “student of Martin Luther King, Jr.” The spirit of King’s social philosophy was well reflected in his words. Julian Bond observed two crucial facts about the 1960s Civil Rights Movement: it was a movement that enjoyed broad support from whites, accomplishing its goals because whites and blacks together strove to overcome the pernicious system of Jim Crow segregation in the South; and, while having led to the disestablishment of legal segregation in the South, it still fell short of the goal of full equality for African Americans for the nation as a whole. Bond’s history lesson could have gone much further, but did include the critical observation that racial division today yet poses a threat to any progressive movement undertaken in the United States. State NAACP leader William J. Barber who presented Bond with a special award on behalf of NC-NAACP, also spoke at UNCW’s Kenan Auditorium, using the occasion to herald an event that is to come on February 10 at the state capital in Raleigh, one that has been endorsed by up to twenty-eight progressive labor, religious, community and reform groups. Spearheaded by the North Carolina NAACP, the “People’s General Assembly” will begin at 11:00 am. on Jones Street, followed by a program at 12:00 noon, and a march to the State Legislative Building to carry out a “people’s lobby” on behalf of a fourteen-point agenda that has been developed by the NAACP. The North Carolina coalition, including such groups as Democracy North Carolina, the AFL-CIO, the N.C. Black Leadership Caucus, the N.C. Council of Churches, and more, is seeking to attract fifty to 100 people from every North Carolina county as a means to demonstrate popular support for a new and more responsible politics in the state today. Progressives of all races should acknowledge that it is time to reclaim the sullied honor of North Carolina from the corruption of special interests. In this magazine, we have over the past six years repeatedly issued calls for a more responsible politics to address the issues that lie within the purview of the public interest. The NAACP has answered the call—not on account of CCV—but in response to the overwhelming anguish felt within communities across the state where the impact of inadequate government has been most strongly felt. A survey of the statistics tells the story. The poverty rate for North Carolina as a whole is still well above the national average, at 15.1%, but for African Americans the poverty rate shows an unacceptable rate of 24.0%. Per capita income among Blacks according to the 2005 American Community Survey of the U.S. Bureau of Census, stood at or near 35% less that the per capita income of North Carolina’s total population—indicating a disparity of income and employment that has been growing since George W. Bush became the U.S. President. Home ownership among African Americans, one of the most important indicators of the American standard of living, stood at 49.8% for Blacks, compared to 68.2% for the state. Unemployment stood at 4.7% for North Carolina, while among Blacks unemployment grew to 8.3%. (See CCV Special Report on Poverty, this issue. Where intolerance and racial antagonism prevail in North Carolina, these facts are likely to continue to be ignored. The TV fantasy-land image of racial equality in America today has sustained too many in the belief that all-is-well, and that the racial problem was resolved somehow by Ronald Reagan or the moral preachments of welfare reform. Too many Americans have failed to grasp that racial discrimination has continued to exist and that Black citizens still need help in getting out of the old culture of Jim Crowism, victimhood, dependency and resignation before the crushing cycle of poverty, racism and denial. The lessons of our history now should speak to all with a call for government of the people and for social, economic and political reform. Privatization, old fashioned morality lacking in real perspective, along with laissez-faire economics proclaimed by globalizing corporations subsidized by the taxpayer while holding government in thralldom to military adventures overseas—should be relegated to the waste-heap of shopworn fragments shredded into fluff and blown into the winds of the recorded annals of yesteryear’s folly. Those lessons remind us that every citizen should walk with dignity, as with equal treatment before the law. That no citizen should suffer under the dead hand of the past to be singled out to receive imposed burdens, just as the state should rise to the challenge of promoting the highest standards of education, healthcare, and prosperity for all. We should do more for the citizens of North Carolina, because we can. And we should practice tolerance within our communities, because we hear the anguished voices of the excluded and oppressed not only within our own country, but elsewhere throughout the world. So we can agree with Julian Bond and William Barber that it is time for North Carolina once more to answer the challenge to live up to the American creed. North Carolina’s new day will come sooner because they have spoken, but will become reality only when North Carolinians of all races learn to listen to each other and march together toward a common vision of the public good.
Access the full fourteen point agenda at: http://www.nccouncilofchurches.org/areasofwork/committees/economic_justice/HKonJ/14points.pdf
Find out more about the event: http://naacp.ubernc.com/ |
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Carolina Civic Voice Winter 2006-07 Vol. 6, No 4 |