Charlotte: 2 weeks later - A tale of divergence

(Image Credit: Adam Rhew)

Two weeks later.  Where are we?

A little over a 2 weeks ago, the CMPD shot and killed Keith Scott. (NPR, 09/16) Ever since then there has been a public reawakening of old southern pains in a city striving to be the new face of the south. After the violent rioting, peaceful protests, release of videos, and a very vocal city council meeting, where are we, two weeks later, as the citizens of Charlotte?

The streets are back to normal. The curfew is lifted. The state of emergency (for the protests) is over. If you did not see the news for a week or two, you might have not known anything ever occurred.

I think there are few separate, but important issues that are often conflated in this incident: Structural racism, Socioeconomic class, and believe it or not --- the segregation of Charlotte's schools.

Charlotte is a city going through growing pains. It has experienced great economic prosperity in the last decade, but that prosperity has not reached all segments of its community. This became visible on all of our screens nationwide as a few violent riots broke out and several peaceful protests. While the news media portrayed this as a crisis, declaring that this is the fall of Charlotte, I see it as an opportunity. If we are smart, we can do something radically different in this city which will not only cast us as the new face of the south, but the face of an entire nation.

On Race and Socioeconomics 

In my current role as a psychotherapist, I see the segment of the population many of us rarely do on a daily basis. I covered this in my previous blog post; so I won't rehash it here. I can say that if not for my current position, I might be of the same mindset of many of my socio-economic peers.

I live a middle class life. I leave work to go to a safe home. I don't usually worry about officers raiding it. I have a stable income. I have food to eat and I usually pay all of my bills on time without much worry. I can understand  why it's so easy to wonder "why this is happening?" and ask for immediate peace when my own personal life is relatively peaceful.

At the same time, I am an African American male. I have been pulled over at least once a year by an officer while driving. I do experience the fear of an officer viewing me as a threat simply due to the pigment of my skin. That discrimination is visible, but remains invisible -- hiding in another's mind about how they may or may not view me.

I live in a nexus of sorts. Racism has been getting better in a lot of ways in America --- let's not sell that short. I live a much different life from my grandfather and even my father. African Americans have been making a lot of progress. At the same time, we face old ghosts.

"...there are really two nations within Black America. The problem of income inequality.... is not between Black America and White America but between black haves and have-nots, something we don’t often discuss in public in an era dominated by a narrative of fear and failure and the claim that racism impacts 42 million people in all the same ways." - NY Times 02/16

Every single day I hear the stories of a few of the individuals we see have seen on our screens. I listen to their struggles with the police and criminal justice. While "we", the majority of us directly unaffected by the events (Charlotte Agenda, 09/16), are terrified of a few broken windows and two unfortunate losses of life --- this is for "them", individuals living in these communities, is a weekly occurrence. We may despise those who have harmed police officers. But we do not hear (or often see) the raids and harassment some communities face daily from police officers. I have known academically that these places exist, but only through constant engagement with this community have I come to understand the reality of their daily lives. It is a tale of two Charlottes.

And before you think it, yes, if it is a black community it is largely "black on black crime". The same goes for "white on white crime". Individuals largely commit crime against someone of their own skin color. Maybe we are all racist that way. " Eighty-four percent of white people who are killed every year are killed by white people. White people who buy illegal drugs are most likely to buy them from white people. Far from being extraordinary, the fact that black criminals are most likely to commit crimes against black people makes them just like everybody else. A more honest term than “black-on-black crime” would be, simply, ‘crime.’ - (Fusion 9/15)

At the same time, the CMPD is one of the best police law enforcement agencies I know of. Many of it's officers do an outstanding job. It has been a model for police reform and has consistently sought to change. Recently it was even acknowledged  by the White House.

Despite all of that, even the police chief, Kerr Putney, has talked about how he grew up in North Carolina distrusting the police, due to his own father's death. The ghosts continue.

"He has invoked the “racist bigoted history” in American policing. And he has publicly stated that he believes his father’s death was an unacknowledged murder, one poorly investigated by officials in his hometown, Roanoke Rapids, N.C., because the police there “didn’t care about the value of a black life. ”- NY Times 

I have also thought similar things in my own life. To say that an African American police chief thinks this in a majority-minority county and that it was an African American officer who shot Keith Scott; is to highlight the plight of systematic racism. There are no individuals who are immune to its effects in some way. This is in drastic contrast to many Caucasian middle and upper class Americans who often don't have to think critically about race. It's the tension between #alllivesmatter and #blacklivesmatter. The ideas are not mutually exclusive, but saying the former when the latter is meant to give credence to a social and structural issue is missing (or whitewashing) the point. When you have a house on fire, you don't say all houses matter.

I have to acknowledge my own bias. This seems as a no-brainer, given my background and experiences. As an African american male growing up in the south, I was taught early and consistently about race and ethnicity in America. The history behind discrimination and how to endure it was an open conversation in my family. In retrospect, it was also a strength. It was a shock when I learned  in my adult years that my socio-economic Caucasian peers often did not even have these conversations at all in their households.

A UNCC professor, Shannon Sullivan, who is a southern, middle class, Caucasian female, wrote a few books on this called, "Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege" which explores her own development on race, gender, and ethnicity when she became an adult. "Good White People" is the follow up book she wrote which explores how the positive intentions of white middle and upper class individuals can have profound negative consequences. I attended her speaking session last year, where she candidly talks about how the word or notion of "race" was taboo in her household and community growing up --- leaving her with holes in her own identity and questioning her "good whiteness".

I highly encourage reading the books and watching the video, regardless of your race or ethnicity. It will be a risk and uncomfortable, no matter who you are. It is truly world shaking.

I think this is the missing, unconscious dialog. We are limited to our own experiences --- even more so when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, etc; and it shapes our ideas about the world and how it works far more profoundly than we rarely recognize.

On Schools

This comes to the forefront in the resegregation of schools in the Charlotte Area. Charlotte has one of the lowest level of economic mobility of any major city currently. "Poor kids lose .69 percent in earnings for every year they live in Mecklenburg County. That means at age 26, people who grew up poor in Mecklenburg will, on average, have household income 14 percent lower than if they had grown up in the average U.S. county, and about 25 percent less than if they had grown up in the best county for income mobility...finding that living in Mecklenburg County, or moving there, actually causes poor children to fall further behind." - Charlotte Observer 05/15

If you are born poor in Charlotte, you die poor in Charlotte --- statistically speaking. What does the American dream become if you are not provided to tools to manifest it?

In the last year, Charlotte has been undergoing a massive push to reintegrate the school system. This has not made many newspapers and it has faced considerable backlash from parents in more affluent neighborhoods who have threatened to leave the school district. "...the plan has drawn threats from several local towns to pull out of the school district, which currently encompasses the whole county, and the superintendent, already an interim placement, is scheduled to retire this year, which means the task force will need to work with new leadership." - The Atlantic, 03/16

The social science shows that school integration is by far the best way to fix a host of low performance school issues. Not magnet schools, not better teachers. Better teachers matter, but they often burn out and quit or move to richer areas. It places an unrealistic burden on them. For some reason, integration remains the hardest thing for us to do and commit to. But it is the solution, long term.

"When we operate as if the past is irrelevant, and propose ostensibly race-neutral policies in a deeply racialized world, we inevitably create social institutions that perpetuate that social stratification. The school system in Charlotte did not resegregate by accident, just as police in Charlotte did not perceive Keith Lamont Scott as a danger by accident. The country we live in is one that we have built to be this way. The cities we live in were built this way." - The Atlantic 10/16 

On the Media, On Facebook

When the protests were taking place, a lot of fear and miscommunication happened. We saw it on CNN and Facebook --- tanks in the city, violence seemingly everywhere, and apparent loss of control in a city which seems so stable.

And I think part of our own panic has to do with the fact that most of us are not actively engaged with these communities. When we only see individuals and their grievances through our smartphones when cops are arresting them, or they are protesting, it becomes easy to panic and "check in" on Facebook to give ourselves and loved ones a pseudo-sense of security. If you visited the protests, you would quickly see that what the news showed and what was actually taking place was worlds apart. You lose perspective on how a community actually functions 364 other days of the year if you never see them.

Honestly, if all we had to put up with was a curfew and some panic on Facebook from our families and friends --- it does not compare to the angst a lot of these individuals in Charlotte face daily.

In a way, this is an opportunity to change the narrative so we do not face the same problems of the last 20 years OR the ones other large cities continue to struggle with. We can choose to face these problems of class and race --- or ignore them through partial efforts which will only continue these issues. If we listen to these recent protests, start to actively engage these communities, and challenge ourselves, we can create a new narrative and live up to the dream of the new south we want Charlotte to be.

But first, wake up from the dream of Charlotte  --- the city you thought you lived in prior to the protests. Embrace the reality of it. Build it.

I don't believe in the dream of Charlotte. I believe in it's people.


Resources:

1. After Fatal Police Shooting, Protest Erupts In Charlotte, N.C. - NPR
2. Black America and the Class Divide - NYT
3. Hey Charlotte, you don’t need to check in safe on Facebook. - Charlotte Agenda
4. 10 Cities Making Real Progress Since the Launch of the 21st Century Policing Task Force
5. Kerr Putney, Charlotte Chief, Had Cause in His Life to Distrust Police - NYT
6. Next time someone tells you "all lives matter," show them this cartoon - Vox
7. A guide to debunking ‘black-on-black crime’ and all of its rhetorical cousins - Fusion
8. Shannon Sullivan, Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism (SUNY Press) 6:30 PM, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015, UNC Charlotte Center City - YouTube
9. In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters - NYT
10. One notch ahead of Baltimore - Charlotte Observer
11. Where Children Rarely Escape Poverty - The Atlantic
12. THE DESEGREGATION AND RESEGREGATION OF CHARLOTTE’S SCHOOLS - The New Yorker
13. Shattering Charlotte's Myth of Racial Harmony - The Atlantic