Open Letter to the Elected Officials of Charlotte

Of course this letter is to the members of the NAACP as well as the greater Charlotte community. First, we would like to say thank you to the many parents, students, and other individuals who joined with us for the MLK Day March and visits to the Levine Museum and the Harvey Gantt Center.

And to the many leaders of Charlotte let me say, we respect every opinion given regarding the NAACP’s decision to put Charlotte in the National spotlight. Our call was a call for a letter writing campaign not a boycott, a call to various groups such as CIAA, NCAA, PGA, to reveal the consistent growing racial disparities in our schools, our neighborhoods, against small businesses, against our parents, but most importantly against our children.

In the last ten (10) years, several research studies have shown the many disparities within this community:

We wanted to bring attention to the deplorable disparity of jobs through government contracts for our minority contractors. We are about 30% of this community yet we get less than 1% of all contracts, this is unacceptable. Many contractors in Charlotte have had to go out of business because of this fact and a lot of large construction companies are very crafty in getting around the utilization of minority contractors.

We need to highlight Jerry Orr’s attempt (Charlotte Douglass Airport) through City Council to put 144 small businesses out of business. Mr. Orr wants to replace 144 independent minority cab drivers with one major white cab company called Yellow Cab (I’m sure you’ve heard of it). He wants to make these men go to work for Yellow Cab, that’s tantamount to making them share croppers or tenant farmers and they will never get anywhere financially, probably die owing Yellow Cab for the cabs they already own.

Our members and citizens should be aware of the reports done by Crossroads Charlotte whose research about the relations in this city showing Charlotte headed toward four possible outcomes as a community, the one they fear most seems as though it is the one that it is rapidly becoming (Fortress Charlotte). Think about it!

The University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, headed by Attorney Julius Chambers, did a study on education and housing in Charlotte and completed the study in 2005. The study clearly showed the Board of Education that the direction it was going and the policies it was making were actually widening the achievement gap creating despair and disenchantment with minority students, forcing a higher failure rate. The report warns CMS that the continuation on this course would destroy communities and get progressively worse. The report proposed alternatives but CMS has refused to use any of them. Once you read the report you realize that the CMS Board seems to be doing everything the EXACT opposite of what was recommended. During this same period Judge Manning, a white republican judge stated that what’s happening in the Charlotte school system is nothing but “Academic Genocide.” What do you think?

In October of 2010, Johnson C. Smith University’s School of Business released a report that graphically illustrates “Though Charlotte maybe the second largest financial center in this country, minority businesses here (Black and/or Hispanic) get less help from the financial industry than in any other city in America. No help jump starting minority businesses, not enough if any joint, corporate/community training programs, no special small business seed programs. And let’s not forget minority home owners in Charlotte are getting little to No Help on restructuring their mortgages. We should remember how Bob Johnson, a very wealthy American and former owner of the Charlotte Bobcats expressed in an exit interview his disappointment with Charlotte and it’s resistance to work with young black entrepreneurs. He found it just as hard to do business here for himself.

First Century Foundation has completed a study in Montgomery County, MD that shows that diversity in housing and socio/economic diversity in the schools has shown to unequivocally increase academic performance of minorities and is closing the gap by 2, 3 and in some cases 8 points a year. The study also shows that neighborhoods and the people in those communities get along much better with much more harmony than before. Over 100 school districts across the nation have adopted this model. CMS refuses to accept the report, and the Charlotte City Council seems reluctant to or is too inept to enforce a mandate for mixed and affordable housing anywhere.

An impact study done by the Charlotte Housing Authority and additional study by members of the Northwest Corridor shows a great disparity in mixed and affordable housing in the city. There is a need for at least fourteen thousand (14,000) more units of mixed/affordable housing throughout the city. Less than 35% of possible affordable housing even exists in the NW corridor though space is available. The study shows the continued devaluation of property in the corridor which effects schools, businesses, and neighborhoods but plans for upgrading the corridor seems to be slow in coming. There is no Lynx and now due to the economic downturn maybe no trolley.

Some say “Charlotte can not be a bastion of racism, look at all the African Americans that are elected officials.” I say “We have a black president now and I have seen more racism and hatred in America, in the streets and in Congress than anytime over the last 40 years and Charlotte’s no exception.”

These are the reasons for our protest, not to mention the total resegregation of our schools, putting all of the predominantly black schools in a special separate zone by themselves and the closing of the ten schools in the Black or minority community. These are the reasons for our reasonable and rational discontent and we are determined to do more, to bring national attention to this city and the glooming racial disparities that exist here. Everything we’ve mentioned is a glowing sign of injustice to the minority and poor in this city. Injustice, discrimination, and racial hatred are the fundamental causes for which all NAACP battles have been fought for over 102 years. And we won’t stop now, “Forward Ever, Backward Never, On ward Forever.”

Reverend Brother Kojo Nantambu