Charlotte is ‘nice/nasty’ — and that’s holding us back, says Malcolm Graham

Former Charlotte City Council Member and N.C. Sen. Malcolm Graham once strutted through his parents’ Charleston, South Carolina, home, full of teenage swagger. He waited patiently for his mother to compliment his new sweater.

He was shocked when she told him that he looked “nice/nasty.” Graham’s mother, Henrietta Graham, did like his new sweater. It was nice. However, she knew that the shirt her son was wearing under his sweater had been plucked from a pile of dirty clothes. It was nasty.

His mother challenged him to do better and to understand that what lies below the surface is just as important as what you present to the world.

Graham likens Charlotte to his fly sweater and his dirty undershirt. Charlotte is nice/nasty. And Graham wants to challenge the city to work on the nasty problems that are hidden under shining skyscrapers and bustling Uptown streets.

“Charlotte is politically correct,” Graham said. “It’s a very polite city — on the surface. But, when you start peeling away the layers you see that there are many problems.”

“Charlotte is great at throwing money at problems, but it’s time that our city leaders put on some blue jeans and do some work,” he said.

It is the dirty, sweaty work that will allow Charlotte to shake off the ghosts of segregation and overt civil injustice and wholly embrace a welcoming, progressive future.

Just look at the aftermath of the Keith Lamont Scott shooting and the protests that followed last September. Charlotte City Council responded by expanding affordable housing goals and ponying up $1 million on new workforce development initiatives, which Graham cites as an example of how officials skirted addressing exactly what the protests were about.

“People didn’t take to the streets because their wasn’t enough affordable housing,” he said. “They were protesting because they want police officers to stop shooting black folk.”

For Charlotte to be a beacon of the “New South” — which Graham defines as Southern cities that promote a new progressive beginning for human rights and civil justice — it must address the inherent biases people of color face in the educational, employment and criminal justice systems, he said.

Charlotte has been ranked the 14th best place to live by U.S. News & World Report. But in a 2014 study the city ranked 50th out of the 50 largest cities in the U.S. for social mobility. If you are born poor in Charlotte you are less likely to escape poverty compared to other large cities in America.

To their credit, Charlotte leaders took action after this report and formed task force that came up with 21 strategies and 91 recommendations to address the city’s low rankings in segregation, income inequality, school quality, social capital and family structure.

The indefatigable Graham showed a slight tinge of exhaustion when discussing the task force, which took two years to come up with strategies and recommendations. Graham thinks the task force was a step in the right direction, but he wants city officials to hold themselves accountable and push for results. He wants to see a commitment from financial leaders, whom Graham feels don’t have enough vested in Charlotte because many of them don’t live here, and he would like to see the political leadership put their community over their position.

“The energy fizzles out too quickly in Charlotte,” Graham said. “We need to be marathoners, not sprinters.”

Graham lost his sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, when white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, killing Hurd and eight others.

Graham was instrumental in having the Confederate flag, a symbol that Roof idolized, removed from the South Carolina state house. Although Graham doesn’t believe that the removal of Confederate monuments needs to be the first problem that Charlotte addresses, he does think allowing monuments that were erected not as an homage to Southern heritage, but to “poke a thumb in the eye of the Civil Rights Movement” need to be brought down in order for Charlotte to move forward collectively and progressively.

“A place can’t be inclusive if it has reminders of its divisiveness,” Graham said.

Graham has called Charlotte home since attending Johnson C. Smith University on a tennis scholarship. He loves the city and wants to see Charlotte have a chance to be a true leader in the New South.

But can the Queen City peel off its good looking sweater and expose its dirty undershirt?

Photos: Observer file photo; Courtesy of Malcolm Graham

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 1:03 AM with the headline "Charlotte is ‘nice/nasty’ — and that’s holding us back, says Malcolm Graham."