How Charlotte should respond to the protests
We hope the civic leaders who gathered in Asheville Tuesday for the Charlotte Chamber’s retreat were as disturbed as we were by former Bank of America chairman Hugh McColl’s blunt assessment of where Charlotte stands right now.
He said the unrest over the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott exposed the fact that Charlotte has fallen short in addressing inequality in housing, jobs and education. We’re a city on the rise, but we’ve been vividly reminded that too few share in that prosperity.
Why are the inner-city poor getting left behind? McColl’s answer: “Prejudice that takes the form of not caring.”
No matter how you feel about the protests, we can all agree that “not caring” about the demonstrators’ grievances is not an acceptable option.
The city of Charlotte’s leaders, as well as civic and religious groups, are starting to talk about their response. But we already know the broad outlines of what must be done. We’ve been talking about it for decades.
We need to counter the isolation and marginalization of the poor, including the working poor, by mixing more affordable housing throughout the city, suburban areas included.
We need to counter the resegregation of schools, either with redrawn school boundary lines or new magnet schools or some combination. We need to connect people in the struggling neighborhoods west, north and east of uptown with good jobs and new hope.
We need an intensified focus on sophisticated apprenticeship programs such as the one Olympic High School enjoys with Siemens and other firms.
That collaboration has created a school-to-work pipeline that positions Olympic students to grab Central Piedmont Community College degrees and $50,000-per-year advanced manufacturing jobs by their early 20s.
Also, North Mecklenburg and other high schools offer technical institutes teaching skills such as automotive technology, cosmetology and culinary arts. We need more efforts like these, geared toward in-demand skills such as computer science and medical professions.
We are heartened that the City Council plans to start crafting its next moves in response to the unrest during its meeting Monday. However, the council shouldn’t act in isolation; it must collaborate with the county, the school board, the Chamber and legislative leaders.
Making headway against deep-rooted inequities is never easy, as civil rights lawyer James Ferguson said Tuesday evening during a WFAE-FM panel discussion on the unrest.
“We have to work for it, with intentionality,” he said.
Some will resist. They will ask why their families should sacrifice to help solve the problems of others. It’s not an unreasonable question.
But, as we learned so painfully in recent weeks, the problems across town eventually become everyone’s problems.
In the 1970s, we mustered the civic will required to act on huge social challenges.
It is time we did so once again.
This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 5:13 PM with the headline "How Charlotte should respond to the protests."