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Some great comments on the Middle Class Squeeze (see below).
First, kudos to “chilton” for coining a great term: “Pulturbia: cheap, on-slab housing with faux ‘community.’ ”
An anonymous commenter tossed out a challenge:
Mary, pick a side of the fence, please. When talking about the problem of sprawl, you note, “That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices.” Then you criticize “arriviste mansions,” which, of course, are the result of intown neighborhoods evolving naturally when left to their own devices.So, which is it? Should we let market forces prevail, or should we have the government tell us what to do? And if the latter, just curious: are you prepared to put historic preservation status on your own intown home, which would prevent a McMansion but severely limit your resale value?
And then “chef” commented:
I’m not sure what you’re asking for. Do you want mandated housing – force people to live certain places so they are integrated? Do you want to force developers to build $800k subdivisions next to $150k subdivisions? It seems like you want to force some sort of “solution” but fall short of saying what it is. If people can afford $800k houses, why not let them build and live where they want?
A few comments: This is a topic that could justify a research-paper length discourse, but I’m trying to keep the blog entries shorter, so I apologize for giving short shrift to some complicated situations. And bear in mind there are no easy solutions, because whatever you do, some negative consequence will emerge. Cities are complex organisms.
But it’s a misconception to think those “arriviste mansions” are a pure result of natural economic evolution. They’re not. They depend on government regulation, specifically on zoning laws that keep development at lower intensities. Without single-family-only zoning, some of those mansions would be apartment or condo buildings. Or stores, offices, or factories. Without that government meddling (a.k.a. zoning), when we’re forced to vacate our intown home in 15 years because we’ve retired and our tiny journalist pensions won’t cover the property taxes, we’d sell out to a high-rise condo developer for a lot more than even Simonini and brethren would pay us. (I’m pretty sure our humble ranch isn’t eligible for historic landmark status, especially since we replaced some of the drafty-but-vintage 1950 metal casement windows in front. We’re less authentic, but warmer.)
In a city evolving “naturally,” that is, without the government constraints of zoning, etc. etc., we’d see much more intense development in the desirable areas. That condo project at Carmel and Colony that the Giverny neighbors fought so intensely would be dwarfed by the nearby high-rises and office towers.
All that said, I don’t think we’re going to have that mythical-but-pure, dog-eat-dog free marketplace, where you can build anything anywhere and I can put a Starbucks in my front yard next to your McMansion. We don’t have it now. And on balance that’s a good thing. A totally free market would pollute the water and air and we’d all pay a lot more for street paving, among other things.
So I have to opt for a government regulatory system, but with different regulations, in some instances, from what we have now. Not more regulations, necessarily, just different ones. For example, current regulations require certain lot sizes and setbacks and limit the placement of your carport and won’t let your aunt bake pies to sell at the farmer’s market if she lives in a neighborhood zoned for residential only. I’d ease up on the single-family-only rules (and let people bake those pies!). BUT I’d force developments to have a small percentage of housing affordable by people who aren’t rich. Every development, even ones with $800,000 houses, would have to comply. You’d be free to buy an $800K house and move in. But on the corner might be a duplex where your widowed grandmother might live, or your niece who’s a kindergarten teacher.
That’s because it’s in the larger community’s best interest to have housing for people who aren’t rich, and it’s been proved over and over that a small percentage of less-affluent families don’t hurt property values, when they’re dispersed through higher income neighborhoods. But large collections of very poor families clustered in one neighborhood do hurt property values there. So it’s in the larger community’s best interest to encourage economic integration in ways that don’t negatively affect other areas.
Several Virginia and Maryland counties have adopted those “inclusionary zoning” ordinances, as has Davidson, and they seem to be working fine.
Interestingly, Myers Park – designed 100 years ago before Charlotte zoning laws – had deed restrictions that dictated that on certain streets the houses couldn’t be too expensive. John Nolen, who planned the neighborhood, thought it was important to mix housing sizes and prices. So Myers Park (and to a lesser extent Eastover) has huge houses, smaller houses and even garage apartments (a form of “affordable housing” that’s been all but lost due to overly restrictive zoning rules).
What about all those starter home neighborhoods? That’s trickier. I’m not sure what the best solution would be, even though I worry that they’ll be our slums of 2036.
Allowing more affordable housing in higher-income areas would ease some of the market pressure for starter homes, but probably not enough. Stronger design rules – like the ones Cabarrus County recently instituted – would be appropriate. And if the high-interest-rate mortgage business were forced to clean up its act, I bet a notable percentage of the starter home market would evaporate.

You heard it here first: Charlotte slowly becoming a city of stark haves and have-nots?
Two different bits of recent news coverage might sound a warning bell.
First was Michelle Crouch’s article Jan. 11, “Homes’ sum is greater than parts” about the Montibello Crossing neighborhood. A developer wants to buy the whole 47-acre neighborhood – all 63 homes, vintage 1970s – and tear them down so he can build much pricier houses (or, as one Eastover resident I know calls them, “arriviste mansions.”)
Last year the average sale price for Montibello Crossing houses was $257,000. Several neighboring subdivisions are much ritzier, with average sale prices last year in Gleneagles at $610,000, Quail Hollow at $690,000 and Seven Eagles at $851,300.
The second piece was the excellent series, just concluded, on the problem of foreclosures in Mecklenburg County. Did you look at the map? Since the foreclosure problem is primarily tied to entry-level (i.e., inexpensive) housing, the map shows a large band of neighborhoods, sweeping east to west across the county, generally north of downtown, are being filled with new subdivisions holding nothing but entry-level housing.
Don’t get me wrong. This city needs housing that people who aren’t wealthy can buy. We don’t want everyone who isn’t making a six-figure income to have to move to Union, Cabarrus or Gaston County. I’m not saying it’s a problem that those houses are being built (although if you read the series, you’ll see it’s a problem when mortgages are given to people who shouldn’t really get them, and foreclosure results). The problem comes when too much housing for low-income people gets concentrated, instead of being sprinkled throughout the city amid higher-income housing.
Here’s market reality: If you cluster too many subdivisions of low-cost houses, you can’t sell higher-end houses in that area. People think it isn’t a good investment – and they’re probably right. All those starter-home subdivisions may well be condemning large chunks of Charlotte to a foreseeable future of nothing but low-income residents. It’s an economic monoscape in the making, and not one that will be healthy for the city.
If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past half-century, it’s that neighborhoods housing only large concentrations of poor people are more prone to crime, drugs, social problems and joblessness.
Then, in south Charlotte you’ve got people in moderate-level housing being squeezed out by super-expensive housing.
Catch my drift? Does this not sound like a future of economic apartheid?
What will that kind of future mean for public schools? Once the courts threw out the old, court-ordered student assignment plan, the schools rapidly splintered by income and race – reflecting the way the city’s neighborhoods are segregated by income. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is staggering from large, and unexpected, increases in low-income and immigrant students. (Yes, many do very well, and being poor shouldn’t mean any student gets a worse education. But statistics show that as a group, kids from poor homes don’t do as well as kids from wealthier ones, and they require a disproportionate amount of public money in order to give them an equitable education.)
Meanwhile, the slow attrition of affluent kids into private schools or home schools continues as the rich get richer, and the influx of poor and immigrant kids tilts formerly middle-income schools into the high-poverty category.
Can the middle class even hold on here? It’s not a comforting vision of the future.

All those people buying up condos in those uptown towers ’cause they love the view? Guess what. Nothing in city regulations can stop the owner of some parking lot next door from putting up a tower to block the view.
I guess it’s only a major point if you’re one of the people buying in to places with names like “the Vue,” but it’s a great example of our city planning policies being a day late and a dollar short.
The point came up Tuesday night in a forum called “Towers: Is Charlotte Losing Or Finding Its Soul?” at the Levine Museum, put together by an interested group that calls itself the Civic By Design forum. Architect/developer David Furman, who’s building Courtside among other uptown projects, was asked about the problem of shadowing, which you get in places with a lot of tall towers.
The questioner wanted to know what’s being done here?
“I think nothing,” said Furman.
City planner Kent Main, in the audience, confirmed that. We do not have any regulations on that, he said. One reason buildings in New York City are terraced back from the street, he said, is because of those kinds of regulations requiring sunlight and shadow studies. But, he said, he didn’t think Charlotte had reached that point yet.
He’s right. We haven’t. But here’s the problem with that kind of thinking: By the time Charlotte has reached that point, with everyone wanting a tower on every uptown plot, how hard is it going to be for City Council to buck the pressure they’ll get from all those developers planning to build all those towers? Setting sunlight rules and viewshed rules will limit the ability of some property owners to build everything they want, wherever they want it.
The time to adopt regulations is now, before the pressure gets so intense.
How important is the view to potential condo buyers uptown? Patrick Kelly, a young architect who works with Civic By Design forum coordinator Tom Low, went around to a bunch of for-sale condo tower projects uptown to hear their sales pitches.
His conclusion: “They’re all selling the view.”
Betcha all those buyers will be a tad ticked when they learn their “view” has no protection. Welcome to Charlotte.

All those people buying up condos in those uptown towers ’cause they love the view? Guess what. Nothing in city regulations can stop the owner of some parking lot next door from putting up a tower to block the view.
I guess it’s only a major point if you’re one of the people buying in to places with names like “the Vue,” but it’s a great example of our city planning policies being a day late and a dollar short.
The point came up Tuesday night in a forum called “Towers: Is Charlotte Losing Or Finding Its Soul?” at the Levine Museum, put together by an interested group that calls itself the Civic By Design forum. Architect/developer David Furman, who’s building Courtside among other uptown projects, was asked about the problem of shadowing, which you get in places with a lot of tall towers.
The questioner wanted to know what’s being done here?
“I think nothing,” said Furman.
City planner Kent Main, in the audience, confirmed that. We do not have any regulations on that, he said. One reason buildings in New York City are terraced back from the street, he said, is because of those kinds of regulations requiring sunlight and shadow studies. But, he said, he didn’t think Charlotte had reached that point yet.
He’s right. We haven’t. But here’s the problem with that kind of thinking: By the time Charlotte has reached that point, with everyone wanting a tower on every uptown plot, how hard is it going to be for City Council to buck the pressure they’ll get from all those developers planning to build all those towers? Setting sunlight rules and viewshed rules will limit the ability of some property owners to build everything they want, wherever they want it.
The time to adopt regulations is now, before the pressure gets so intense.
How important is the view to potential condo buyers uptown? Patrick Kelly, a young architect who works with Civic By Design forum coordinator Tom Low, went around to a bunch of for-sale condo tower projects uptown to hear their sales pitches.
His conclusion: “They’re all selling the view.”
Betcha all those buyers will be a tad ticked when they learn their “view” has no protection. Welcome to Charlotte.

Go to almost any city in America, and if you want to find the neighborhood that was urban renewed out of existence, look for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Bingo.
So you guessed it! The Charlotte street some people want to rename MLK Drive runs smack through what used to be the historic black neighborhood called Brooklyn. It was mostly urban renewed out of existence. It was further plundered when I-277 was built along one side.
Now that part of downtown is a rather desolate sector of government buildings, parking lots and an underused (except by Canada geese) park.
Here’s another funny thing. A bunch of Southern traditionalist types are pouting because they say the street, named Stonewall, honors a Confederate War hero. However, there’s no evidence that it does or doesn’t. More on that below.
One more funny thing. A big chunk of Stonewall Street years back (my guess is 1950s) was renamed Independence Boulevard. Wonder if the same folks kicked up a fuss then. When I moved here in 1978, Independence ran along Stonewall Street. It came past CPCC, as now, past Charlottetown Mall, and then shot up toward the Observer building, but at some point (I can’t quite remember where) it curved left, then right again and went down what’s now called Carson Boulevard. Somewhere around there Independence magically changed names – this IS Charlotte, after all – into Wilkinson Boulevard. The coming of I-277 rerouted that section of then-Independence and the city restored its older name: Stonewall.
Back to Stonewall. Dan Morrill, local historian, says it’s his “reasoned judgment” the street wasn’t named for Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, whose widow, Anna Morrison Jackson, was from Charlotte and lived here for years. “The street name is old,” Morrill says. “I looked at two maps, one dating from 1890-something and the other 1877.” Both maps showed it named Stonewall Street, he says.
What makes him think it wasn’t named for Stonewall Jackson is that, as he says, “I would have thought that in all of my meanderings about Charlotte that I would have heard that that was what it was named for. … I read every edition of the Charlotte Observer from 1890 to 1925, and I never saw any reference to that.” He also thinks that if it had been named for Stonewall Jackson, it wouldn’t have been called just Stonewall Street, but would have been Thomas Jackson Street or something.
“I’ve got a feeling, “ he says, “that if somebody wants to go down there [the Carolina Room at the main library] and spend a week cranking microfilm, they might find something.”
Tom Hanchett, historian for the Levine Museum of the New South, who’s done a lot of research into old Charlotte neighborhoods, also isn’t sure. “It’s a strange street to pick for that name,” he says. He also mentions: “It’s a sucky street to name after King. Can’t we do better than that?”

More on the “is New Urbanism a good idea?” theme. Comments welcome, below:

Longtime west Charlotte activist Sue Friday sent this note:
“I just don’t think anyone should be advocating new urbanism. I doubt you and I could afford to live in Seaside. The problem with NU is that it encourages people to set themselves up in elitist communities and feel good about it. Birkdale, built away from everything out in a cow pasture and on the wrong side of 77 is a prime example. I think part of its “charm” is exclusivity — price and distance from undesirable people. Places like that damage Charlotte, drain off strength, $, and energy. It would be so much more exciting if it had been done as redevelopment in some of the older, poorer neighborhoods accessible to everyone. What has been done to the northern end of the county and the small towns there is inexcusable. The worst part is how smug so many of the planners and developers are because they can paste on a NU label.”

I disagree. Here’s my response:
“Lord knows, there’s plenty of elitist development going on around Charlotte, and most of it isn’t New Urbanist at all. I don’t think it’s fair to condemn New Urbanism because it’s being applied, in many cases, in suburban locations like Birkdale. In Charlotte, the ‘burbs are where almost all the large-scale development is going on. Why condemn New Urbanism — one style of design — just because it’s being used in greenfield development? Would you rather have a Birkdale looking the way it does, or have another standard-issue regional shopping mall there, a la Northlake?
Yes, we’d both prefer that more development was happening in older, poorer neighborhoods. But it isn’t Birkdale’s New Urbanist design that caused it to be built where it is or target the markets that it does. The villain in that is the whole larger picture of metro-area development economics.
Since suburban development is going to happen anyway — much as you and I would prefer to see underused, in-town sites developed instead –why shouldn’t it be better designed, better for the environment, more suited to support public transit and more like the neighborhoods that have stood the test of time? Plenty of New Urbanist developments aren’t elitist — although Seaside sure isn’t among them. One key New Urbanism principle is to include a range of housing at a range of prices, by including more “affordable” options: apartments over stores, garage apartments and live-work units, etc. etc. Seaside has those places, but Seaside got so popular even the tiny places built to be “affordable” aren’t, any more.
Like you, I like places with more age on them. They have more soul. I’d much rather live in Elizabeth than Baxter. I’m not going to be attracted to anything new, even New Urbanist new. But new stuff keeps getting built. And I think New Urbanism is a better option for it than replicating Piper Glen or Hunter Oaks or Foxcroft the ga-zillions of subdivisions named for the landscapes the developer destroys.

The head of the Knight Program for Community Building at University of Miami, where I have a yearlong fellowship, sent a note responding to comments from one or two fellows who criticized New Urbanist developments because they aren’t redeveloping existing city neighborhoods, etc. His name is Chuck Bohl. Here’s what he wrote:
“In the words of one new urbanist realist, ‘New Urbanism cannot prevent tooth decay.’ It is not a panacea for all of the challenges of community building, and neither is zoning, housing policy, traffic engineering, social services, economic development, community development and environmental regulation in a vacuum.
“New urbanism restores physical planning and design to the toolkit, and, rather than the urban renewal and heroic Modernist architecture and planning of the 1960s, it espouses relearning how to make walkable, mixed-use places with an attractive public realm of great streets and public gathering places, civic institutions, and a mix of housing types. [New Urbanist] principles have been applied to HOPE VI [public housing] projects, manufactured housing neighborhoods, and all manner of urban infill.”

Plenty of comments to yesterday’s post on whether school board member George Dunlap should reply to a racist e-mail he received, and if so, what he should say. Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Today I received this from reader Jim Jordan in Laurinburg, about 100 miles east of Charlotte if you head toward Wilmington. Jordan wrote:
“Once I was sitting at the dinner table talking about the integration of the University of Mississippi. My father suddenly called me a ‘n—– lover.’ I told him that he might be correct and I also loved him.
“I’ve discovered over my years in teaching that there are people of all races who dislike to the point of hatred people of other races. Usually this has to do with something that happened up to five hundred years ago and had only a nominal effect of the people doing the hating. We recipients of the hatred have to consider the source and move on with our lives.
“I can understand the problems with the CMS system. It isn’t simply that the voters continue to elect idiots – not especially their fault when good people refuse to run for the School Board and your only choice is the lesser of the two idiots. It also has to do with the history of integration in CMS.
“Court ordered busing and really long bus trips all over the county aren’t going to please many people. More important than that, it puts kids who do not know each other and have never had any experience dealing with each other in the same school. One group will consider the school ‘theirs’ and the other group will be the interlopers. It’s not going to be a pretty sight.
“Then in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the CMS Board and administration sent out a message to teachers and administrators. ‘We expect you to keep order but if you get into trouble you swing in the wind alone.’ That in itself was enough to create a hemorrhage of teachers out of CMS that the system is dealing with today. More importantly it created the idea of an acceptable level of chaos.
“Kids, whether black, white, Asian, or whatever are going to act like kids. That means quite often irresponsibly and always on the edge of the boundaries. It only takes one kid going beyond the pale every day to destroy the learning environment in the classroom. If the classroom teacher gets no support and no help in managing a disorderly student and is also held accountable for all the testing – well, you have problems.
“Now having said that, I’ll say this. I taught from 1966 until I retired in 2000. At no time, even during the darkest days of school riots, did I ever see black students as more of a discipline problem than white students. I realized early on that black students were more likely to be referred to discipline than white students. If they were referred they were more likely to be suspended or expelled. But the problem tended to be this zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all policy that we developed to avoid being sued. Kids are individuals, we’re told. Why not treat them as individuals and let the lawyers have at it?
“Should Mr. Dunlap reply? I think not. What difference would it make to the person who wrote him? What should Mr. Dunlap do? Deal with the CMS problems, that begin with a childishly acting board, and move on to everything else that troubles the system.
“There will always be people around who don’t like you for some reason. Don’t worry about it and do your job.”

Plenty of comments to yesterday’s post on whether school board member George Dunlap should reply to a racist e-mail he received, and if so, what he should say. Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Today I received this from reader Jim Jordan in Laurinburg, about 100 miles east of Charlotte if you head toward Wilmington. Jordan wrote:
“Once I was sitting at the dinner table talking about the integration of the University of Mississippi. My father suddenly called me a ‘n—– lover.’ I told him that he might be correct and I also loved him.
“I’ve discovered over my years in teaching that there are people of all races who dislike to the point of hatred people of other races. Usually this has to do with something that happened up to five hundred years ago and had only a nominal effect of the people doing the hating. We recipients of the hatred have to consider the source and move on with our lives.
“I can understand the problems with the CMS system. It isn’t simply that the voters continue to elect idiots – not especially their fault when good people refuse to run for the School Board and your only choice is the lesser of the two idiots. It also has to do with the history of integration in CMS.
“Court ordered busing and really long bus trips all over the county aren’t going to please many people. More important than that, it puts kids who do not know each other and have never had any experience dealing with each other in the same school. One group will consider the school ‘theirs’ and the other group will be the interlopers. It’s not going to be a pretty sight.
“Then in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the CMS Board and administration sent out a message to teachers and administrators. ‘We expect you to keep order but if you get into trouble you swing in the wind alone.’ That in itself was enough to create a hemorrhage of teachers out of CMS that the system is dealing with today. More importantly it created the idea of an acceptable level of chaos.
“Kids, whether black, white, Asian, or whatever are going to act like kids. That means quite often irresponsibly and always on the edge of the boundaries. It only takes one kid going beyond the pale every day to destroy the learning environment in the classroom. If the classroom teacher gets no support and no help in managing a disorderly student and is also held accountable for all the testing – well, you have problems.
“Now having said that, I’ll say this. I taught from 1966 until I retired in 2000. At no time, even during the darkest days of school riots, did I ever see black students as more of a discipline problem than white students. I realized early on that black students were more likely to be referred to discipline than white students. If they were referred they were more likely to be suspended or expelled. But the problem tended to be this zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all policy that we developed to avoid being sued. Kids are individuals, we’re told. Why not treat them as individuals and let the lawyers have at it?
“Should Mr. Dunlap reply? I think not. What difference would it make to the person who wrote him? What should Mr. Dunlap do? Deal with the CMS problems, that begin with a childishly acting board, and move on to everything else that troubles the system.
“There will always be people around who don’t like you for some reason. Don’t worry about it and do your job.”

So, how would you respond?
Say you’re a black elected official, and you get racist e-mail, complete with racial slurs and references to body parts. Do you reply? If so, how?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member George Dunlap sent the following to a number of people he knows, including a member of the Observer’s editorial board. (No, I wasn’t one.)
Here’s the original, racist message to Dunlap. (I’ve edited some offensive language, and deleted the sender’s e-mail address.) It comes from “Online Feedback from CMS Website”:
“Comments: Sir, I remember fondly my elementary school days at Cotswold in the ’60’s. Most of us were generally good boys and girls. We had 2 negro children in the whole school, and nobody mistreated them. They were good boys, so far as I know. None of our parents would have allowed us to use disparaging language against negroes, or colored people. This was the way things were. Then came Randolph Jr. High, then forced busing. The negroes were n—–s, and they damn well acted every bit of it. Disruptive to the extreme, pulling out their p—–s and beating them on the desk in class. Beating white children, rioting, full of slavery-blaming. Just generally ALL a bunch of god-damn n—–s. All day, every day. Whatever white Liberal speaks their PC baloney in the public forum, is just that – a turncoat liberal. And “African Americans” are just a dreadful species of naughty children. I can’t change that, no matter how much you Libs tax me.”
Here’s what Dunlap asks, in an e-mail this morning (Dec. 29):
“This is a test. Each time I respond to folks like ——–, they seem to not like my response and run to the media to tell them what a nasty person I am and why I should not have responded the way I did. As the new year approaches, I plan to try something new. This is the plan. When I get email that I want to respond to, like this one. I plan to send it to a number of people. If you are receiving this, it’s because I want to respond to this email. Your job is to tell me in 100 words or less why I should not respond or to suggest a response for me.”
One final thought: If you think this sort of racist talk has vanished, think again. It’s not uncommon for black people in prominent jobs – or even white newspaper columnists – to get similar letters and e-mails. Charlotte – like most places in America – hides plenty of racial tension under the surface. I generally ignore them. Most of the letters arrive without a name and return address, anyway — as though the writers were ashamed. Fancy that!
What would you tell Dunlap? Or the e-mailer? I’ll try to reach Dunlap later today and ask if he’ll share some of the advice he gets.

So, how would you respond?
Say you’re a black elected official, and you get racist e-mail, complete with racial slurs and references to body parts. Do you reply? If so, how?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member George Dunlap sent the following to a number of people he knows, including a member of the Observer’s editorial board. (No, I wasn’t one.)
Here’s the original, racist message to Dunlap. (I’ve edited some offensive language, and deleted the sender’s e-mail address.) It comes from “Online Feedback from CMS Website”:
“Comments: Sir, I remember fondly my elementary school days at Cotswold in the ’60’s. Most of us were generally good boys and girls. We had 2 negro children in the whole school, and nobody mistreated them. They were good boys, so far as I know. None of our parents would have allowed us to use disparaging language against negroes, or colored people. This was the way things were. Then came Randolph Jr. High, then forced busing. The negroes were n—–s, and they damn well acted every bit of it. Disruptive to the extreme, pulling out their p—–s and beating them on the desk in class. Beating white children, rioting, full of slavery-blaming. Just generally ALL a bunch of god-damn n—–s. All day, every day. Whatever white Liberal speaks their PC baloney in the public forum, is just that – a turncoat liberal. And “African Americans” are just a dreadful species of naughty children. I can’t change that, no matter how much you Libs tax me.”
Here’s what Dunlap asks, in an e-mail this morning (Dec. 29):
“This is a test. Each time I respond to folks like ——–, they seem to not like my response and run to the media to tell them what a nasty person I am and why I should not have responded the way I did. As the new year approaches, I plan to try something new. This is the plan. When I get email that I want to respond to, like this one. I plan to send it to a number of people. If you are receiving this, it’s because I want to respond to this email. Your job is to tell me in 100 words or less why I should not respond or to suggest a response for me.”
One final thought: If you think this sort of racist talk has vanished, think again. It’s not uncommon for black people in prominent jobs – or even white newspaper columnists – to get similar letters and e-mails. Charlotte – like most places in America – hides plenty of racial tension under the surface. I generally ignore them. Most of the letters arrive without a name and return address, anyway — as though the writers were ashamed. Fancy that!
What would you tell Dunlap? Or the e-mailer? I’ll try to reach Dunlap later today and ask if he’ll share some of the advice he gets.