November 23, 2010 Blogs & Columns » Boomer with Attitude

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McCrory's no racist, he's a dorkist 

It was almost funny to hear former Mayor Pat McCrory weigh in on the chanting that rocked recent school board meetings. But just "almost."

These days, McCrory is doing all he can to keep his name in the press until the next gubernatorial election in 2012. It must have been in that self-interested spirit that McCrory spoke up after a school board meeting, because he certainly didn't offer anything constructive, or even remotely insightful. Instead, he started a war of words with Charlotte NAACP leader Kojo Nantambu.

The former mayor, always looking to shore up support from his party's far right, said he didn't like the sound of all those "No justice, no peace" chants from protesters — chants which were started by Nantambu. McCrory looked as solemn as he's capable of, and declared that the chants amounted to "violent words" that were intended to threaten violence if protesters didn't get their way. Nantambu soon answered by saying McCrory has "a very distorted sense of reality" and, to top it off — ta-daa — "is a racist." McCrory then replied that Nantambu "should be ashamed of saying that."

I don't know that the NAACP leader should be "ashamed," but I think Nantambu misjudged McCrory: the would-be governor isn't a racist; he's a dorkist.

McCrory's comments weren't racist, either. They were tone-deaf and dorky, for sure, but not racist. There is a qualitative difference between disliking an entire group of people because of their color and simply not having the first clue about those people's culture or history. That's McCrory's real problem here. Now, I have personally heard the "no justice, no peace" chant, or have seen it on bumper stickers, since at least the early 1980s, and its meaning is pretty clear: it's a reminder to those in power that the protesters are determined to be heard; there's no implied threat of violence in the phrase at all.

Unfortunately, culturally tone-deaf statements have been part of McCrory's career for a long time. If that helps him garner a few more Tea Party votes in the next election, well, that's just a pleasant (for him) side effect. You don't have to look too far back to see what I mean.

In 2006, for instance, the Uptown suits were all aflutter because — horror of horrors! — young African-Americans were cruising the area on weekends. Seriously. This was a huge deal at the time. Mayor McCrory weighed in on the subject, while trying to justify a weekend Uptown show of force by police, by declaring, "Where there's cruising, there's usually trouble." Wow, now there was some insight, huh? As we wrote at the time, "Golly, if cruising isn't curbed, even more young blacks might gather Uptown to socialize, wearing those tacky hip-hop clothes! Before you know it, people might even start to think they have a constitutional right to assemble or something! Pretty scary."

The next summer, in 2007, the "fear of a black weekend" was in full force again. Once more, Uptown panties were in a twist, and, you guessed it, the mayor spoke up in his unique, authoritative way. "Too many of our youth, primarily African-American, are imitating and/or participating in a gangster type of dress, attitude, behavior and action," said Fearful Leader. I bet you didn't know that the way you dress is a legitimate concern for a mayor, did you?

I've covered McCrory for years, and my take on his latest venture into a racially sensitive debate is: Why is anyone surprised? Pat McCrory has consistently displayed a profound, incurious ignorance of anything outside of RichFratBoy World. I thought this was common knowledge. You have to forgive the rich frat boy clique, though; you see, they are convinced that they run the world, or at least that they and their beliefs (and even clothes) are a standard to be looked up to, and imitated, by the rest of us. Don't worry, Kojo, it's not just blacks for whom McCrory has zero empathy or understanding. If you weren't around a few years ago, you missed out on seeing the mayor make an ass of himself when public art was being chosen for the light rail line. As always, Mayor Babbitt gave off a bubble-entrapped yuppie vibe, as he basically made fun of any artwork he didn't understand, and carped about the artists who produced them. I swear, the guy's face ought to be the illustration for dictionary definitions of "philistine."

There's one good way, however, to avoid the kind of war of words we heard recently. Could someone please get McCrory some kind of primer on "Life Outside the Southern Business/Politics Matrix"? It would do us all a lot of good.

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