Transformation: A North Carolina Story
by Wesley Fink on November 6, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- What's New with Wes
While AnandTech Editors can be found in many cities and countries around the world, most of you are already aware that Anand himself and AnandTech are headquartered in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. I also grew up in North Carolina and went to college in North Carolina. Today I live in New York, but much of my family - "home" if you will - is still in North Carolina.
That is certainly why I was profoundly moved by the announcement, just a few hours ago, that MSNBC and the Associated Press have finally moved North Carolina to the Barack Obama column in the Presidential election. The networks concluded that the number of provisional ballots remaining to be counted were less than the current narrow lead held by Obama, and that no other outcome was really possible.
There are advantages to working for a CEO who began this website when he was 13 years old, and who is now an old man in his mid-20’s. Everyone assumes you are in the same age group as your boss, and despite the fact that I am the longest running current staff member at AT (other than Anand), most just assume I am in school or a fairly recent grad. I am flattered by that assumption, because I am actually a grandfather with three grown children. They grew up on my knee at the computer. They are all now graduated, successful in their fields, and all work either directly or indirectly in the computer industry.
For the work I do at AnandTech my age is irrelevant, but my age is totally relevant to my immense sense of satisfaction in the fact that North Carolina voted for Barrack Obama – even by the slimmest of margins. Younger commentators will talk about North Carolina as a dependable Conservative Red state until now, and the explosive growth and changing demographics of a state that has become Wall Street South and a Technology hub. For me the victory in North Carolina of a man with an African Father and a White Mother is much more personal, and nothing short of revolutionary. It is something I was not sure I would see in my home state of North Carolina in my lifetime.
When I grew up in North Carolina all the schools were integrated and “separate but equal” was the “progressive” law of the state. I still recall the gasps in a gathered crowd when my wife, a nurse, and I stopped at an accident and tried to help a gravely injured man who happened to be black. I was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at her direction and she was trying to control bleeding as best she could while we were waiting for a “colored” ambulance service that seemed to take forever to arrive.
As a College student I marched for Civil Rights and participated in sit-ins at lunch counters in Greensboro, NC and other NC cities. Fortunately these events were mostly peaceful in my home state, and while we saw lots of anger and name-calling, we didn’t see the murder and bombings that were happening in places like Alabama and Mississippi. That certainly does not justify the grievous discrimination that was a part of the fabric of my home state, but I will be forever grateful that for the most part the transition that was taking place was loud but mostly peaceful.
I also remember as a child that North Carolina was a reliably Democratic state in the days before Red and Blue became boundaries for hate and intolerance. North Carolina, as a southern state, was particularly hard-hit by the Great Depression. As a result the South saw Franklin Roosevelt as something of a God. It was simply that he and the US government paid attention to an area of the country that had been widely ignored except by those who exploited the region’s resources and cheap labor. The public works and infrastructure jobs created in the South by FDR had a profound effect on the area surviving the Depression and coming out of it with hopes that the South could be vital again. Because of the Fed investments in the South during the Depression North Carolina and the South were solidly Democratic.
In the 1950s a progressive Democratic Governor named Luther Hodges pioneered the concept of Research Triangle Park, which today is recognized throughout the world. When JFK was elected in 1960 his cabinet included a North Carolina Governor, Terry Sanford, who later went on to serve as President of Duke University.
All of that changed with the Civil Rights movement. People like Jessie Helms and Strom Thurmond, who favored segregation, changed parties as did others in the South who wanted things to stay as they were. They became the open champions of racism in the beginning and preached a more subtle brand of racism as it became less popular to openly look down on someone for the color of their skin. Regardless of the subtlety those who grew up in the South knew the emergence of the Republican Party in the South was initially based on Racism, a fact that was particularly puzzling since Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President.
The last BIG play of the racism card in NC was the now-famous “hands” ad crafted by Karl Rove for the then losing Jessie Helms Senate campaign against Harvey Gantt, the popular black ex-Mayor of Charlotte. Gantt was ahead in the polls. a fact that had to be maddening to the NC Senator that created a career out of the politics of racial and intellectual hate. In the last few days the Helms campaign flooded the TV stations with that ad with the white speaker crumpling a letter telling him he had not gotten a job. The ad went on to reflect “. . . you needed that job but you lost it to a person hired because of Affirmative Action”. The hands ad turned the tide and pulled out the closest Senate race of Helms' career.
It is because one of the Republican Party’s legacies in the South is racism that the victories by Barrack Obama in North Carolina and Virginia are clearly revolutionary. Republicans represent many other things in other areas of the US, but in the South that legacy of racism has remained. The fact that an African-American has won my home state and Virginia is a repudiation of that legacy. This turn may be temporary and a reflection of the dire Economic conditions and international wars that now plague the US. I don’t think it is, but even if Republicans win North Carolina again in 4 years or 8 years, the party will never be able to effectively play the racism card again. There are areas of the South, it turns out, where running a campaign based on racism and hate and fear just won’t play reliably any more.
The Obama win in North Carolina and Virginia is also good news for the Republican Party. The victory by a man with an African Father and White Mother who describes himself as a "mutt" has forever destroyed that racial barrier. No matter your political persuasion we are all better off in toppling those barriers. We can never again assume in any future Red victory in the South that it was at least partly the result of lingering racism.
This victory also presents the opportunity for the Republich Party to decide what it really stands for today. Perhaps in reinventing itself from this humiliating landslide victory by the Democrats, the Republican Party can find a way to be inclusive again – embracing African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Gays, Atheists, Muslims, and ALL Americans, instead of preaching the politics of exclusion, barrier fences, and fear.
In America, it turns out, you really can grow up to be President – no matter the color of your skin or the heritage of your parents or the label others might apply to your beliefs. What has happened in my home state today and in the US in the last few days is truly a Transformation.
The majority of our readers are under 30, and I really think you get it more than us old fogies. In many ways that’s good news, and I'm glad so many of you get what's going on. However, getting to where we are today was painful and emotional for many of us. Telling the story is one way of letting go of those emotions.
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headala - Saturday, November 8, 2008 - link
Hi, I registered just to post this. I'm glad that you're happy that Obama won NC. Go Heels Go!I think you might want to clarify some of your positions. Even if you didn't explicitly say that "Republicans are racist" and "anti-affirmative action is a racist position", you surely implied both. I think that's why people are angry and/or offended.
I don't think you mentioned any of Obama's policy positions or anything about his agenda. Do you know much about him, other than that he's half-black? There's a lot more to him than that. You could have written about how exciting it is that he is very pro-consumer in regard to privacy and net-neutrality.
I know quite a few white people who are Democrats; in fact, almost all of the registered democrats I know are white. I also know quite a few African Americans who are Republicans.
There are a lot of African-Americans, especially educators, that are against affirmative action because it actually stifles excellence in many areas of education. So are they racist? Are you sure that you can call the 'hands' ad (I haven't seen it, so it's an honest question) racially motivated? I think most people would like equal rights without regard to race; so are they racist too?
And, I'm sorry to tell you that voting for Obama simply because he is black IS racist and irresponsible. I am extremely happy that many African-Americans voted for the first time in their lives, but do worry a little that they did it mostly because he is also black and they believed all that CNN and their friends told them about him. Unfortunately, they believed that they had more in common with him than the color of their skin.
It's your blog, so you can do what you want. If I were you, I would clarify in the post and not post political-oriented articles anymore.
ap90033 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
Thanks for an educated response. I get so sick of the racist bit. I think the new minority is quickly becoming whites as they cant say things others can and they have to watch what they do but others can do whatever they want and it isnt considered racist. There is a growing double standard in America today.The most racist people I know are black. Sad but true. As a Christian I dont believe in judging people by their skin color and I wish others would do the same. We are all unique and Special in God's eyes and that is what is important. :)
doncerdo - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Mr. Fink, I understand that what you wrote about is an important subject for yourself and you'd like to share it with the world. But, using Anandtech to publish your political views is completely is childish, egocentric and very unprofessional. Yes, you can defend that it's your blog and you can write about anything you want. But this is a tech site which deals with tech subjects and those subjects appear in the home page of your "CEO'S site". Content you generate helps bring ads targeted to your core audience, if every writter starts talking about something not related to this site, why should advertisers pay top dollars to place ads on a highly targeted site...let alone probably the most respected one nowadays in the industry? I have had a notion that since Anandtech started placing blog entries the site's content quality had gone down...I really couldn't point my finger at something but I felt it. A post like yours makes me understand things better the site is generating a lot of personal opinions about personal subjects instead concentrating on informing us about the latest developments in the tech world. I see it with Anad's home theater experiences, etc. But at least those were on topic and could be dismissed as minor glitches in a well-oiled tech publishing machine. Seriously, don't use Anandtech to vent your personal views, maybe advertise it here in some unobtrusive way in the site. But keeping the "this is my blog and I can write what I want attitude" is narrow, mediocre and egocentric approach that causes more harm than good to the overall site. With this approach in a couple of months we could be reading here about your personal hygiene habits or your taste in porn or whatever it is you are extremely passionate about. Besides for political views there are respected and independent establishments just like Anandtech where I'm willing to read articles such as yours from the pros, here I'd rather unwind and read about tech from the pros.Rigan - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Political diatribes really have no place in the technical blog sphere, this kind of intolerant name calling even more so. How can anyone write the sentence, "I also remember as a child that North Carolina was a reliably Democratic state in the days before Red and Blue became boundaries for hate and intolerance." without realizing they’ve just called half their readers intolerant and hateful? The political bloggers do this all that time it’s how politics works, but in the middle of a blog that has always contained purely technical articles it has no place.I to am ecstatic that America demonstrated to the world on Tuesday that the Civil Rights movement worked and due to people such as yourself Mr. Fink we can firmly say racism has no hold on us. But, please to not mix your apparent dislike for Republicans with Obama’s success. They have nothing to do with each other.
Wesley Fink - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
What makes you assume my quote was only referring to half the readers. With name calling on both sides of the Red-Blue boundaries these days I am calling ALL potentially intolerant and hateful toward the other side. I remember times when being from a Dem or Rep state was a passing fact and not a reason to hate each other.I am hopeful that blurring the boundaries and cracking the race ceiling in this election will help us to quit the name-calling, labeling, and baiting. We are ALL sick of it.
Bonesdad - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Nicely written Wesley. From one fogey to another: these are incredible times. I come from a red state, Idaho, and there are plenty of prejudiced/racist voters here. It's amazing to me how many people still live in that mental/ideological stone age. This election was as big as humans on the moon...amazing. Glad we are here to witness it.Homerpalooza - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Ugh. The statements people make. "I come from a red state, Idaho, and there are plenty of prejudiced/racist voters here"Probably all democrats you're talking about then. I've met lots of prejudiced/racist democrats. And most don't even know it.
I am also a fogey. Growing up in rural Northern Virginia (King George County).
I moved to MN in 1978.
I met more racists, backwards people in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (a deep blue state) than I had ever perceived or experienced in Virginia.
I would argue that the intellectual candor and intelligence of most of the people I knew in Virginia was very evolved. I won't say nobody votes on race, but it's a tiny number. Virginians are more proud about supporters to states rights, and don't care what "color" or "race" you're from. There is room in pragmatic conservatism for everyone.
Virginians are some of the most intelligent, even handed, courteous and non-racist of any "Southern State" I've ever met. At least everyone I knew.
My HIGH SCHOOL history teacher in MN told the class "There is only one reason for the Civil War. Southerners are racists, Northerners weren't. The war was fought for one reason. Freedom of slaves."
Poorly written Wesley. Your "pride" in the choice of your state to vote, may have come Republicans crossing the line to vote the right person into office based on the choice Not a reflection of racism.
Zak - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Without judgment on the actual piece I too believe that it's better to keep religion, politics and... sports out of AnandTech and other tech websites. Even if it's just a blog.Z
lamestlamer - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
Equating the Republican party with racism is inaccurate. Racism has existed throughout both major political parties but is taboo today. The Neo-Conservative movement is a subset of the GOP that bases its power on Christian fundamentalists who are the largest unified voting block in the country. However, the talking points of the neocon movement have never been racist. Abortion, gay rights, and other legislated morality have been their focus. The same people who vote for neoconservatives may be disproportionately racist, but this is not the issue of the neoconservative movement. Before the neoconservative movement, most Christian fundamentalists were apolitical. It was the neoconservative movement that drove these people to the polls in an effort to create a Christian nation (largely under the guise that it started that way).The shift towards the Democratic party has little to do with the neocons. Loss of buying power and jobs has driven the nation to the Democratic party in hopes of recovery. The McCain campaign was actually ahead in September, seeing a large boost after the Palin nomination reinvigorated neocon support. If credit had stayed good for another two months, we would likely have McCain in the White House.
fk49 - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
I'm a student at Duke and I know that this campus is overwhelmingly composed of Democratic Obama supporters, transplanted, like another commenter said, from blue states. There was a huge push for the democratic ticket on campus and in the surrounding area and I'm glad the effort from the youth vote seems to have made a difference.That said, maybe it's because I've been living in this academic environment, or perhaps NC really has shifted, but I haven't noticed much of a difference in culture or racial relations compared to Maryland, where I'm from.
..Also, would Anand or any of the other writers be interested in holding a reader meetup in the Research Triangle Area? I think that would draw a lot of interest ;)