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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ap90033 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
Please read both Common Sense Books. Both Parties SUCK. Obama is currently on a non stop spending spree that is Killing the economy. We need some non Progressive leaders that dont play party games and look out for the People and the Constitution. I mean really, with all the spending, stupid Czars Obama is appointing, taking over all kinds of businesses, Cap and Trade (predicted to be the biggest tax increase in history if passed), lack of transparaency, and just playing the same old Washington politics and I could go on and on and on but you get the point. Guys get your head out of your rear, it isnt about if you are Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, it should be about whats best for AMERICA.Again I cant stress this enough READ (if you are a liberal you should have an open mind right?) Common Sense by Glen Beck (A Libertarian btw not a Republican)...
ap90033 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
Also, CAN WE PLEASE GET OVER THE COLOR of our skin now? I would like to have people judge me by my character...I Know they will still play the race card even though an average American Black rose against all odds to be the most powerful man in the world... I just wonder how long it will take people to see they want us divided so we cant unite against this horrible progressive movement... Wake up please...
Hlafordlaes - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - link
I was raised on the Mason Dixon line and I, too, remember how things were only a few decades ago. Yes, the switch to the Republican party in the South had a lot to do with opposition to affirmative action and the enfranchising of blacks in society.The implicit racism of the Republican Party is also quite obvious over the last 30 years. The opposition has been to social spending, as those funds are perceived to go to minorities, not spending in gral (Rep. deficits have been FAR larger than under Democrats). Just looking at the county-by-county breakdown of the last election shows that majority red correlates closely with the rural, uneducated, and fearful of displacement. These areas of the country also receive a net transfer of wealth in the form of:
- Fed funding of States (there's a net transfer from blue to red, look it up)
- Agricultural subsidies
- Placement of military bases
The unspoken fact is that rural whites are the coddled, spoiled of the US, and they don't want to compete fair and square, much to the contrary of their stated, "free-market" beliefs. It's in the blue areas where the economic present and future of the country is being forged, and where all the centers of learning and innovation are located.
All the moaning and groaning among the comments here about "don't call me a racist" is feigned indignance. If you voted for a party using the tactics employed over the last 30 years in presidential and congressional races, well, you have formally given your explicit approval to racist messages and tactics. Own up, or shut up. All that whining is unmanly.
You can flame me, but the Rovian Republican methods are too obvious, the Willie Horton scare tactics too common, the budgetary numbers too real, for you to have ground to stand on. Dissed.
ap90033 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
No offense, but I self taught myself to success, I didnt need any stupid help from the STUPID Government.Quit whining about needing help and do for yourself. It DOESNT MATTER IF you ARE BLACK, WHITE, PINK or any other skin color...
Need proof? One word Obama!
KryptiK1 - Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - link
As a Virginian I have to say that I'm amused that it is our election of Mr. Obama that is seen as Virginia's repudiation of a (Republican) legacy of racism. Personally, I think that our election of Doug Wilder back in '89 should have put those notions to bed (especially since his polling numbers held up pretty well in SW VA IIRC) but then political narratives often ignore plenty of inconvenient details.rlburnside - Sunday, November 9, 2008 - link
Oh man, what a canard and false dichotomy about websites regarding politics and technology. Only a fool doesn't realize everything's interconnected, and then posts ranting about the OP's "inane" political views, and then pretends false outrage at being labelled a racist for being a republican when in fact, the only real reason to vote republican in this election is because one is, in fact, a racist.Sure, some blacks voted republican. They're called Uncle Toms. Is that insulting? Sure! Why not. It's disgusting and insulting to imagine a black would ever vote for a party that gives poor blacks life in prison for smoking pot while coke-heads get off scott free. Or that giving a working welfare black mom some additional help is considered racist while fat cat white CEOs make off with millions in taxpayer corporate welfare. Geez, such hypocrisy. If you don't want to read someone's polilical opinions, DON'T READ THEM.
And yes, many republicans are rabid racists. If you don't like that I said so, sue me. Or better, get a clue. The whole world is cheering that many of your fellow citizens finally did. So stop pretending like there's no racism...I'd think it was high time to take responsibility and skip the article or just STFU instead of trolling blog posts that have clear titles hinting them as being progressive and right-thinking Re: NC voting Democrat as being a positive development.
Just because Anandtech's a tech blog doesn't mean we cease to be human beings when we log on. So quit it with the false dichotomy about the OP shouldn't post his opinions, when almost every single other internet and traditional venue is talking about it. If you don't like it, turn off your computer and go back into the dark ages when only priests spoke and everyone else had to listen. Now we all get a voice. If you don't like it, don't read it.
Barbu - Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - link
Wow, what a beautiful display of free speech... NOT!If one's opinion is that he can take a wiz on anybody's front lawn... no comment. And it's an equal display of IQ to come on a tech site and berate people that actually want to read about tech stuff! Not to say about the language which makes me wish that there would be some form of moderation for the comments.
The only moment when I wish to hear about politics is when/if the government would actually take measures against that DMCA, against legal binding agreements that force you to install "legitimate" Sony rootkits and stuff like that.
Last thing, about "don't read if you don't care": well, that doesn't actually work if someone throws bright-painted letters right in your path; again, this is a tech site and (too) personal opinions can be displayed elsewhere. After all, Anand himself only blogged about stuff related to hardware/multimedia, not about his views on the American Pop-Corn ;)
P.S.: and yes, people will stop reading useless stuff, but if that is repeated, the entire site might take a dip in the audience. Or actually the traffic might grow; tabloids can prove that: junk in, gold out!
tcsenter - Saturday, November 8, 2008 - link
Just wanted to say I think its very innovative that Anandtech is letting historians from MoveOn.Org and the Democratic National Committee write guest blogger editorials.Surely this is just the first edition and the 'opposing' side will be given equal time in the near future. Who will be giving the right-wing side, the Christian Coalition of America? Maybe the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth? No, don't tell me! I want it to be as much of a jaw-dropping surprise. Can't wait!
headala - Saturday, November 8, 2008 - link
At first I thought this was a post about the upcoming and ironically named "Fairness Doctrine"! :-)zinfamous - Saturday, November 8, 2008 - link
well, as I commented in the forums last week, a "'Yes' on Prop 8" appeared in the Google-powered ads on the forum pages....maybe, in a way, this is the counter-opinion?
;)