Missing the Plot

Durham's Mayor, YNs and Liberal Ignorance

This is my second time writing about Durham politics, namely my annoyances with the so called leaders of our city that also received overwhelming support from swaths of Durham residents who participated in those elections. But this post is to be clear about what we are witnessing. We are in a time of heightened repression. A time where our writing, art, discussions and organizing have to be clear and explicit. That includes circling the block when we see missed opportunities to be elevate the contradictions among us and to build greater interest in where we are trying to go as people committed to a just and liberated world.

Durham Mayor Leo Williams

A recent article was published in the (Raleigh) News & Observer titled, Durham mayor says he is ‘not going to apologize’ for his town hall remarks, and I just need to get it over with. The article is fine for what it is, but it severely misses the point—or at least an opportunity to highlight the actual problematic nature of the mayor’s comments. The article zeroes in on the fact that the mayor chose to use the term “YNs” (which stands for young n**gas) in front of a crowd of people at a sports bar (assumed mostly Black) who were also “using the term”. The article then jumps into the term as AAVE, academic history of code switching and the acceptable use of the phrase and blah blah blah. What they didn’t discuss were the most important parts of his statement; which was everything he said after that. Here is his quote:

Young people used to just fight, but now they reach for guns, he said. "No value for life, that's what we're dealing with. And they're 12 years old.” “They have a mother that's only about 12 years older than them. They're living in public housing where public housing has incentivized poverty. It won't allow you to have two-parent households, and this is the federal government's fault. I take issue with it.” - Mayor Leo Williams of Durham North Carolina

This is where we should focus our energy. Why? Because everything emphasized here is directly out of the neoliberal moderate & mildly conservative universe. From Reagan to Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump, we have heard these same sentiments repeated which use racial tropes and disparaging language to ultimately blame people for their circumstances. To hell with history or legislative impacts on those circumstances.

Trope 1 - The idea of social support incentivizing poverty

Who was one of the early elected officials to throw out tropes and stereotypes that squashed “welfare” or social safety nets under the guise of incentivizing poverty or reinforcing dependency on “handouts”? Ronald f*cking Reagan. Let’s review:

“It is now common knowledge that our welfare system has itself become a poverty trap—a creator and reinforcer of dependency.” - Ronald Reagan

Much like Reagan’s conspiracy of the welfare queen, Mayor Williams’ idea that public housing incentivizes poverty comes as an additional slap in the face to the millions of people living in poverty who will be soon be separated from Medicaid and SNAP due to this generational idea that those who are receiving social support are likely committing welfare fraud, lazy, or living off the system. In the same way, it adds insult to injury in a time when public housing assistance is under attack. Meanwhile it seems that Mayor Williams has given less of a damn about any of this as he rubber stamps every development case regardless of environmental impact or lack of affordable housing in the developments. Language matters and often the things that are said that we miss are most important.

Trope 2 - The lack of two parent households and 12 year old single mother’s being the reason for crime

First of all, who the hell is having babies at 12 years old? Well, okay, maybe that’s actually more likely now that Roe has been upended, but this plays into a tired ass line of victim blaming that is rooted in the racial trope of Black women and teen pregnancy being the sole and primary cause for Black deviancy and lack of progress for Black people. It’s a line straight out of the Moynihan report of 1965.

In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is to out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well. — Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Who was the more recent king of punching down at Black women and/or “absentee fathers”? Nope, not just first black president Bill Clinton, but your favorite Black president Barack Obama. Obama held the same idea about Black absentee fathers and the impact of single parenting on children. Matter fact, he gave the speech on father’s day to prove his point.

Mayor Williams falls right in line, which again, isn’t surprising for a male bodied liberal elected leader who is convinced that YNs stem from these types of households and his role is to save them with mentorship programs. Because it couldn’t be that poverty is systemic and an impact of policy, but instead that it’s a lack of effort or exposure. That we all should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, like he did.

It is my hope that whoever reads this begins to connect the dots on why liberalism is not serving us, and how neoliberalism is actually a bridge builder to the very fascism that is staring us in the eyes. AND, if Durham’s Mayor is so progressive, frequently repeating how we are dealing with a hostile federal government, what do we do when his votes and beliefs work to achieve the same outcomes as that hostile government?

Think on that. Comments welcomed.