Steven Long, a member of UNC’s Board of Governors, recently opined that the advocacy work of UNC’s Center for Civil Rights was inherently partisan.
While we disagree with Long’s conclusion, his mistake is understandable. Nationally, the Republican Party fails so completely to represent or serve the interests of people of color that any work supporting marginalized communities might well appear to be “partisan” activity.
This is a relatively recent development. As late as 1964, neither Democrats nor Republicans were discernibly more supportive of racial equality than the other on the national level.
Today, 98 percent of Republican politicians elected to state-level positions are white, and few contest that no matter how unresponsive Democrats might be toward people of color, they are still better than Republicans.
This great sorting out of the parties by race was even more pronounced in North Carolina than it was nationally. Since the mid-1960s, conservative, white North Carolinians have left the Democratic Party to become Republicans. When asked to explain this trend, Frank Rouse, former chairman of the state Republican Party admitted: “It’s race in North Carolina. That is not supposition. That is fact ... Folks who live in suburbia or folks who have moved to North Carolina don’t understand it, but it is an absolute fact.”
This sordid tale should comfort conservatives eager to re-engage with communities of color. America did not naturally become a nation dominated by one party hostile to racial equality and one lukewarm to it. Politicians and ordinary voters made — and make — decisions that created this status quo. They should choose now to improve it.
