Opinion Roundup: Remembering MLK, Folt's farewell, NC revenues and more

Monday, Jan. 21, 2019 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Folt's farewell to Chapel Hill, Dr. King’s ‘Promised Land’ still remains elusive, Orange County judge reopens courtroom to public for Silent Sam protest cases, GOP senators try to figure out how to closely to run with Trump, restoring water-quality standards for Lower Cape Fear and more.

Let’s remember the MLK who wasn’t liked (Charlotte Observer) — Martin Luther King Jr. was not a well-liked man. He was one of the most polarizing figures in the United States during his final few years of life. He was not the cuddly creature we re-invent every King Day to lie to ourselves and our kids about how he only wanted us to get along. His approval rating began to rise only after he was no longer here to demand America live up to its ideals.

Dr. King’s ‘Promised Land’ remains too elusive today (Fayetteville Observer) — We celebrate one of our great Americans today, recalling the profound changes he helped bring about in our society. But for those who will consider deeply the issues he raised, it’s reasonable to feel sadness as well.

As King would have wanted, leaders standing up (Elizabeth City Daily Advance) -- The eve of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s life seems an appropriate moment to update the progress observed along the long road to racial equality while recognizing acts of courage seen in the spirit of King's life. One such example came just last week on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Folt's farewell to Chapel Hill (Winston-Salem Journal/Greensboro News & Record) -- When Carol Folt became chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, she may have felt like someone who had just moved into a house that was on fire.

ALAN BLINDER & ADRA D.C. BURCH: Fate of Confederate Monuments Is Stalled by Competing Legal Battles (New York Times reports) -- Stubborn debates bubbled up this month in Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill, N.C., and in Birmingham, among the most progressive parts of a region that has struggled to reconcile its history with its modern ambitions. “This is one of America’s most important conversations. In many ways, we have only begun to talk critically about the landscape that has existed in this country for a very long time that romanticizes the era of the slavery and the role of the Confederacy,” said Bryan Stevenson, the leading force behind the newly built National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

Legislature can end controversy over Silent Sam (Wilmington Star-News) -- For the sake of the future of our flagship university, change the law and put Confederate monument in a museum. That’s not a capitulation; it’s the morally right thing to do.

TAMMY GRUBB: Orange County judge reopens courtroom to public for Silent Sam protest cases (Durham Herald-Sun reports) -- Several people charged in protests of the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill had their cases resolved Friday in Orange County District Court, where a judge barred the public from entering the courtroom during the morning session. At least two people were found guilty, while others were given amnesty or found not guilty. Judge Lunsford Long closed the small courtroom to everyone except defendants, court officials and law enforcement until the afternoon session resumed. A sheriff’s deputy posted at the door checked identification cards against a list of names. The mood was calm and friendly in the hall as protesters and reporters chatted and watched the procession in and out of the courtroom.

SCOTT JASCHIK: Affirmative Action Fight Shifts to UNC (Inside Higher Ed reports) -- Some issues are similar to those in Harvard case, but Chapel Hill's status as public university -- and some differing strategies -- could affect outcome of the case.

JANE STANCILL: In the end, Silent Sam’s fate and Carol Folt’s future were intertwined (Charlotte Observer reports) — Early in the morning of Monday, Aug. 20, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt thanked some staffers who had worked over the weekend before the start of the new semester. “It should be a busy and fun week ahead,” she said by email. Fourteen hours later, she was texting with a vice chancellor, Joel Curran, as he watched a tense situation unfold on McCorkle Place, where the hotly contested Silent Sam Confederate statue stood, surrounded by tall banners.

NICHOLAS RICCARDI, ADAM BEAM & DAVID SHARP: GOP senators try to figure how out closely to run with Trump (AP reports) -- Republican Sen. Cory Gardner helped mastermind the GOP's midterm strategy of pushing Senate candidates closer to President Donald Trump. But heading into his own 2020 re-election bid in Colorado, he's allowing more distance with the not-so-popular president. He's not alone. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is reviving his proposal for an immigration deal as part of talks to reopen the government. As Republican senators set out to run for re-election in states where views on Trump are mixed, they're trying to figure out how closely to align themselves with Trump.

DIANE ROBERTS: N.C.’s Thomas Dixon Jr was the great-granddaddy of American white nationalism (Washington Post column) – Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), President Donald Trump and the rest of the (white) America First fraternity are borrowing from a narrative created by a North Carolina novelist more than 100 years ago. His name is Thomas Dixon Jr., and he is the great-granddaddy of white nationalism. Dixon’s stories of virtuous white people victimized by violent and incompetent black people were not merely expressions of white supremacy, but had brutal and deadly consequences. Dixon was once hugely famous: a celebrity preacher and writer of lurid novels that sold in the millions, despite their frankly awful prose.

Meadows offers glint of hope on shutdown during Hendersonville visit (Hendersonville Times-News reports) -- Congressman Mark Meadows (R-NC) offered a sliver of hope Saturday about progress being made to end the government shutdown that adversely has affected 800,000 federal workers and countless government contractor.

COLIN CAMPBELL: NC’s biggest slumlord? State Government (Durham-Herald Sun reports) — If you drive into downtown Raleigh from the north, some of the first buildings you’ll see are boarded-up, dilapidated brick structures on the left side of Dawson Street. “Downtown Raleigh’s supposed to have a booming real-estate market,” you might think to yourself. “Surely a developer would want to build something nice on this block.” But the absentee landlord here is North Carolina’s state government, which happens to be one of the state’s worst slumlords.

North Carolina revenues up again at halfway point (AP reports) — North Carolina tax collections keep outpacing expectations. The top economist on the General Assembly's nonpartisan staff says state revenues for the first half of the fiscal year through December are $189 million ahead of projections lawmakers used when assembling the current budget. That's 1.7 percent ahead.

ANTIONETTE KERR: NC Businesses Get Tips on Being Family-Friendly (Public News Service reports) -- More than 1,000 N.C. employers weighed in on policies that benefit businesses, workers and children for a new guide produced by Family Forward NC, an initiative of the N.C. Early Childhood Foundation. Tracy Zimmerman, executive director at the foundation, said part of the goal is to keep N.C. businesses competitive by increasing access to research-based practices that help working families - such as paid parental leave, support for breastfeeding mothers and flexible work schedules.

Western North Carolina Women's March participants encouraged (AP reports) — Participants in an annual Women's March in western North Carolina say they feel empowered and encouraged by midterm election victories that raised the profile of women in politics.

Victims a second time: First Hurricane Florence, now the government shutdown (Charlotte Observer) — Hurricane Florence was one of the biggest disasters ever to hit North Carolina. Now the government shutdown is preventing much-needed relief money from coming to the state.

RICHARD GROVES: A quiz to counter immigration misinformation (Winston-Salem Journal column) -- Give President Trump credit: From the time he descended the escalator and declared that we are being invaded by Mexican rapists, immigration has become one of the top issues for Americans. In 2018, 48 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll ranked immigration among the top five issues facing the country. That was an increase of almost 80 percent over the previous year. But for all the heightened interest, how much do we know about immigrants and immigration?

CELIA RIVENBARK: Ivanka and Jared give up their ‘Vice’(s) (Wilmington Star-News column) — I was amused to read Ivanka Trump and Jared (“Knuckles”) Kushner walked out of a movie theater, apparently in a huff, midway through watching “Vice,” a deliciously dark biopic about former vice president Dick Cheney. It may be the most human thing these two have done in public.

VIRGINIA FOXX: Legislating for life, 46 years after Roe (Winston-Salem Journal column) -- This week marks the 46th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that has forever changed the way our nation values life. Since that fateful decision, an estimated 60 million infants have been killed in the womb in the United States alone. This is an unspeakable tragedy and as long as we allow abortion to continue, it degrades the moral character of our country.

LINDELL JOHN KAY: City manager’s office remodeling irks council (Rocky Mount Telegram reports) -- Rocky Mount City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney is remodeling her office suite without the knowledge of City Council. The situation mirrors circumstances six years ago in Savannah, Ga., where Small-Toney was forced to resign.

HENRY FRYE, MARGARET ARBUCKLE, GLADYS ROBINSON & TOM ROSS : The case for Bennett is a strong one (Greensboro News & Record column) -- Everywhere we go lately, the conversation eventually gets around to the crisis at Bennett College. Facing loss of its accreditation, the 146-year-old institution has sounded the emergency bell.

MICHAEL RUANE: When few enslaved people in the U.S. could write, one man wrote his memoir in Arabic (Washington Post reports) -- ibn Said soon fled and made his way to North Carolina, where he was captured around Fayetteville. He was jailed, then handed over to plantation owner and future congressman James Owen, the brother of John Owen, a future N.C. governor. One old account states that authorities took notice when ibn Said scrawled “piteous petitions” in Arabic on the walls of the jail. Ibn Said then spent the rest of his life with the Owen family in Bladen County, N.C., at their plantations on the Cape Fear River.

NICK ANDERSON: UNC defends race-conscious admissions in federal lawsuit (Washington Post reports) -- UNC-Chapel Hill urged U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs to reject allegations of illegal racial bias in the public university’s admissions process and rule in its favor without allowing the lawsuit to go to trial. At the same time, the plaintiff in the case — a group opposed to affirmative action called Students for Fair Admissions — also asked the judge to bypass a trial. The group said evidence showed that UNC gives too much weight to race and ethnicity in its admission process and has not given adequate consideration to race-blind strategies for enrolling a diverse class. The dueling legal motions in federal court in N.C. showed that the debate over race-conscious admissions is not limited to how Harvard University selects a class.

CECIL STATON & KIERAN SHANAHAN: 2018 a year of achievement at ECU (Greenville Daily Reflector column) -- It was an extraordinary year. No, that’s not boosterism by two of ECU’s biggest fans. It was a truly amazing year. No question, 2018 was colored by the departures of our athletics director, a football coach and a basketball coach, a lot of change in one year.

TAYLOR KNOPF: Switzerland couldn’t stop drug users. So it started supporting them (NC Health News reports) — The Swiss people took drastic measures to reduce the number of people dying from opioid overdose. Their approach is effective - and unorthodox. The first in a series describing how Europeans have tackled their overdose issues.

North Carolina flu deaths climb as season enters its most dangerous phase (Greensboro News & Record reports) — Two more people died in the past week from the flu in North Carolina, bringing the total death toll from the virus to 22 for the flu season that started in October and is now entering its most active period.

ECU professor studying health effects of chemicals in N.C. drinking water (Greenville Daily Reflector reports) -- A professor at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine has received state and federal funding to study the health effects of potentially harmful chemical compounds that were found in North Carolina drinking water.

TIM WHITE: We all want clean water, but can we get it? (Fayetteville Observer column) -- I wrote an editorial last week supporting the county’s move to extend water mains to the people in Gray’s Creek whose wells are polluted with GenX and other potentially dangerous chemicals. Although the source of the pollution, Chemours, has agreed to provide elaborate filtration systems for those homeowners at no cost, they won’t do it for wells with only a little bit of the chemical in them.

KEMP BURDETTE & WILL HENDRICK: Restore water-quality standard for Lower Cape Fear (Wilmington Star-News column) — What do you do when a stew of poultry litter and hog waste smother a river, sending its oxygen level plummeting and its acidity climbing? Well, if you’re North Carolina, you deem its waters “swamp waters,” and move on. The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission did just that in 2015. The reclassification of the Lower Cape Fear, made at the behest of regulated industry, was an attempt to change water quality standards — instead of working to improve water quality.

Frances R. Mears, longtime AP reporter and manager, dies (AP reports) -- Frances R. Mears of Chapel Hill, an Associated Press reporter, editor and bureau chief during a journalism career that spanned more than 40 years, died Saturday. She was 66. Mears had been ill with cancer, said her husband, Walter R. Mears, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political writer and retired AP vice president.

Longtime reporter Treva Jones wrote with love and care about Raleigh’s lives and deaths (Charlotte Observer reports) — Treva Jones, a born storyteller, virtuosic news reporter and historian to a generation of Raleigh Times and News & Observer readers and staff writers, died Friday. She was 73. Jones, who authored more obituaries than possibly any other one writer ever to work for the N&O, would have crafted her own and filed it in the publishing system for use now had she imagined that her passing would be news.

MATT DEBNAM: TERRA NOVA-Maps exhibit shows evolving understanding of N.C.(Washington Daily News reports) -- From the earliest to the latest maps in the collection at the Historic Bath Exhibit Center through June, viewers will notice tremendous differences. In the earliest maps, significant features such as rivers, islands and landmasses are exaggerated in scale and somewhat distorted from how we now know them to be. In essence, cartographers of the era were doing their best with the tools and technology available. The collection of 29 antique maps were donated to the historic site by Gene Roberts, a Bath resident and avid collector of antiques. For those looking back from the 21st century, the collection tells important stories — stories of exploration, North Carolina’s Native American heritage, settlement and political divisions.

KAREN ECKERT: Hot dog favorite now drawing fans in Eastern Pines (Greenville Daily Reflector reports) -- “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is an expression that Bill Dunn and his wife, Valerie, take to heart as owners of the new Bill’s Hot Dogs franchise in Greenville. Bill’s Hot Dogs has been a landmark eatery in Little Washington since 1928. There are two Bill’s restaurants in Washington — the original near the waterfront The small, take-out-only Greenville restaurant opened its doors in December.

TIM FUNK: Brooklyn was the center of black life in Charlotte. Until the bulldozers arrived (Charlotte Observer reports) — Like many cities, Charlotte has a street named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And with the national holiday honoring his life Monday, it’s a perfect opportunity to remember a time when that uptown Charlotte street bearing King’s name was in the heart of a neighborhood called Brooklyn.