Bill James

Bill James has long been one of Charlotte’s most outspoken politicians. How, it appears that he could be becoming one of Charlotte’s most powerful. Ten years of populations shifts have left him with one of the city’s most populous districts, with 150,000 voters who returned him to his city council seat in a landslide in the last election. And the plain-speaking conservative even won the endorsement of the city’s African-American newspaper, much to the consternation of many liberals in Charlotte. We sat down with James in his south Charlotte home to discuss race, religion, and the state of Charlotte politics.

Warren Smith: You’ve become the guy liberals love to hate. Why is that?

Bill James: I’ve wondered about that myself, because I always thought I was called to this work, but I never felt that I was particularly called to be bludgeoned to death by the liberals. Now, I knew that I was conservative, but I never expected to be elected to the county commission in an era when they would be focusing on social policy more than anything else.

That put me in an arena totally different than the one I thought I would be in if you had asked me in 1993 what I would like to be doing. I thought I would be dealing with business issues. But at the same time I was running for city council then I felt this tugging that that wasn’t what God wanted me to do. That, yeah, you could sit up there and talk about the arena, and that would be fine, but there was something else.

I didn’t go into this thing thinking that I would be the conservative in Charlotte that all the liberals love to hate, but as a practical matter the hard-core liberals are as ideological as any hard-core conservative and they understand that there are big stakes, and so do I. And most liberals do not follow what you could call a traditional Christian approach to morals, values, or ethics. I’m not going to say that they are not Christians. I’m not going to get into that. But, let’s face it, you have to make some pretty wild theological jumps to reach some of the conclusions that they reach on a variety of issues.

I think it’s because I’m blunt, that I’m like the guy on Dragnet – "Just the facts, ma’am" – that has caused some of this. In politics, I’ve found that people get offended by the truth. Of course, you’re supposed to tell the truth in love, and I try to do that, but it’s still going to hurt.

WS: One of the areas in which you’ve tried to tell the truth – according to your lights – is in the area of race. Ironically, you’ve been called a racist by liberals, while being endorsed by the city’s black newspaper. Why talk about race in the terms you’ve been talking about race, and why do you think you’ve been branded a racist?

BJ: It bothers me that I have been branded, and not just a racist, but a homophobe, a bigot. You name it. I’ve been called everything in the lexicon of left-wing, liberal slurs.

The issue for me is not what people say about me so much as this: I don’t want to stand before God and have Him say to me, "I put you in this position. What did you do with it?" Am I supposed to say to God, "Well, God, you just don’t understand Charlotte politics. If you say certain things, they’re going to get mad at you." In the meantime, you let an entire generation of African-American babies just go to hell because you failed to talk about the problem of illegitimacy in the black community.

And I’m not the only one who has been called racist. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal Democrat from New York, wrote a book on what in the 60s was called the plight of the Negro family. He was vilified for it. Called every name in the book. But he went on to serve admirably in the Democratic Party, facing down many of his critics, because he had the facts to back himself up.

There is nothing I have said that I have not been able to back up with facts. I think that this is something Charlotte needs to face. Charlotte has been a community that has been run by an elite group that has as its motto: "We would rather seem than be." This is the reverse of the state motto, which says "Not to seem, but to be." Pretension and haughtiness and the ability to put on airs are in essence personified by Charlotte’s ruling class. These are the same people who have ignored Charlotte’s race problem for years. Who have allowed Charlotte’s black children to perform poorly, who have refused to address illegitimacy. And who make cutesy little deals with the business community to put a façade on all of this in order to appear to be a world-class city. Rather than to address these issues head-on and stand up for what is right.

The real question, when you talk about race, is this: The liberals have been in charge for 30 years. During that time has black educational achievement improved? The answer is no. Has busing as a mechanism for solving social problems worked? No. The sad part is that because of poverty and illegitimacy, the African American community faces a major problem. The problem is not exclusive to the black community, but it is concentrated there. And the solutions need to be more than just lip service.

Why is it that in 19 black neighborhoods on the west side of Charlotte, there were 11,000 violent crimes in three years? Murder, rape, arson, and all the rest. I’ve loaded up these statistics on my web site – billjames.org. I did that because I felt that if I started sticking these statistics out there for people to see, it would perhaps energize people to do something about it.

WS: I talked with Arthur Griffin about some of these issues, and he said one of the reasons for the breakdown of African-American communities was public policy. He asked me, for example, where I-77 and I-85 intersected. The answer is right over where there used to be thriving African American communities. He said public policy destroyed the African American community and it will take yet more public policy to restore the African American community today.

BJ: I empathize with that, but you can’t undo what’s been done. Certain things in life you can’t undo. If government actions were immoral or unethical back then, the first thing to do is to stop the immoral and unethical behavior, not continue the immoral or unethical behavior against a different group just for the sake of reparations. The first step is to apply government standards in a moral, ethical, reasonable, and uniform way.

Is racism alive and well? Sure it is. But my concern is that Arthur is always looking to the past and saying, "see what you did?" It’s the politics of victimization. "You did this to me. You did this to my ancestors. Therefore, you owe me."

African-Americans have to get beyond the politics of victimization. Fill in the blank. "Because of 400 years of slavery, you owe me. Because of what happened in the Civil War, you owe me." All of these things are legitimate gripes, but they’re history. And my ancestors were murdered during the Civil War because we opposed slavery. One of my ancestors, Maj. John Ebersold died going out to his well after he had mustered out of the Union Army. He lived in the south, but he fought for the Union, because he was opposed to slavery. He got mustered out and went back to his family. Got up one morning and went to his well, and a group of Confederate guerillas trying to teach Union sympathizers a lesson, shot him coming out of the outhouse.

So I’m not saying we should forget the past. No, don’t forget the past. But learn from the past so we don’t repeat the sins of the past. I remember my family history. Arthur remembers all the sins that have been heaped upon him. I remember people who have slighted me over the years, too, but I’m not going to dwell on them. The question is: What solution works?

If Arthur Griffin could tell me, "Bill, busing works," I would be willing to consider that as a solution. But you know what? Busing doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried. The root cause of poor performance by black children is not segregated schools, but the fact that black families don’t stay together.

WS: That’s why you think black pastors are a central part of the solution.

BJ: Right.

WS: So we should be looking for the root causes of illegitimacy?

BJ: Yes. For example, you could have a mom who gets pregnant without getting married, is on crack. That happens hundreds of times each year. These babies are born at Carolinas Medical Center. The mom doesn’t care particularly about the baby because she’s on drugs. The historical solution has been to show all the compassion in the world for the mom but none for the child. The child goes into a hellish atmosphere in some low-income housing project, and ends up being raised by a mom with major problems.

The solution, it seems to me, is to remove the child from that environment and to put them in a loving environment.

WS: But isn’t that a pretty radical solution? Doesn’t sound like a very pro-family solution to say that the government should wrestle a child from his mother. Granted, it may not be the home that you would wish for that child, but she is the baby’s mother, after all.

BJ: No. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be raised with their own family. But there comes a point when you pass the line of being a lousy parent and you have entered the world of child abuse. At that point, someone has to step in and make a difference. In South Carolina there is a law that says if you’re pregnant and you’re on crack cocaine, they’re going to take your baby away from you. That’s just a fact of life. We need a similar law here.

The bigger picture is that when you bring a child into this world there is a commitment that you make to God and a compact that you make with society to take care of this child. If society has to write the checks to take care of the child, then the society should impose certain requirements.

The problem has been that we wring our hands and say "we’ve got high crime, high illegitimacy, crack babies; let’s put more money on these problems." I want to see morality be a part of the public discussion. Money may be a part of the solution. But a part of the solution is to follow the precepts that have been outlined in the Bible. Certain behavior gets rewarded, and certain behavior does not. Historically, we have rewarded behavior that is moral and upright. That means we ought not to reward behavior that is not.

Now, when you start talking in these terms, what you’re really saying is that if someone is not acting morally you’re not going to let them have money or keep their kids, and some will say "Who are you to decide?" I’ll grant you that this is an area that makes me quite nervous, but we are already making these decisions in the wrong direction. And we have created generation after generation of babies who are treated as thought they are worthless.

And the people at the top of the society want to talk about Chamber of Commerce brochures. The people in the middle are unaware of the problem. The people at the bottom, who are least able to influence things, are represented by individuals who either ignore the problem or are the beneficiaries of the current system.

How do you solve the problem when the people who are elected by the African-American community are sustained by the current system? I asked a city council member – I’d rather not name which one, but he’s the one who has most of the 11,000 crimes I spoke of earlier in his district. I asked him why he would tolerate 11,000 crimes in 19 black neighborhoods? In white neighborhoods in southeast Charlotte, if there were 3 a year, there would be an uproar. He said, you don’t understand the issues. I said, you know, you’re right. I don’t understand why African-American leaders would tolerate those things that are damaging to the people they represent. I’m not saying blame the victim, but I am saying that the African-American pastors and political leaders have to share the blame for what is going on in these neighborhoods.

WS: A few minutes ago you said that an elite had ruled Charlotte. Is that changing? Is a business elite giving way to a populist elite?

BJ: There has been a shift that has been going on for ten years. Don Reid got elected in 1991. Joe Miller almost winning. They were more fiscal conservatives. Mike Jackson in 93 and Tom Bush in 94 and Tim Sellers in 95. Joel Carter and myself. On and on. But nothing in politics goes in a straight line. It’s like a graph of the stock market. It goes up and it goes down.

The district lines have been drawn in a way that benefits inner city blacks. My district has 150,000 people. Jim Puckett’s district has 200,000 people. We have over 50% of the population of the city of Charlotte, but only one-third of the district votes. That’s going to have to change.

WS: And it probably will change at re-districting. Will that be a defining moment for the city of Charlotte?

BJ: Defining? That’s a little broad. But it will be a significant event. The Democrats want to keep their district seats, and that can’t happen.

By the way, we saw an incredibly racist vote in the Democrats abandonment of Jim Richardson in the last election. Democrats picked Becky [Carney] and Parks [Helms] but they don’t pick Jim Richardson? I call it like I see it. Why would a Democratic voter do that? There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the three except that one of them happens to be black, and that person didn’t get about 14,000 white Democratic votes that went to the other two. The "all for one, one for all, Three Musketeers" approach didn’t work. The black guy got holding the bag, and it was the Democrats that left him holding the bag, and that is something that Democrats don’t want to talk about.

WS: They don’t want to talk about the fact that liberal Democrats might in fact be hypocritical? They talk diversity, but they vote white?

BJ: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, in district 4, the bastion of white liberalism in this city. That’s Dilworth, Elizabeth, Plaza-Midwood. Jim Richardson was 13,000 votes behind Becky and Parks. In some precincts Becky and Parks had the exact same number of votes, and Jim was behind their totals. Voters in those liberal white precincts pulled for the white candidates, but wouldn’t vote for Richardson. That’s racist.

WS: Some are saying that the black vote has become so monolithically Democratic that Republicans have given up on them. But what you’re saying is that Democrats have taken them for granted. If that’s true, you end up with black voters essentially disenfranchised.

BJ: The Democrats will pay lip service. They’ll go to the Black Political Caucus dinners. Blackberry Brunch. They’ll show up at the right times at the Excelsior Club. But the fact is that the African-American community has disenfranchised itself.

And I’m not sure what Republicans can do. The truth is that if you rely on a government check for your livelihood, and about 60% of African-Americans in Charlotte are on some form of government subsidy, why would you vote to have that check cut? The problem is that this check robs you of self-sufficiency and dignity and a sense of purpose.

WS: Some people say that one of the reasons you are so passionate is because you have had some health problems that have focused your attention on your own life’s purpose.

BJ: I have two things wrong with me. I have a rather rare progressive liver disease that was the same disease that killed the football player Walter Payton. In addition, I have asthma that they think is related to the medicine I take for the liver disease.

But the fact is that I don’t dwell on it. I just do the best I can. Not to compare myself with the Apostle Paul, but if he can have all the afflictions he had and still serve, so can I. I just want to be able to get to the end of my life and hear God say you did what I wanted you to do. I want to be able to say that I did not sit back and let the status quo ravage the lives of millions of children only because it was the politically correct thing to do. That’s what drives me forward.