From Staff Reports
The Asheville-Buncombe County Community Reparations Commission on May 6 voted to recommend four economic projects for Asheville’s black community — including a guaranteed income pilot program — that “they want local leaders to support,” Asheville television station WLOS (News 13) reported on May 7.
Meanwhile, John Boyle wrote in a May 13 Asheville Watchdog opinion column that, “nationally, monthly payments for guaranteed income programs range from about $300 to $600, with a variety of funding sources.”
Regarding the recommended projects, News 13 noted that “the action followed nearly two years of meetings and discussions by the 25-member ARC.”
The other three initial projects recommended are as follows:
• An economic development center
• Support for existing neighborhood plans and incentives
• A reparations accountability council
Meanwhile, H.K. Edgerton, an Asheville native who grew up here in the Jim Crow-era and now bills himself as a Southern heritage activist, said of the ARC’s guaranteed income proposal, “Poppyco*ck on the whole thing!” in a May 19 telephone interview with the Daily Planet.
“You can accomplish anything” with hard work and good manners, Edgerton asserted. “Ain’t no ‘back payment’ due” to blacks for slavery in the United States.
In his column, Boyle wrote the following:
“I’ll admit my immediate reaction to the Community Reparations Commission’s latest headline-grabbing recommendation — a guaranteed income pilot program for low-income residents — was along the lines of, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
“Just giving money away to people? With no strings attached? That sounds crazy, right?
“After all, this is America, land of the free, home of the rugged individualism ethos and a ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ spirit and all that, right? You can’t just give everybody a free ride!”
However, Boyle wrote that his discussion with ARC Chair Dwight Mullen changed his mind on the matter, stating that “maybe (the proposal) makes even a lot of sense.”
In his column, Boyle then quoted Mullen as saying the following:
“This is not welfare. This is not something that is a handout,” Mullen told me Thursday, three days after the committee passed its recommendations. “It’s payment for work that was never, never, never paid for.”
The Daily Planet — on May 13 and 15 — emailed Mullen for any general comment, along with specific questions, about the ARC’s guaranteed income proposal, but the newspaper did not hear back from him by its early-morning May 20 printing deadline.
Responding to Mullen’s assertion that was quoted in Boyle’s column, Edgerton said in his Daily Planet interivew, “As for slavery (and reparations), take that crap and throw it into the trashcan... Instead, go to school. Also, learn some manners,” such as saying— on a regular basis — “Yes, sir!” and “Yes, ma’am!” ... and see what happens.
As for Mullen’s contention about reparations that “it’s payment for work that was never, never, never paid for,” Edgerton disagreed. “That’s not quite true either. You (as a slave) had food, clothing, shelter, protection…. They found out what slavery really was with the 13th Amendment.”
(The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”)
Further, Edgerton noted, “The whole world (at the time of American slavery) was complicit with the slave trade, especially Africa. It was black Africans who snuck into the villages and stole villagers and sold them, especially to the Arabs... Those Africans (who were shipped to the U.S.) got the opportunity to come to the greatest country in the world.”
Ultimately, the biggest reason reparations are not owed to blacks over slavery is that, at the time, it was legal to own slaves in the United States, Edgerton said. Therefore, he added, there was no illegality committed that would justify reparations.
Regarding the very idea of reparations, Edgerton contended, “A slave’s got no payment coming for being a slave.”
As for Mullen, Edgerton — as in previous interviews — charged that the retired UNC Asheville political science professor who was born and raised in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, “has turned himself into a ‘poverty pimp’ in trying to present a false narrative to black folks” in order to buy “what Dwight Mullen is selling....
“That’s what the people with a “woke” agenda do -— they change the meaning of everything in the dictionary....These poverty pimps needs to ‘stick it.’”
Instead of pushing for handouts to blacks, Edgerton said, “Dwight Mullen needs to go over to his schoolhouse — PEAK Academy in West Asheville — with his wife and his children — and try to teach these babies (schoolchildren) how to be competitive in this society,” with reading, writing and arithmetic — and a heavy dose of learning good manners, especially “Yes, sir!” and “Yes, ma’am!”
As for Boyle’s comments in support of Mullen’s ideas, Edgerton said, “Nothiing he says — or writes — makes any sense to me. John Boyle (who is white) can’t speak for black people....”
