After commuting back and forth to Asheville for a number of years, I’m at a crossroads as to whether I should retire there.

As a black professional who has stayed abreast of the different social and economic climate changes in Asheville, my decision of where to retire draws near. My choice to perhaps retire in Asheville centered on the fact that I have distant family there, which has aided in my decision-making process.

While there are few African Americans in Asheville who have been able to breach the glass ceiling, none have reached back to help their own people as a whole, and the blame can’t be totally put on the white community! Our black brothers and sisters are equally responsible for not reaching back to empower members their own communities – for you ALL have roles of responsibility. I have observed that you have/had doctors, lawyers, judges, minister, educators, bankers, real-estate brokers, and now even a black mayor, AND a few black millionaires amongst your midst. I say: What roles of responsibility have these people taken within your own communities of color? None, it seems; if so, there would have been some measure of growth and progress (not regress) by now.

On one of my recent visits to Asheville (I was there for two weeks), it was very obvious there was no social mixture of African Americans in downtown. Walking in that area, you could count on one hand the people of color in any given area! In my investigation (of where the black people were), I found that the majority of blacks were held up in housing projects, with some of them even fenced in! I haven’t heard of that since the Nazi concentration camps. I believe there was a proposition by Asheville City Government to ban “gated communities,” and if so, why are these people corralled in the housing projects like animals? It should be against the law. Or, is this the modus operandi of how people of color are treated in Asheville. You think?

I’ve come to the conclusion that a black person’s power-roles in the Asheville community at large is only as “talking heads,” and blacks literally are “pimped-out” by the establishment – at the expense of your own African American community. I’ve investigated the lack of inclusion of African Americans in both professional and non-professional climates in Asheville, and sadly to me, there are only a few blacks who stand much chance of any type of upward mobility, educated or not! For one, there is NO leadership in the black community. Ask about that, and see what one says!

I am not prejudiced against my own black people, and this is not to demoralize the African American community in Asheville. My point is to let the readers of my opinion know that blacks in Asheville have been disenfranchised in ways that I have never seen before in any other communities. And your own people help to put you there!

People will only do to you what you LET them do!