Equity

Vance, Patton, Woodfin,  Henderson, Weaver, Chunn, Baird — their names are familiar  to anyone living in Asheville and Buncombe County today. All were wealthy and influential civic leaders honored by having their names bestowed on statues, monuments, streets, schools, parks, neighborhoods, and local communities. They were also major slaveholders or slave traders and white supremacists who amassed their wealth and influence in part through the exploitation of human beings they treated as property. Of all the slaveholders in Buncombe County, no one enslaved more African Americans than Nicholas W. Woodfin, James W. Patton, and James McConnell Smith, according to census records and slave deeds. 

Asheville itself was named for a major slaveholder, as was Buncombe County. The fortunes that propelled Samuel Ashe and Edward Buncombe to prominence were wrung from the suffering of hundreds of enslaved Africans on their sugar and cotton plantations.

African-Americans in Asheville are three times more likely than white people to be searched by police in traffic stops and are disproportionately charged with common crimes such as marijuana possession in disparities that experts in police bias called shocking, an AVL Watchdog analysis of police data found. Among lower-level crimes such as disorderly conduct, trespassing and resisting an officer – offenses where police have broad discretion – Black people account for 33 to 40 percent of the charges while representing just 12 percent of the city’s population, according to the analysis of arrests posted on the city’s web site from 2012 through early this month. The data suggest that Asheville, which is on its fifth police chief in nine years, has failed to guarantee equal treatment under the law for all its citizens. “These numbers raise serious concerns about discriminatory policing,” said Roy L. Austin, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who oversaw federal investigations of racial profiling and misconduct in police agencies. 

“While further analysis is certainly appropriate, these numbers cause me to pause,” Austin said, “for their sheer disproportion to the population of Blacks living in the community.”

New Asheville Police Chief David Zack, whose first four months on the job have included the pandemic and massive protests over police treatment of African-Americans, said he’s still examining the department to determine “what we’re doing well and what we need to work on.”

“Certainly, this is really important data that has to be addressed,” he said. “This sort of data is a major concern.”

City of AshevillePolice Chief David Zack

In cities across America, Black people are disproportionately stopped by police and arrested for certain crimes, research shows.

One by one, they arrived at their downtown businesses this week to find shattered storefronts and graffiti-stained walls. The damage could not have come at a worse time, following a two-month closure from a pandemic and a sluggish reopening. But these Asheville business owners chose not to cast blame or demand justice from the vandals. They joined the cause. Patton Avenue Pet Company owner Jenna Wilson, Hazel Twenty boutique owner Lexi DiYeso and others drafted a letter that they posted Thursday night in the Asheville Black Lives Matter Community Facebook group.

The main floor of Manna FoodBank’s warehouse in Asheville is a beehive of activity as scores of staff and volunteers pack, load and wrap food for distribution. Boxes, pallets, and forklifts still abound, but the vibe has changed. In her office, Manna CEO Hannah Randall shifts in her chair. The data points she sees on her computer screen are staggering. The pandemic has amplified the scope of poverty and hunger in Western North Carolina like nothing before.