Reviews & Comments
Fountain, NC
re: Slower, quiet life in rural eastern NC
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6/23/2020Completely (almost) agree with this excellent overview. I moved here from 20+ years in urban Greensboro and found the 50-50 racial divide in Fountain a bit perplexing, and Blacks are far more genial, social, and responsible than Whites, who are generally tribal, bigoted, and selfish with a clear sense of white privilege and entitlement. At the downtown celebration of Black History month, essentially no Whites showed up for free lunch and gospel music. At the town festival, both races showed up but Whites kept apart in tight clusters and made faces when a local high school’s Black step-dance troupe performed. Blacks greet Whites with friendly conversation but Whites almost never initiate conversations with Blacks or indicate any serious interest in Black lives. White “Christians” have nothing to do with Blacks and preach the most obnoxious racist ignorance onna continuous basis. The White children and grandchildren of a notorious lynching of a local Black man in 1930 for which none of the 200 mob participants out of a town of 400 were ever identified, charged, prosecuted, or punished, to this day unashamedly echo the racism of their elders proclaiming the lynching was justified. And of course the wealth gap is still ten-to-one White with Black families limited to only 10 cents for every White family’s $1. The town had essentially died since the 1960s, and now young people flee as soon as possible, with major property owner being land-rich but utterly moribund for adding to the economy. When the local police department (completely White) started offending Whites with overzealous DUI roadblocks and ticketing for minor offenses, The Town Council eliminated the local police. Now, the County Sheriff’s Department provides patrol and response, and thd local police are not missed a bit.