Scott Teamer says Craig Pierce may have done us all a favor.

President of the local NAACP, Teamer was offended at the way Pierce, a Rowan County commissioner, characterized the poor during a recent commission meeting. So were a lot of other people. Rather than crucify Pierce, though, Teamer wants to take on the thinking that Pierce expressed. He knows Pierce is not alone.

“I want Craig Pierce to know it’s nothing personal,” Teamer says. “It’s not just Craig Pierce. … We have to challenge that mindset,” Teamer says.

In case you missed it, controversy grew out of a board of commissioners’ retreat a couple of weeks ago. Commissioners were talking about poverty and how to improve the local economy when Pierce said people on public assistance were a drag on the local economy. His example was a single mother who lives on public assistance in Clancy Hills Apartments with a crack-slinging, live-in boyfriend.

“The comments were racist,” Teamer says. Some people do depend on handouts, he says, but it’s because they don’t have the courage to step out on their own.

But he wants to challenge the mindset that thinks of black people as lazy and “like rabbits.”

“Don’t you think it’s sad if people think the only way they can get ahead is to have a baby?” Teamer says.

The dissatisfaction that brought Teamer to my office is not just about race. He voiced concern about poor people in general.

Commissioners may not like having poor people around, but supermarkets have no problem taking their food stamps, he said.

Teamer is disturbed by the disregard of how residents got in an impoverished state and the  rush to say,  “It’s your fault that you’re poor.”

People in power rarely acknowledge what black citizens have suffered, he says. They are blind to the cumulative effect of being treated as chattel and then living under the threat of Jim Crow laws.

Teamer is disappointed in the black community, too. Five of the 16 candidates for Salisbury City Council in November were black —an unprecedented level of involvement. But voter turnout in black neighborhoods was not good, he says. 

Teamer says the black community has trouble pulling together because of what he calls the “slave mentality” — no mental aspiration, a lack of self-esteem and confidence in each other. 

“We need to work as one.” 

He was disappointed when East Spencer, whose town board is all black, hired white management.

Teamer is impatient with Martin Luther King Day celebrations — all symbolism and no real dialogue or action, he says. 

“The NAACP is recruiting young people. We have to pass the baton on black leadership.”

King’s “I Have a Dream” speech doesn’t mean as much to today’s youth as it does to their elders.

“The younger generation has rebelled because there’s no American Dream for them,” Teamer says.

Even Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” mantra falls on deaf ears among young blacks, he says. What hope? Teamer says they look at what’s going on around them and think, “Somebody needs to explain why I don’t have a damn thing.”

Their hurt needs to be addressed, Teamer says.

He sees the Dunbar charter school proposed in East Spencer as a worthy cause. In his view, the school system is not designed to lift up young black people and convince them that they can come out of the housing authority and accomplish great things, he says. He calls for a re-education to change their mental state.

Teamer brings up the Confederate Monument on Innes Street, the subject of intense conversations last summer after the Charleston church massacre. To some, it represents heritage and tradition. To others, it represents people who fought to keep black ancestors enslaved.

“The statue exists because of the environment, and the environment is, people stay in their place,” Teamer says.

Teamer knows some people are uncomfortable with what he has to say. He grew up being told not to talk about Malcolm X, and now he hears people urge him to leave the Confederate monument issue alone.

Whites and blacks are guilty of not telling the truth, for being polite instead of being direct and truthful, Teamer says. “That day is passing.”  

Elizabeth Cook is editor of the Salisbury Post.