Carolina del Norte: An Introduction

Snapshots

At Johnny’s Café on West Main Street in Carrboro, North Carolina, customers savor gourmet coffee with fresh pastries. Known for more than two decades as Johnny’s Sporting Goods, the small corner market stocked fishing tackle in a “down home” atmosphere until 2008 when Johnny sold the store. The new owners cultivate a well-heeled clientele who play speed bingo, enjoy live music, and simply “hang out with the neighbors.” Customers who enter through the door on the opposite side of the building, however, immediately hear colloquial Spanish and come face-to-face with boxes of onions, jalepeños, cilantro and a display of brightly colored $2 and $5 phone cards such as Te Cuento; Boss Carolina; Bang! D.F.; Sigo Siendo El Rey; and Red Carolina, used for calling throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Separated by a single door and a wall, this parallel world is Tienda Rosita, a Mexican family business supplying fresh produce to a growing Latina/o working-class clientele in the area. Here you can buy 10 limes for a dollar, and the owners take pride in bringing wholesale produce from the farmers’ market in Raleigh. On weekend evenings, a taco truck parks in front of Tienda Rosita, offering a range of taquería fare such as tacos, consomé, and tamales. In 2010, the family that had managed Tienda Rosita for over ten years left without notice.

Police doused students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with pepper spray and fired tasers into the air in 2009 in response to a noisy protest of an event that students considered thinly-veiled white supremacy. Tom Tancredo, a former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, was invited by “Youth for Western Civilization” to speak on why public universities should not allow the children of undocumented Latina/o migrants to enroll and pay instate tuition. Many of these children have lived the majority of their lives in the United States and view it as home, yet they are mostly excluded from universities and community colleges in North Carolina because they don’t have the appropriate documentation of residency. Chanting “there’s no debate, no space for hate” outside the classroom where the speech was being delivered, student protesters interrupted Tancredo’s speech. Tancredo was escorted out by campus police after a small window was smashed. Student representatives of the Carolina Hispanic Organization (CHispA), who attended the speech to protest Tancredo’s view, felt the outcome mischaracterized the position of those who support tuition benefits for all residents. In a report by the Raleigh News and Observer, the president of the organization is quoted saying: “We are the children of immigrants and this concerns us . . . We were more interested in an intellectual conversation instead of a shouting match . . .” (DeConto 2009). On the other hand, Tancredo used the UNC protest to stoke his anti-immigration view via a media blitz claiming his first amendment rights were violated: “There is no freedom of speech on hundreds of university campuses today for people who dare to dissent from the radical political agenda of the socialist left and the open borders agitators” (ABC News 2009). Tancredo returned in April 2010 to finish his talk, his visit financed partially by residents of North Carolina.

One steamy summer day in 2008, tow trucks carried away dozens of cars and trucks from an apartment complex on the edge of Carrboro, selecting vehicles with dents, significant rust, and otherwise deemed “unsightly.” The apartments are popular with undocumented Latina/os because the location is adjacent to an informal day labor market where men can sometimes find temporary employment. Next, the tow truck drivers began to remove vehicles of non-residents and any that had a discrepancy when signatories of apartment rental contracts were compared with vehicle registrations. This meant that an apartment resident postponing car repairs had to pay $100 to the towing company to recover her or his car. On several occasions crowds gathered to protest, to try to stop the towing, or to hurriedly move their cars before they were hauled off. When...