Durham, N.C. – Mayor Leonardo Williams is not interested in code-switching, I’m glad because we are exhausted. Recently the teacher of the year-turned, restaurateur-turned-politician, was asked by a reporter about a comment Williams had made at a town hall meeting. In a moment of candid frustration regarding youth violence, the Mayor had used the acronym “YN.” For the uninitiated, it stands for “Young N*****.” “She asked, ‘Do you want to apologize?'” Williams recalled in a recent sit-down interview. “I said, ‘I would not apologize. I’m not apologizing for that.'” For Williams, the controversy that followed—spanning from The Shade Room to local Facebook groups—missed the forest for the trees. While critics fixated on his vocabulary, they ignored the context: a room of 200 Black residents discussing the life-and-death reality of gun violence, broken homes, and children raising children.
“I’m very authentic,” Williams said, shrugging off the backlash. “Why do we need to be politically correct? I am a leader who speaks the truth, and this is how I get in trouble a lot. And you know what? I don’t give a damn.” Williams, a former educator draws a sharp contrast between the survivalist activism of the past, referencing the resilience of his home Princeville, N.C. after catastrophic flooding, to what he terms the “performative outreach” of today. “We have an ever-growing sense of amnesia,” Williams said. He argues that modern local activism often looks backward rather than forward. “We can’t drive the car forward by only looking through the rearview mirror. When you get reckless, looking out the back window and pressing the gas, that is when you can’t define what you want.” He points to the historic Hayti community. The city recently allocated $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to revitalize the area, yet Williams notes a struggle to deploy the capital effectively. “We know how to fight,” Williams noted, “There’s this saying: ‘People close to the pain need to be closer to the power.’ Well, let them get close to the power and stop speaking for them.”
Mayor Williams shared an important data snapshot on the racial wealth gap and housing disparities. To contextualize the Mayor’s comments on the necessity of Black wealth generation please note the current Federal Reserve data which highlights the disparity:…