Whew! You can tell when a man speaks truth by the reaction he gets. Bob Johnson spoke truth on his way out of town, setting off one last fire-storm of criticism targeting the former BET kingpin. Johnson made many major blunders during his time in Charlotte, pegging the local business community was not one of them:
Charlotte is a very, how would I call it, close-knit, arrogant, sometimes incestuous town. …It’s close-knit, and if you come to this town, and you look like you’re one of those people that might break some glass … it’s going to be tough for them to relate to.
Johnson being Johnson, he immediately fouled that up by asserting that Charlotte does not do enough for minority businesses, proving that Johnson is unaware that every local unit of government has a minority contractor program. But Johnson’s overall thrust is exactly correct.
Proof can be found in a couple places. One, that Charlotte Rent-Seekers Guild president Bob Morgan responded to Johnson with silence. And two, our esteemed mayor. Anthony Foxx is the latest poster-child for how Charlotte likes to do business, via the cut-in. Foxx has been cut-in to DesignLine USA, the hybrid bus maker which hopes to sell millions of dollars worth of buses to CATS. Official Charlotte will swear up and down there is no connection; unofficial, incestuous Charlotte knows better. More Johnson:
I am surprised at the number of people … that come to me looking for financial backing that they haven’t been able to find in the business community…. I’m surprised that there aren’t more substantial alliances between larger white businesses and minority-owned businesses.
Bob, buddy. You never stood a chance. Most of the “substantial alliances” local white businesses have with local black businesses are on the down-low — have been for decades. They are there, a fly-by guy like you just cannot see them.
The cut-in approach expanded the good ol’ boy network selectively, where needed, albeit quietly so as not to kill the goose. Government contracts were and are a favorite method of this approach — check out how many minority-owned — former elected-official owned — operations pocket big, big checks from local government. The banks? They practically invented the cut-in, using the CRA to buy-off opposition to their mergers for decades.
The supreme irony is that Johnson’s could not see — or did not want to see — the cut-in in action in Charlotte given that Johnson himself was a recipient of billion-dollar cut-in into the cable industry. Johnson came to Charlotte looking for actual creative businessmen and women and instead mostly found Bob Johnson clones. Like a distorted, super-sized funhouse mirror, the Charlotte business community did not like what it saw when it looked at Bob Johnson, and vice versa.
We should be grateful for Johnson’s insight, as painful as it might be to take to heart. Good luck, Bob. You’ll need it.
Bonus Observation: Johnson’s critique of Charlotte’s business climate is really just a subset of the fact that the city is not very friendly to entrepreneurs of any color, race, or creed.
