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In the midmorning sun, Greensboro shimmers from the 15th-floor window of Renaissance Plaza.

Do you think Greensboro is in need of healing? If so, how would you approach it? If not, are you satisfied on where the city is and the direction it is going? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

A three-story mural of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, our namesake, looks over Center City Park. The spikes of our skyline stretch eastward, toward the newly painted water tower at Bennett College, and a Lego-like crane looms nearby like a modern-day dinosaur.

Yes, we have arrived.

Our downtown is thriving, our economy is growing and our constellation of higher education — one law school, two universities and four colleges — only adds to our clout.

But pull back that Hallmark-card sheen, zero in on the ground, and there's a different city. A city wounded by controversy.

A scandal in the police department that festers like a splinter. A lack of reconciliation over one of our worst moments. And an effort to recognize one of our best moments — a time when four college students sat down to stand up against racism — that still breeds skepticism.

These community lightning rods have created a cancer of distrust and raised tough questions about our leadership, past and present, and our legacy of racism, real and perceived.

The strange thing is, we live in a city that prides itself on inclusion, tolerance and a history of social justice. Yet two recent surveys — one on race relations, one on trust — tell us our city's cherished core values have slipped.

Not that we need a survey to tell us that.

Talk to enough people — as I did, more than three dozen including community bigwigs, faith leaders, neighborhood activists and teenagers with big dreams — and you'll hear stories of how our distrust has pushed us into proverbial corners.

It has paralyzed us, forcing us as a community to lose focus on what's important and turning potential bridge-building opportunities into empty promises.

Everyone from public officials to community activists gets demonized. Ideas get shot down without discussion. And "The Sound of the Beep,'' a phone-in feature in The Rhinoceros Times, drones on week after week with anonymous posts full of anger, accusations and hate.

We need to find solutions. We need to be bold enough and brave enough to talk about what divides us and find ways to start coming together as a community. As someone told me, we need to listen to learn, rather than listen to speak.

Only then can we begin to heal.

If we don't, we'll remain a city divided. A city where "potential" is a constant catchphrase. A city infected by Greensboro Disease — a perception of resistance to change.

So, the stakes are high. It's our city's future. What will it look like?


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A few nights before Thanksgiving, at a downtown church, Action Greensboro rolled out its new plan to help revive Greensboro.

One of the nonprofit's top recommendations: Start at the corner of South Elm and February One Place, the very corner that changed the world nearly a half century ago when four N.C. A&T students said no to Jim Crow and ignited a movement. Finish the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Many in the room clapped. Has its time come? Yvonne Johnson, our new mayor, thinks so. (Listen to a podcast with Johnson)

Johnson sees the museum as something we need to celebrate. Still, during her campaign, she ran headlong into our city's cynicism with a project unfinished after 13 years, millions spent and two failed bond referendums.

"I don't trust the civil rights museum,'' a man told her.

Trust can be hard to come by in our city.

Since Action Greensboro's last survey four years ago, race relations have deteriorated. So has our tolerance to diversity. The 804 people surveyed in June also gave a negative rating to officials running our county, our city and our public schools.

That's easy to understand.

We in Greensboro exist in a political world of finger-pointing campaigns and perceived conspiracies.

Among the many:

* The January 2006 resignation of David Wray, the former police chief, after allegations that the department targeted black officers in an unfair internal investigation.

* The city's cold-shouldered reaction to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which looked into our city's most violent day: Nov. 3, 1979, when five Communist Workers Party members were killed in a clash with Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan in Morningside Homes, a poor black neighborhood in east Greensboro.

* The perception that Action Greensboro is run by an exclusive set of power brokers, mostly white baby boomers, who make their way the only way. And that our former mayor, Keith Holliday, was more interested in keeping the peace than making tough decisions.

Five decades ago, Newsweek magazine described Greensboro, our city, as the symbol of the "New South, astir with a new liberalism."

That's no longer true. We have lost our way. And that's why we need solutions to get us back on track, step by step.

In dozens of recent interviews, with young and old, black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, I heard many ideas. Here are a few:

* Involving a cross section of our clergy to help restore bonds of trust.

* Tapping into the intellectual horsepower of our higher-education institutions.

* Grooming more leaders — particularly young leaders — beyond our city's usual cast of characters.

* Making sure everybody who graduates from Guilford County has the ability to go on to college.

One of the more interesting ideas involved bringing people together for a special project. Such as building a bike path.

From his 15th-floor office at Renaissance Plaza, attorney John McLendon can look out his window and envision the 4.5-mile bike path, a project known as the Downtown Greenway that will link the city's college campuses and older neighborhoods.

He sees the greenway as a metaphor for our need to connect, to break down the racial and socioeconomic barriers that separate us.

"We have a great opportunity to ... come to grips with the more difficult aspects of our city, both real and perceived divisions, and move forward,'' said McLendon, 49, a co-chairman of the greenway planning committee. "We have to do it. It's for the good of the community.''


* * *

There's a quote on Victoria Sadeq's door at the Newcomers School, recently opened for the children of Greensboro's next generation of immigrants. (Video of Sadeq and others)

It comes from Martin Luther King Jr.: "People don't get along because they fear each other. People fear each other because they don't know each other. They don't know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other."

Sadeq, 47, saw that firsthand growing up in Venezuela and Colombia. She sees it every day in her class at Newcomers. "Just because we don't know each other, we're afraid," she said. "You need to know your neighbor. Open your heart a little.''

Four years ago, the Rev. Eric Cole did that. When he spent a night on Eugene Street to find out what it would be like to live on the streets, it dashed his view of the homeless as an insular, suspicious bunch. Instead he found a close-knit group of intelligent people who drew life's short straw.

Cole took those revelations back to his multiracial congregation, a picture of diversity in the most segregated hour of our week: Sunday morning.

He's doing the same today, with known gang members in our community.

"If I had one wish, I want everyone around the table and to have a chance to share their collective stories,'' said Cole, a Bennett College math professor and pastor of Shalom Community Christian Church. "And the more we talk, the more we'll see what connects us than separates us.''


* * *

That lack of communication is one of the causes of our distrust. It divides us and drives us into corners over various issues, whether it's Wray or what happened so many years ago at Morningside Homes.

We find comfort in the familiar. That is, living in our separate circles that never intersect. And when we try to deal with our hang-ups over race and class, we want it to be painless.

Perhaps there needs to be some pain — the kind of pain pricked by frank discussion.

Monica Walker, a social justice veteran with 30 years of experience, believes that. Only then can our community begin to trust, begin to heal, begin to change.

"How do you talk about the big stuff when you don't talk about the small stuff?'' says Walker, the chief diversity officer of Guilford County Schools. "It's the common ground we keep missing.''

Walker Saunders, the executive director of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, sees that, too.

"Our civility as a community is preventing us from having open discussion,'' he said. "Everyone wants to be polite. But we should be able to sit and tell our opinion and then go out and have a beer. If we don't, we won't move forward efficiently. We'll always be second-guessing ourselves. We'll always be asking ourselves, 'What if?' "

That's where IMPACT Greensboro comes in. It's an 11-month program intended to help 90 people from across the city learn to listen, learn to see differently, learn to trust.

That's happening already, in the most expected — and unexpected — of places, away from the glare of TV lights and headlines.

Meet Arthur Samet and Monte Edwards. They found common ground — that thing that Monica Walker talks about — through Tapestry, informal dinners started two years ago by the Weaver Foundation.

Samet is white, a father to Jack, 3, and Abby, 5. He runs a construction company his dad started in 1961. Edwards is African American, a father to Angel, 11, and Ciara, 9. He helps his brother-in-law run a construction management and disaster recovery services company.

At first, they talked about raising kids and following football.

But after nearly 10 gatherings, the 38-year-olds delved into race: Samet growing up Jewish, Edwards growing up black. They say they've gotten beyond the superficial and created a friendship.

Meet James Shields. He works as the director of community learning at Guilford College and recruits students to volunteer in the community. They work with prisoners, the poor, the needy and the new — immigrants from such countries as Vietnam, Sudan and Mexico.

His students often share what they learned about themselves and their community just off campus.

Meet Carolyn Simms. She's a retired teacher who lives near Huffman Street, off N.C. 29, in east Greensboro, behind a locked door with a locked mailbox.

Simms sees this neighborhood as her home — she's living in the two-bedroom house where she was raised — and this is why she introduced herself to a guy she suspected was selling drugs across the street.

She showed him a black-and-white photo of her mother and said, "This is my momma. We love this neighborhood. And I want to welcome you to the community, and we want to keep the community crime-free.''

Our city needs more of that honest, in-your-face boldness. Yvonne Johnson, who last week became our city's first African American mayor, promises that'll happen.

She's got the experience. She's been on the City Council for 14 years. But she's also got something else: a knack for building bridges.

Some even compare her to Esther, the stout-hearted heroine from the Old Testament.

She plans to build bridges with town meetings and open discussions on our city's toughest topics: David Wray, the unfinished civil rights museum, the lack of reconciliation with the report and recommendations from the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

She feels she has to. For our city's sake. For closure.

"Sometimes, people aren't able to get past what they believe and think,'' she says. "They stay stuck being angry and disillusioned, and they add to the festering, and it eats up the energy we could be spreading. But we've got to move on.''

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com