Two counties in the Charlotte area have a new county line after a long dispute over their border. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says borders help define us … and not always for the best.
It’s amazing how wound up we can get over borders.
On Sunday, the boundary line between Lincoln County and Catawba County officially changed. Actually, it changed back — back to the original line between the counties that was established in 1842.
In the intervening 180-some-odd years, as parcels of land on the county line got bought and sold, the commonly recognized boundary line shifted. Basically, it wasn’t always clear where Catawba County ended and Lincoln County began. This became a problem for matters such as voting and school zones.
Last February, the state released a land survey that confirmed where the original line had been. Both county governments said at first that they preferred the lines as currently understood. But they never could fully agree. And after a year, the state survey became law.
As you might imagine, some people who live along the line are unhappy about this. Some moved to one county over the other for the schools. Others now have new county commissioners and state reps. Some folks, I’m sure, are just complaining to complain. It’s never hard to find some of those.
But part of it, I think, is tied up in identity. All our borders — between counties, states, and countries — are by and large imaginary. But sometimes we see ourselves as different humans than the ones on the other side of the line.
A lot of this is mostly for our amusement — when North Carolina plays South Carolina in football, it’s a contest not just between states, but states of mind.
But the new administration’s policies when it comes to the border are not amusing but terrifying for millions of our undocumented neighbors.
Federal agents have already made immigration raids in Chicago, New York and other cities. President Trump plans to build a deportation camp at Guantánamo Bay that could hold as many as 30,000 people. Trump also wants to end the automatic right to citizenship for everyone born here, regardless of their parents' status.
This is only, in part, because of our flawed and overwhelmed system of legal immigration. It is also because we have been trained not to trust those on the other side of the border.
You know, of course, that these borders were not handed down by God. The British used to own most of where the Carolinas are now. Texas got handed around from the French to the Spanish to the Mexicans before becoming a part of the United States.
We are really good at demonizing and denigrating those who cross our borders, especially the ones who do so illegally. Those of us who were born here are not so good at admitting our incredible luck at landing in a country where so many others are longing to live.
Lincoln and Catawba counties can work their thing out. In a few years, it won’t matter. But as long as this country is so attractive to so many … there aren’t walls high enough to keep them all out, or camps big enough to send them all away.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section at wfae.org. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org
