Why The Rest Of The World Seems To Care So Much About Transgender People

This clip above is Professor Richard Florida, then at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, from about 2002 or 2003.  He's speaking to a group of civic leaders in San Diego, California about the findings in his then recent book, The Rise of the Creative Class.

I'm writing this on April 21st, 2016.  Less than a month ago, the North Carolina legislature passed a law, known commonly as "HB 2" or "The Bathroom Bill."  The law was passed in a special session of the legislature, and was so controversial that the Democratic state senators actually got up and walked out, refusing to even vote on the bill.  As most of you know, the most famous issue in the law is that transgender people are mandated to use the public restrooms of the sex on their birth certificate, not the gender they currently identify with.  The law had several other provisions, and was passed using the fear tactic that the legislature was trying to keep creepy guys from dressing up as women and molesting young girls in the bathrooms.  OK, nobody wants that to happen.  But in the 200+ cities that have a similar ordinance, including Greensboro, NC, that molestation case hasn't been an issue.  I haven't seen one case brought up where that actually happened.  HB 2 was passed hurriedly in response to an anti-discrimination ordinance by the city of Charlotte.

This blog post is not about whether you're for or against HB 2.  This post is about the incredible reaction to HB2, and the long term consequences of passing that law.  In less than a month since HB 2 passed, Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert in Greensboro because of the law.  Ringo Star cancelled a show because of the law.  Pearl Jam cancelled a show.  Cirque du Soleil, a huge French Canadian circus, has cancelled all of its upcoming shows in NC, including shows in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Raleigh.  Paypal cancelled a planned expansion, including adding 400 jobs, to the Charlotte area.  Deutsche Bank, a huge German-based bank, has also cancelled a planned expansion in NC, this one would have brought 200 jobs with it.  Cyndi Lauper did not cancel her planned concert in NC, but instead said she would give the proceeds from that show to an NC based organization that fights for LGBT (that's Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender) rights.  In addition, this law and its reaction have made national, and even world news, on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and other major news programs.  In a very rare political move, top porn website X-Hamster first banned people in NC from visiting its website, instead putting up a page to let people know that the word "shemale" had been searched for over 48,000 times this year by North Carolina residents.  Later X-Hamster put up another page asking if you agree with HB 2.  It you clicked "yes," you were banned from its website.  In addition to all of that, the Raleigh convention center has reported that planned events totaling $7 million in economic impact have been cancelled.  The Greensboro convention people have just reported that events adding up to $5 million in economic impact have been cancelled in that city.  Future sporting events such as the NBA All-Star Game, NCAA events, and the X-Games are now in limbo.

If all that wasn't enough negative reaction to this state law, over 100 top executives at major companies also signed an open letter stating their opposition to HB 2.  Those who signed the latter include Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Tim Cook of Apple.  Even a top executive of Levi Strauss & Co. signed it.  Levi's jeans is now mad at North Carolina.  When's the last time you heard Levi's take a political stand?  To top it all off, Stephen Colbert opened his late night show a couple nights ago with a comedy sketch making fun of HB 2 that ended with guys dressed as Abe Lincoln and Robert E.Lee making out with each other.  Others are saying that BILLIONS of dollars in Federal money may be diverted from North Carolina because of HB 2, because of anti-discrimination clauses in Title IX laws.  At this point, it appears that the negative effects of passing HB 2 will likely run into the billions of dollars in coming years, and very likely tens of billions or hundreds of billions in lost revenue and business, because the Republican legislature and Republican governor McCrory of North Carolina have alienated most of the high tech businesses of the world.

I understand that social conservatives don't like gay and transgender people.  That's their right.  I understand that many people would like to pretend that gay and transgender people simply don't exist.  The issue is that HB 2 forces discrimination against some of these people.  It also keeps cities in North Carolina from passing their own ordinances that are more open to these people and other minority groups.  That's why so many people are pissed off at North Carolina right now.  They simply hate the idea of legislated discrimination.

So what? you may say.  This is a tiny group pf people we're talking about.  According to Wikipedia, the best statistics estimate that 3.3% of the North Carolina population is part of the LGBT community, that's 244,000 people.  If all those people were in a single city, that would be the fifth largest city in NC, a bit smaller than Greensboro and larger than Winston-Salem. 

Why are there so many people outside of North Carolina taking a stand against this law?  Now we get to the work of Professor Richard Florida, who's groundbreaking work in economic development really got going when he taught at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.  He explains his initial concepts in the speech above.  Professor Florida was teaching the well known theories of economic development, when he started realizing they weren't really working anymore.  Pittsburgh, much like Detroit, took a huge hit when the factories started closing in the 1980's and 90's.  But it had a great high tech and research scene, and tech start-ups like Lycos (a pre-Google search engine) spun off from Carnegie Mellon.  But the top students in computer science and related tech were all leaving Pittsburgh.  Even Lycos moved to Boston.  So Professor Florida put his nose to the grindstone and started researching why this was happening.  His research led him to identify a new class of workers in the world, which he dubbed the "Creative Class."  With the industrial revolution 300 or so years ago, agricultural jobs dropped to a small percentage of the workforce, replaced by factory workers in the 1700's and 1800's.  But in the mid-20th century a couple new groups began growing in the workforce.  The largest group is the service workers, a relatively low wage group that now makes up the largest population of the American workforce.  But as the factories shut down, another, mostly high paid group, began to grow exponentially in the workforce.  These are the scientists, engineers, artists, designers, writers, media people, and others who use their intellect and creativity as a main part of their work.  These people make decisions, use their judgement, and create new concepts and ideas.  This group of people is now the main economic driving force in the workforce of both the U.S. and other developed nations.

Despite the ability to use technology and work from virtually anywhere, these people tend to cluster in certain regions.  Florida's research showed him that these highly creative "mega-regions" where the Creative Class congregate have certain things in common.  He dubbed these attributes "The Three T's."  They are Technology, Talent, and Tolerance.  The places where the Creative Class cluster are also the regions doing the best financially.  It's that last "T," Tolerance, that comes into play with HB 2.

Generally speaking, the people driving today's tech-heavy economy want to live in a place that's tolerant to all kinds of people.  These creative people tend to abhor the idea of discrimination, especially official discrimination mandated by law.  Tech and creative people tend to be kind of weird.  The "computer geek" is a major stereotype we all know.  Though, in reality, tech people are often far from that stereotype. But for a city or region to thrive in the modern economy, they need to have a technology base (such as a major university), they need to be able to attract highly talented people, and they need to be tolerant do all kinds of different people.  HB 2 told the world, in effect, "North Carolina is not tolerant to various kinds of people."  That's why there is such a backlash to this law.  That's why this law will have an impact on North Carolina's economy that is completely unimaginable at this early stage.

You, as an individual, are free to believe whatever you want about marginalized groups of people like the LGBT community, transgender people, or any other minority.  But, like it or not, these people exist.  Like it or not, a huge part of the U.S. (and world) population believes these people, like all people, should have the same fundamental legal rights as everyone else.  But in today's world, overt discrimination will have huge financial consequences, as well as other social consequences.  Any city or region can pass any law it sees fit.  But the cities and regions that are seen as intolerant to minority groups will find it harder and harder to remain viable economically in the 21st century.  You can be as big a bigot as you want, but the business world is changing rapidly, and the extremely discriminatory regions are being left behind.  Hey, you can start living like the Amish if you want, they have viable economies without modern technology.  But if you want to discriminate against marginalized groups AND thrive in today's business world, it's going to get harder and harder.  If you're a millennial from North Carolina who wants to have a career at the leading edge of technology, you may very well have to move to somewhere else.  Little acts like passing HB 2 have huge consequences in today's world, consequences that may very well affect every single one of the 10,000,000+ people in this state.  Only you can decide if that price is worth discrimination.

Just for the record, I'm a straight guy who has spent most of my adult life in California, where I interacted with dozens and dozens of different groups of people, including people in the LGBT community.  My biggest insight to share from that is that people are people, and we have more in common with each other than we have that separates us.

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