The Andrew Jackson equestrian statue in front of the state Capitol
Last week, news arrived that Oracle plans to open a campus on the east bank of the Cumberland (please watch out for human remains and don’t damage the remnants of the Trail of Tears!) and bring 8,500 jobs to the city.
I know I’m not usually one for cheering massive development, but I have mixed-to-positive feelings about this — assuming we get some solid plans from Oracle about what they’ll do to protect archaeological and historic sites there. In fact, my two first thoughts were: 1. Oh, ha ha ha, those half-a-million-dollar houses on Trinity Lane make a lot more sense now, and 2. They better put a light in at Vashti and World Baptist Center because that intersection is already super scary, and the only people at it are locals and people from Whites Creek trying to sneak out of downtown the back way.
I think Oracle will be good for Nashville. But I can’t shake the feeling that Oracle is doing more harm than good by coming to Tennessee.
Here’s the thing. Oracle is known for working closely with HBCUs and providing a pipeline of Black talent into tech jobs. It also has a perfect score on the Human Rights Equality Index. News stories tout that Nashville attracted Oracle because of our “world-class higher-education institutions and a talented workforce,” and how the city “boasts a diverse populations with a vibrant culture, has a high quality of life while maintaining affordability, and is a top destination for new employees.”
I’ll pause a minute to let y’all laugh at the "maintaining affordability" bit.
OK, on to my point. Oracle, by coming here espousing these values of racial diversity and LGBTQ friendliness and claiming that Nashville is so super awesome, is masking over two related problems.
One, this state is racist as hell and the enemy of LGBTQ people. If Oracle’s plan is to hire a bunch of people of color and LGBTQ people from here and provide them with income and opportunity to either get out or get rich enough to insulate themselves to some extent from the evil here, OK, sure.
But how is Oracle going to ask people to move here? How are they going to tell their Muslim employees that Nashville is a good place to live when the state just put virulent anti-Muslim extremist Laurie Cardoza Moore on the state textbook commission? How are those employees going to feel safe putting their kids in public schools knowing that one of the people who decides what their children learn hates them? What is Oracle going to tell gay employees when they ask if Tennessee is friendly to gay adoption? “No, but …"? But what? Even if gay people find gay-friendly adoption services, when they move here, their tax dollars go to support adoption agencies that discriminate against gay people. Asian employees at Oracle are supposed to be cool with moving to Nashville when our senior U.S. senator, in the wake of the Atlanta massacre, talked about how China is responsible for COVID? Oracle is cool with asking them to tolerate her representing them? Is Oracle going to ask Black people to come live in a state where Nathan Bedford Forrest is given a hallowed spot in the state Capitol as a symbol of being a good Tennessean? And don’t even get me started on this state’s attitude toward trans people. Even before this state decided that they needed to keep trans kids from playing sports in order to protect girls, every trans person in tech I knew here 10 years ago had moved away. If you are a trans person in tech, I cannot in good conscience tell you that it’s safe to come here. If you are the parent of a trans child, please, do not move them here. It is not safe for them.
But this brings me to the second problem: The one argument that LGBTQ people and people of color and others on the side of justice and equality have had that has been even the least bit effective is, if we keep passing this evil legislation, it’s going to cause companies devoted to equality to avoid locating here. But here we are, being evil as fuck, and FedEx is still here; GM is still here; Amazon’s still moving in, and now here comes Oracle. As far as our state legislature is concerned, there is no downside to passing these bills. They cause no problems. They don’t cause the businesses that brag about their progressive values to even hesitate to come here. They aren’t causing businesses to leave.
So the one quasi-effective tool we had in our fight for protections for minorities is hollow at best. It is simply not true that passing this evil legislation and rewarding bigots has any downside for state leaders. Oracle sees all this and is still saying, “We’re moving to Tennessee,” so why shouldn’t the legislature continue to pass legislation like this?
I suspect that what Oracle is telling itself is that moving here and moving people who cherish more progressive values here will increase progressive energy in the state. Well, except you’re moving to Nashville, which is already a solid-blue island in an ocean of red. So Oracle won’t be changing anything in the city. Is Oracle expecting some of its employees to go live in, say, Cheatham County and change things there? Or are they banking on pricing reliably Democratic voters out of Nashville and expecting all the poor people of color and LGBTQ people who already live here to move to cheaper — but more dangerous — areas and change them?
There’s a sizable population of people in Nashville who grew up in those areas and left them because of how traumatic it is to not be a white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian in those places. If your plan for slowly moving Tennessee away from its current incarnation as a clown car of evil hypocrites is to pressure people to return to places they weren’t safe, or to pressure their friends and loved ones to move to places people like them aren’t safe, then you’re not actually as committed to the well-being of LGBTQ people and people of color as your PR suggests.
I don’t know what the right thing for Oracle to do is. I’m not feeling optimistic that they know either, and that could lead to bad outcomes for the very people they brag about being good for and to.
