Dwight Mullen, chair of the Community Reparations Commission, steps back from his role

Asheville and Buncombe County Community Reparations Commission Chair Dwight Mullen announced Monday he will take a step back from his leadership role. “The time and stress has taken its toll,” Mullen said. “You can hear it in my voice. That’s not emotion, it’s fatigue.” Mullen, a retired professor who taught political science at UNC Asheville for 35 years, has served as chair since the commission formed in 2022. Mullen emphasized it wasn’t the role as chair that exhausted him. “It’s not the work. It’s not the politics. It’s not the fight that I’m stepping back from.” Instead, Mullen said, it’s the national attention on the process of trying to address the effects of long-standing systemic racism that brought him fatigue. “What you are doing is causing attention from across the nation, and those people are calling me,” he said. “I encourage you to look at what you’re doing as setting the precedent for the nation. So this conversation about race and color, whether or not reparations or constitutional, those things are going to come. Don’t be afraid to step up. I just can’t lead it, but I am there to support you.” Mullen said he plans to stay on as...