As an expatriated young Arkansan, I am concerned for our state. According to the continually updated scoreboard of my social media newsfeed, I'm not alone.
Over the past few months I have had countless discussions with fellow young Arkansans who are growing increasingly tired of having to explain the actions of state leaders.
Here is the image of Arkansas that the world currently sees: We have a state representative performing exorcisms on foster children before re-homing them with a sexual predator; a state senator demanding nuclear war against ISIS; a U.S. senator sidestepping the president by writing directly to the leader of Iran to undermine diplomatic negotiations, negotiations that last week finally succeeded in avoiding greater economic sanctions or boots on the ground; that same U.S. senator labeling the lack of gay lynchings as progress; and finally we have House Bill 1228 and Senate Bill 202, the products of a concerted effort to ensure that discrimination against the LGBT community remains legal.
Thankfully Gov. Asa Hutchinson came out against HB1228, understanding that encouraging discrimination against entire classes of people is bad for business. And thankfully the state legislature passed and the governor signed a version of the bill that more closely emulates the federal version.
While I support the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and recognize it simply as a vehicle to balance religious and civil rights, like both Governors Hutchinson and Mike Pence of Indiana I also recognize that timing is important.
The fact that this legislation was introduced in response to the legalization of gay marriage across the country sends a clear message: Gays and lesbians will not be a protected class. This is happening while, according to Pew, 70 percent of millennials and 54 percent of millennial conservatives like myself support gay marriage.
This is a public-relations failure for our state, a failure that is making Arkansas look unattractive to my generation and to young educated people that will drive our economy into the future. This is not a social issue; it is economic. Young diverse people are not settling in Arkansas.
A study released last month by the Census Bureau shows a stagnating young adult population in three of the four metropolitan statistical areas in the state, and negative movement in one. Thirty-six of Arkansas' 75 counties lost population between 2000 and 2010.
We are more white, less educated, less international, and more poor than the U.S. at large. It will only get worse.
Arkansas cannot afford to lose this generation. Millennials are more educated, more diverse, more urban. Most importantly, we're enthusiastic about our work, according to recent research by Ernst & Young. Without us, our state and its economy will be left behind. Jobs will pass us by, economic growth will pass us by, and the future will pass us by.
So I suppose my message is directed to two audiences. First, to our politicians who are painting our state as backward, exclusive, and discriminatory. You are pushing young people away. Sadly, this is not the first time. As John Brummett recently noted, the Arkansas of his childhood was the only state to lose population during the decade of the Little Rock Nine for the very same reasons.
The other audience is made up of fellow expatriated Arkansans, both nationally and internationally. You may be angry at our state and its leaders, fed up with apologizing for the actions of a few, but it's up to us to change the status quo. Without young, intelligent, educated Arkansans returning to the state and to the South, nothing will change.
Even as I wrestle with if I'll settle down back home, part of me feels like we owe it to future generations. Otherwise, I'm not sure how much of a state there will be left to return to.
------------v------------
Mike Norton, a native of Lincoln, is a 2013 University of Arkansas graduate currently studying politics at the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.
Editorial on 04/09/2015