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Basically, you have a very very satisfied white metropolitan population that doesn't want to change anything to better accommodate black people. Which include just about every single person in this thread on both side of the issue. Other than me.
Have you ever considered that it may be your attitude and outlook, not the color of your skin, that is holding you back?
You've been given great opportunities, and you have a college education, yet for some reason you're living in the slums of Baltimore, driving an Uber for a living, and spending the majority of your days ranting on forums about white people. This is what you've chosen, and it doesn't have to be that way.
lege education, yet for some reason you're living in the slums of Baltimore, driving an Uber for a living, and spending the majority of your days ranting on forums about white people. This is what you've chosen, and it doesn't have to be that way.
The thing is though I drive uber on the side. From an economic and sociological perspective, it's great I actually bought a car specifically to do that again after having not drove for a long time. As you know I have a WFH job in Boston.
Whites (well mostly racist whites) will try to gaslight you into thinking what you've earned is what you been given. A mechanism to legitimize workplace or school discrimination. This is one of many many forms of covert racism which obviously dont fool black people but are supposed to shield you from direct criticism. The issue you have with me is I just dont play that game. Because-why would I?
Like Chantrise Sims Holliman, 49, they are college educated and arrived in Georgia searching for professional opportunities that they didn’t expect to find in New England.
Sims Holliman has lived in Atlanta longer than she lived in the Boston area, which she left in the mid-’90s. She grew up in a middle-class household in West Newton, but says it was in that self-consciously liberal neighborhood that she was first called the n-word. She had the same experience in Boston, where she learned to stay out of certain neighborhoods because of the color of her skin.
An author, motivational speaker and educator with a doctorate degree, she said Atlanta offered her more freedom — and more professional and personal opportunities.
“There is no comparison. My mother very much wanted me to move back home, and I told my mother, that’s important to me that my daughter grow up in a city where people look like her and are successful,” she explained. “My parents are still the only Black family within three or four miles of where they live. Here in Atlanta, there is Black excellence on just about every corner.”
Sims Holliman points out that Atlanta has had successive Black mayors — and is on the eve of electing yet another, with two Black candidates facing off in the city’s November election.
...
Gaskill recalled a conversation he had with a friend from the Deep South: “And he said, ‘Where are you from?' I said I grew up in Boston. He said, ‘Oh my God, it’s racist there.’ And I just remember thinking, like, ‘Dude, you’re from Alabama and Mississippi. Like, it doesn’t get more racist than that.’”
But Gaskill says that perception is reality for many Black people around the country — and whoever becomes mayor of Boston will be tasked with changing that image.
Historically, racial hostility extended beyond Boston’s public schools, public beaches and public housing and seeped into the city’s nightlife. Lawsuits over discriminatory entry policies at downtown Boston venues were common in the 1980s, 1990s and even more recently.
...
Atlanta native and Morehouse graduate BMaynard Scarborough worked for Mayor Ray Flynn and later the Boston Globe. But at night he spent time and energy carving out a space for Black and Latino people in the city’s clubs and restaurants by working with club owners and restaurateurs, including Patrick Lyons and Seth Greenberg.
“We did those things because we had to,” Scarborough recalled. “We didn’t have anything to do. So we were a natural group that needed just a little organizing.”
Scarborough’s networking enterprise with friend and businessman Alvin Crawford was called The Loop. It provided access to the city’s often closed-off institutions of culture and nightlife, much like the contemporary multiracial networking group, Get Konnected, organized by public relations maven Colette Phillips. Still, Scarborough chose to move back to Atlanta in 2005 for reasons that he said are fundamental to the notion of basic freedom.
“Atlanta is almost like — we feel like we don’t have to ask to do. You feel empowered. It’s our town,” he said. “Even though I was there for 20 years, I never felt like Boston was my town at all. And I love Boston.”
...
Morehouse graduate George “Chip” Greenidge, who grew up in Boston’s Mission Hill and in Cambridge, has straddled the Mason-Dixon Line with the help of Delta Airlines for more than three decades. He said he also loves Boston, but his heart is closer to Atlanta.
“It’s very interesting being in both of those spaces and places,” Greenidge said. “In Atlanta, there are more opportunities for people to actually become an entrepreneur. There are more ways for creatives to be creative because they’re more spaces to do so. And also, there’s a cheaper-rent district, an arts district. Here [in Boston], it’s very impossible for a young person that’s not in school to actually make it.”
Greenidge created and runs a nonprofit called Greatest Minds, which is tasked with building the next generation of Black leaders in Boston. Like others interviewed by GBH News, Greenidge left Boston in the 1990s to attend Morehouse, but he’s split his time between both Boston and Atlanta since then. He is now pursuing a Ph.D. at Georgia State University and serving as a visiting fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School — and recently hosted a live mayoral debate in Dorchester between Wu and Essaibi George.
“These two candidates are younger,” Greenidge said. “But I think there’s some older structures that have to be addressed. Both have to make sure that there are resources on the table for people looking at the quality of life issues, why they should stay here [Boston] and be around here.”
...
In light of the changing political leadership, GBH News asked the Black former residents of Boston in Atlanta if they would consider returning to Boston, permanently.
“No. I don’t even have to think about that,” said Sims Holliman, citing successive Black leadership in Atlanta and the seemingly interminable racial battles over Boston exam school admissions as two examples. Her daughter, now 24, received an excellent public school education she deserved but may have been difficult to obtain in Boston, said Sims Holliman.
“I’m used to my mayor being Black. I’ve gotten used to my daughter graduating from a math science magnet school here," she explained. "There’s just a difference. Here there are certain battles you don’t have to fight.”
Greenidge said Atlanta’s nightlife provides a freedom a Black person could only hope for in Boston.
“Oh, it's amazing, totally amazing!" he said. "Atlanta, every night, there's somewhere to go hundreds of places where African Americans are in charge of the nightlife. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Atlanta is open.”
Scarborough, who does internal communications for the City of Atlanta, said Atlanta is home and he is there to stay. “I’m not moving again,” he declared.
Nor is Wells, who described going back to Boston as “a step backwards,” no matter who becomes the next mayor. “Not many opportunities for me there,” he added.
...
“I don’t want it to feel that Atlanta is this idyllic metropolis full of Blackness,” Wells said. “Although it has the outward appearance of being Black, it’s still controlled by central pocketbooks of the biggest tax base. It’s a chocolate city on the outside, but it’s very much got a vanilla center.”
Still, in Atlanta, Wells and other former Bostonians said they feel more cushioned from racism’s impact and take comfort in the thought that they can travel comfortably anywhere they please in the city.
They believe the same cannot be said about Boston, despite the fading of rigid neighborhood boundaries and the city’s changing political leadership.
The thing is though I drive uber on the side. From an economic and sociological perspective, it's great I actually bought a car specifically to do that again after having not drove for a long time. As you know I have a WFH job in Boston.
Whites (well mostly racist whites) will try to gaslight you into thinking what you've earned is what you been given. A mechanism to legitimize workplace or school discrimination. This is one of many many forms of covert racism which obviously dont fool black people but are supposed to shield you from direct criticism. The issue you have with me is I just dont play that game. Because-why would I?
I wasn't aware of your WFH job in Boston. And I don't have an issue with you.
I'm not saying what you rant about is wrong. I'm just saying that it's dominating your life and holding you back.
I wasn't aware of your WFH job in Boston. And I don't have an issue with you.
I'm not saying what you rant about is wrong. I'm just saying that it's dominating your life and holding you back.
that is mightily presumptuous and arrogant of you. If me being active on this site is holding me back (lol) then whats it do for you? Who posts far more frequently (per day) than I do. Dont check me, check the air quality...
Holding me back- you don't even know what my goals are let alone my material possesions, income , family life, etc. etc.
I don't go to any non-hip-hop clubs in Boston the ones that exist are VERY good- like VERY good! I (and others I know) prefer them over DC and Baltimore.
But they are few. I'm not in the right demographic or into non-hip hop music so I cant speak to this but this is also a part of what Chip Greenidge was talking about in the previous article I posted.
That same Atlanta that's so great, part of it is about to secede?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade
^A huge leap to pick ATL to compare to as its the Black Oasis...but aside from you alls terrible opinions on the Harvard Crimson girl. This article was written by a black native Detroiter in Philip Martin and it basically dives into what people don't like about Boston. Jenee Osterhedlt (Kansas City native) at Renee Graham (NY native) say the same thing.
Basically, you have a very very satisfied white metropolitan population that doesn't want to change anything to better accommodate black people. Which include just about every single person in this thread on both side of the issue. Other than me.
The fundamental resistance to electing candidates black people prefer and making room for things black people like to do is a major issue. In Boston, the white people are so content they really dont understand why other people arent as glib. Which is....bizarre more than anything else. Naturally someone here will cry about this but everyone knows this to be true.
My brother now living in NY said in Boston its like "white people are up here and everyone else is down here." Not that "down here" is a bad place- its just, nothing special. But you've go to pay "up here" prices for it.
that is mightily presumptuous and arrogant of you. If me being active on this site is holding me back (lol) then whats it do for you? Who posts far more frequently (per day) than I do. Dont check me, check the air quality...
Holding me back- you don't even know what my goals are let alone my material possesions, income , family life, etc. etc.
It's not so much about being active on a forum. It's that you've allowed the color of your skin to consume you as well as define you. It's not productive and it's holding you back.
You're a smart guy, but you're not making smart decisions.
Or maybe, just maybe, those places don't want to end up on the news with a headline containing "multiple people shot?" Because every time that headlines pops up, there's a 99 out of 100 chance it happened on a hip-hop night.
I don't go to any non-hip-hop clubs in Boston the ones that exist are VERY good- like VERY good! I (and others I know) prefer them over DC and Baltimore.
But they are few. I'm not in the right demographic or into non-hip hop music so I cant speak to this but this is also a part of what Chip Greenidge was talking about in the previous article I posted.
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