Racism in Georgia (Jackson, White, Between: crime rates, safe neighborhoods, construction)

[Ann2007]

I’d like to make a comment about the perspective from one white person. I lived in Los Angeles almost all my life. I didn’t think about race much at all, when I was young my various roommates included what I used to call the United Nations, White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, never thought twice about it.

But when Los Angeles changed over the last 25 years I saw firsthand what happens when a white majority population changes to a non-white majority demographic with the accompanying high crime statistics, graffiti, gang shootings, etc. I made a decision to try to move to cities and towns that have a high white population and will continue to do that for the rest of my life. That’s what brought me to this website and others like it.

As I said race was never an issue until I saw for myself how important the racial makeup of a city really is. It’s a sad commentary on the changes in America. It’s as if the people whose ancestors have come from regions in Africa, Mexico, South America, etc. seem to bring the same inherent problems of those countries with them. I don’t know why that happens but it does. Not all of course, but enough of a percentage where it materially impacts the quality of life of those towns and cities where they reside in high numbers.

I think the term racism is not really accurate, I think a term such as behaviorism is more appropriate. I’m looking to live around people who have similar behavior as myself. What I saw in Los Angeles was a city that changed its behavior and changed for the worst and I finally left my hometown and “fled” to another city.

I don’t know what the solution is. But at least I can try to stay safe by looking at racial and crime statistics and going where I feel the most secure. I think Prichard makes an excellent point about what would be the logical reason for someone to want to live in a predominately non-white part of town. The benefits of fleeing such a place outweigh any kind of disadvantage that I can see. And his other point that there are not “excuses” for white flight but “reasons” is also true. Until we can honestly address the reasons why people feel this way the solutions will never be found.

Also, in the next post I’m going to include an excellent article on the subject of reparations. I learned quite a few things that I hadn’t known and thought I would pass it along.

[Ann2007]

Reparations have already been paid through trillions of dollars of transfer payments to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences. African-Americans need to stop self-destructive behavior if they want to improve their lives.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp?ID=1153

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too

By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2001

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One

There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery

Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

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Two

There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.

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Three

Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them

Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?

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Four

America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery

The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?

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Five

The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury

The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?

[Ann2007]

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE POST:


Six

The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination

No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?

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Seven

The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.

The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?

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Eight

Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?

[Ann2007]

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE POST:


Nine

What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?

Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

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Ten

The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom

Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.

For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.

America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

[backfist]

This might be a good point to get back to the subject of White Flight in Georgia; specifically in metro Atlanta and its inner and outer suburbs, exurbs, etc.

Clearly, there are folks who believe in it, and seek to justify that belief by the conclusion that most Black people are either criminals or on their way to such a life. Others have clearly stated that White Flight began decades before crime and immorality became the contemporary scourge of Black America--the premise being that White Flight is no less immoral today than it was 40 years ago. One thing's for sure: it will continue, and it will continue to divide society if each person doesn't take individual responsibility for their role in it.

[Ann2007]

Until the following reality changes, white flight will never change. Most likely it will accelerate. The following zip codes were picked at random from another statistical site to show the difference in race and crime rates. As I said I don’t know what the solution is, but people will do what they can to try and feel safe.

The crime index is measured against 100 which is the national average.


ATLANTA, Georgia 30303
Population--------------4,249
White-------------------22.28%
Hispanic-----------------9.27%
African American--------72.72%
Total Crime Index-------591

BOWERSVILLE, Georgia 30516
Population--------------2,021
White-------------------90.95%
Hispanic-----------------0.94%
African American---------8.35%
Total Crime Index-------20

[GP2]

Great post Ann....So true...

Actually, you can go to Sudan right NOW and a black man will sell you a black slave....wonder who they`ll want money from in a couple of hundred years....

[backfist]

... and I could show you crime stats from Cartersville, GA; Boise, ID; or Cheyenne, WY; all places were white people are in the majority and were crime is 10x higher than in "Bowersville".

Your premise is fatally flawed, and certainly not based on any 'reality'.

[Ann2007]

Well, when it comes to predominately white Boise vs. predominately black Atlanta, the numbers speak for themselves. Instead of being angry about white flight, turn that anger towards the people that are causing the problems and the high crime rates and start to pressure them to change their behavior. At least the crime rate in Atlanta is coming down, so that’s a good sign.


Boise, ID
City-data.com crime index (higher means more crime, U.S. average = 325.2)

Year 2000 - 276.9
Year 2001 - 291.1
Year 2002 - 296.8
Year 2003 - 293.2
Year 2004 - 286.3
Year 2005 - 294.0

Atlanta, GA
City-data.com crime index (higher means more crime, U.S. average = 325.2)

Year 1999 - 1236.9
Year 2000 - 1257.9
Year 2001 - 1195.5
Year 2002 - 1131.4
Year 2003 - 1033.5
Year 2004 - 912.0
Year 2005 - 847.8

[GP2]

Backfist...LOL...I love the way you pick and choose what to comment on...LOL...She listed 10 reasons up there why reparations shouldnt be given...you mean you dont have a response to the real truth, not just as you see it? It really doesnt matter...you have your views and are totally entitled to it.
Oh and Ann...I think those numbers for Atlanta are probably wrong...Atlanta has admitted to underreporting crime....so its probably WAY higher.

Someone mentioned Paula Zahns show...did anyone see Hannity`s piece on that idiotic black professor from NC State who said all white people must die?? Wonder how that would have flown over if a white guy said it...Hell, they all but hung that guy from Seinfield for using the N word, and here this guy is calling for the deaths of ALL white people to the CHEERS of members of the Black Media Association and nothing gets said.....and white folks are suppose to do what to "fix" that Blackfish? Nevermind...dont even try to answer that...