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Someone posted on here about a street mentality, in the suburbs. Seems to have been deleted by the author; for whatever reason I can't find it.
There's seems to be some confusion about mentality, and wanting to be rachet, and actually being the streets, wherever those streets may be. Used to be that the "streets" was a pejorative for the inner city. That is no longer the case. With a lot of Blacks getting priced out of the inner city, and the neighborhoods that were created out of that experience moving to suburbia; primarily inner ring but in some cases even further out, one has to look at things differently. I think that some honestly believe that the same drug activity does not exist out in the suburbs, and that none of the suburbs experience violent activity. This notion should have went away a long time ago, with how things are out in Compton. Millennials that weren't around then should have learned it in their own time with Ferguson. I honestly do not know why that stereotypical assumption about suburbia continues to persist.
I wish I had responded to it, but now is my opportunity.
I grew up in the exurbs of metro Atlanta. That ratchet-wannabe mentality is something I frequently saw. Looking back. Not much of a difference between the redneck culture in my high school and the ghetto/ratchet culture. At first that culture was in the inner ring suburbs like Marietta, College Park,etc. In the 2000s it hit places like Paulding County and Douglas County.
I remember when "the streets" was considered a bad thing. The 90s in my case. My father grew up in the inner city. For him, the streets weren't cool, it was just some fact of life. Not a nice one, but a fact of life nonetheless.
Middle school is when I had to face alot of things. I find it ironic that the first time I ever saw alot of kids wear baggy pants(and sagging them too) was in a 90-95% White middle school. It was mostly the skateboarders doing this. Eventually more Blacks students would move to where I lived. I soon found out how pervasive the baggy pants were. My father basically said that such a style came from the poor inner city kids, and from prison.
Fast forward to age 14. I'm watching the music video of "Big Pimpin" by Jay-Z. My father then told me what a pimp was. I never heard that word in my life. I look back and consider alot of ironies. Preppy White kids knew more about Jay-Z and Juvenile than I did. My father basically made sure his kids didn't take on that "street" persona. He didn't play rap music on the radio. The one time he did, he gave me a lecture of what said songs meant.
Atlanta is getting pricey, and some of the inner ring areas are experiencing gentrification too. With SunTrust Park having opened up in Cobb County, rents have gone up rapidly in many places. Some of that "street" mentality is going further and further out. In some places, like Paulding County, the drugs were always there. Meth is big out there. Opiods too. Cocaine.
That thug-wannabe mentality was something I could never really pull off. And the deeper into my teenage years I got, the more ridiculous it looked to me. What I understood was "these guys are crazy. Eventually I'm getting away from these nutcases".
That's what you keep saying. But if that's what any young black woman really believes about black men, then clearly her logical personal decision should be either to look elsewhere or be content to be alone.
There's no point to being alone and kvetching about it.
I don't understand why you continue to couch my comments into posts about the romantic relations between black men and black women. That was not my point. Again, running off to get a non-black partner does not change dysfunctional manner in which black men and black women relate to each other. And having a non-black partner does not mean that one has divested from the black community.
Each and every time issues regarding black women are brought up in this thread it goes COMPLETELY silent and those posts get ignored. Yet issues that predominantly affect black men are hotly discussed and debated. If NONE of you see the problem with this then we may as well call it a wrap on the black community.
Black men want black women to help fight (anti-black male) racism yet will not help black women fight (or even acknowledge) misogyny.
I don't understand why you continue to couch my comments into posts about the romantic relations between black men and black women. That was not my point. Again, running off to get a non-black partner does not change dysfunctional manner in which black men and black women relate to each other. And having a non-black partner does not mean that one has divested from the black community.
Each and every time issues regarding black women are brought up in this thread it goes COMPLETELY silent and those posts get ignored. Yet issues that predominantly affect black men are hotly discussed and debated. If NONE of you see the problem with this then we may as well call it a wrap on the black community.
First, as I've said in other places, the "black community" is already a dead man walking. It won't last more than another generation beyond the death of the last generation born into apartheid (mine, us Boomers). Any neighborhood that is still monochrome 25 years from now will be a neighborhood on the decline. Raising children in such a neighborhood will be doing them a disservice for their own futures.
And that is what we have always wanted. That is what we marched and fought for. That is the natural outcome of dreaming of a day when we are judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
Quote:
Black men want black women to help fight (anti-black male) racism yet will not help black women fight (or even acknowledge) misogyny.
You keep saying that, but there is nothing we men in thread can say that will make you feel better.
I wish I had responded to it, but now is my opportunity.
I grew up in the exurbs of metro Atlanta. That ratchet-wannabe mentality is something I frequently saw. Looking back. Not much of a difference between the redneck culture in my high school and the ghetto/ratchet culture. At first that culture was in the inner ring suburbs like Marietta, College Park,etc. In the 2000s it hit places like Paulding County and Douglas County.
I remember when "the streets" was considered a bad thing. The 90s in my case. My father grew up in the inner city. For him, the streets weren't cool, it was just some fact of life. Not a nice one, but a fact of life nonetheless.
Middle school is when I had to face alot of things. I find it ironic that the first time I ever saw alot of kids wear baggy pants(and sagging them too) was in a 90-95% White middle school. It was mostly the skateboarders doing this. Eventually more Blacks students would move to where I lived. I soon found out how pervasive the baggy pants were. My father basically said that such a style came from the poor inner city kids, and from prison.
Fast forward to age 14. I'm watching the music video of "Big Pimpin" by Jay-Z. My father then told me what a pimp was. I never heard that word in my life. I look back and consider alot of ironies. Preppy White kids knew more about Jay-Z and Juvenile than I did. My father basically made sure his kids didn't take on that "street" persona. He didn't play rap music on the radio. The one time he did, he gave me a lecture of what said songs meant.
Atlanta is getting pricey, and some of the inner ring areas are experiencing gentrification too. With SunTrust Park having opened up in Cobb County, rents have gone up rapidly in many places. Some of that "street" mentality is going further and further out. In some places, like Paulding County, the drugs were always there. Meth is big out there. Opiods too. Cocaine.
That thug-wannabe mentality was something I could never really pull off. And the deeper into my teenage years I got, the more ridiculous it looked to me. What I understood was "these guys are crazy. Eventually I'm getting away from these nutcases".
It is what it is. Part of that is the dumbing down of America, particularly BET and other media outlets but also the Internet. The other part of that is a change in economics. Atlanta has an enormous metropolitan area and there are vestiges of the cities culture in all of those counties but at the same time there are a lot of impoverished counties with serious issues, and what you're seeing are symptoms of deeper issues there. Just because they are part of the CSA does not mean that they are all created equal. Not to mention that there is still a lot of poverty directly in Atlanta, in spite of prices increasing there. The extent to how far out from the cities center people are going to move is over overestimated; some people just do not leave, no matter how bad it gets.
This is a dangerous period, but the danger has an endpoint: You have to wait for us Boomers to die. As I've described before, my generation was born into a segregated society that younger people really don't understand--it was really very, very alien from what you were born into. But it was inculcated into us Boomers, and as a generation we haven't and can't shake it. We will take Jim Crow into our graves.
But the Boomer generation is still running this society, and right now the segregation impulse in my generation is doing a last-gasp death lunge. Yes, it's a dangerous window we're now in. It's why the John L Lewis' and Mike Pences of my generation will be locked in a death battle until we are dead.
But your generation has, as Dave Chappelle has quipped, "the best white people we've ever had."
I'm not pretending there aren't some Dylann Roofs around, but there really is a universe of difference between Boomers and Millennials, and that difference should inform how you handle what remains.
What you say is certainly realistic based upon the trends of the way things are going. However, keep in mind the old adage "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Ergo, its a double edge sword that Millennials are indifferent about race due to many of them not really knowing and understanding this nations racial history. Not only don't a lot of white kids know, many blacks kids don't know....or don't care.
The problem is that if you do not know history....you cannot explain the present. The present is the creation of the past and not knowing the past handicaps your ability to decipher the present. Hence, regardless of how Millenials are not racist or as racist as their antecedents, the aftermath of centuries of racial oppression still stains blacks as a collective. Young blacks are still impacted by the legacy of past racism, as well as, the racism of Baby Boomer whites today.
Lets say there is a person across the street waving and flinging their arms about wildly and looking eradicate because they just walked through a swarm of gnats. For people who cannot see the gnats nor have ever walked through a swam of gnats to empathize, the person is acting crazy. To a lot of people, black people are "acting crazy" because they cannot see what is responsible for blacks behaving the way they do. The consequences of history are the "gnats" shaping black behavior and if you do not know, respect or care about the history.....black people just look crazy (or lazy, or irresponsible, etc). However, blacks EVOLVED into this condition through the continuum of actions begetting reactions over time.
The danger is in how the Millenial mind reconciles the condition and behavior of blacks. There is an old saying concerning politics that goes something like this. "If you are not a liberal at 20 then you have no heart and if you are not a conservative at 40 then you have no brain". Hence, it's trendy for young whites to have friends and relationships of all different races. The question is what happens when they get 40 and are taking life more seriously? Again, how does their minds process higher rates of poverty, homicides, unemployment, welfare, etc, once they start worrying about their taxes, mortgages, retirement, their family and kids, the school district, etc? Right now, Millenials are looking for fun and entertainment and blacks fit favorably into that mix.
Its important to note that racism is not how you feel about an individual that you know, but rather, how you see the group of collective that you don't know (and hence make assumptions about). The fact that you know or have black friends and or relationships and have fully accepted this black person as your equal, if not superior, does not mean that such is how you feel about blacks in general. The fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division needs to be employed. In other words, its a fallacy to assume that just because a person has friends of other races or date people of other races, that they do not hold negative views about the WHOLE for another race, notwithstanding.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 06-14-2017 at 07:35 AM..
First, as I've said in other places, the "black community" is already a dead man walking. It won't last more than another generation beyond the death of the last generation born into apartheid (mine, us Boomers). Any neighborhood that is still monochrome 25 years from now will be a neighborhood on the decline. Raising children in such a neighborhood will be doing them a disservice for their own futures.
And that is what we have always wanted. That is what we marched and fought for. That is the natural outcome of dreaming of a day when we are judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
You keep saying that, but there is nothing we men in thread can say that will make you feel better.
It truly is not about making me "feel better" it is acknowledging the double standard that black American men have regarding their concerns. You posted pics of black MEN being lynched because you wanted to garner sympathy for the points that you were making in this thread. Yet many black men have no sympathy or empathy for black women. Black men want the larger society to give them their rights and to protect their freedoms yet many of these same men do to black women EXACTLY what they claim the white man is doing to them.
"Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble." - Miss Celie
It truly is not about making me "feel better" it is acknowledging the double standard that black American men have regarding their concerns. You posted pics of black MEN being lynched because you wanted to garner sympathy for the points that you were making in this thread.
The point I was making was that whites were open and casual about killing blacks during my father's generation.
I was not making an effort to avoid using a picture of a lynched black woman, which apparently you think I did deliberately. I simply could not find a picture of a lynched black woman with a bunch of whites in clear approval.
Quote:
Yet many black men have no sympathy or empathy for black women. Black men want the larger society to give them their rights and to protect their freedoms yet many of these same men do to black women EXACTLY what they claim the white man is doing to them.
You're right. What else do you want me to say about that? I've tried to open discussions to dissect how and why many black men are like that--and a lot of it does have to do with the effect of what white people have done and continue to do--but you only keep saying the same thing, as though I'm speaking in a vacuum.
You won't go any further in discussion beyond iterations of "Black men are misogynous."
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 06-14-2017 at 08:22 AM..
What you say is certainly realistic based upon the trends of the way things are going. However, keep in mind the old adage "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Ergo, its a double edge sword that Millennials are indifferent about race due to many of them not really knowing and understanding this nations racial history. Not only don't a lot of white kids know, many blacks kids don't know....or don't care.
The problem is that if you do not know history....you cannot explain the present. The present is the creation of the past and not knowing the past handicaps your ability to decipher the present. Hence, regardless of how Millenials are not racist or as racist as their antecedents, the aftermath of centuries of racial oppression still stains blacks as a collective. Young blacks are still impacted by the legacy of past racism, as well as, the racism of Baby Boomer whites today.
Lets say there is a person across the street waving and flinging their arms about wildly and looking eradicate because they just walked through a swarm of gnats. For people who cannot see the gnats nor have ever walked through a swam of gnats to empathize, the person is acting crazy. To a lot of people, black people are "acting crazy" because they cannot see what is responsible for blacks behaving the way they do. The consequences of history are the "gnats" shaping black behavior and if you do not know, respect or care about the history.....black people just look crazy (or lazy, or irresponsible, etc). However, blacks EVOLVED into this condition through the continuum of actions begetting reactions over time.
The danger is in how the Millenial mind reconciles the condition and behavior of blacks. There is an old saying concerning politics that goes something like this. "If you are not a liberal at 20 then you have no heart and if you are not a conservative at 40 then you have no brain". Hence, it's trendy for young whites to have friends and relationships of all different races. The question is what happens when they get 40 and are taking life more seriously? Again, how does their minds process higher rates of poverty, homicides, unemployment, welfare, etc, once they start worrying about their taxes, mortgages, retirement, their family and kids, the school district, etc? Right now, Millenials are looking for fun and entertainment and blacks fit favorably into that mix.
Its important to note that racism is not how you feel about an individual that you know, but rather, how you see the group of collective that you don't know (and hence make assumptions about). The fact that you know or have black friends and or relationships and have fully accepted this black person as your equal, if not superior, does not mean that such is how you feel about blacks in general. The fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division needs to be employed. In other words, its a fallacy to assume that just because a person has friends of other races or date people of other races, that they do not hold negative views about the WHOLE for another race, notwithstanding.
Yes, that's a point.
That's why I get bugged about politically correct "period" movies and television programs depicting a racially rosey past with black people in places and doing things they were never permitted in history.
I'm not sure of what a good strategy for that might be for black Millennials in 20 years.
One huge factor will be something of a shift in power to other ethnic groups. No other non-European ethnic group gives a fig about the history of black and white in America, and they certainly feel no responsibility for it. These people were a negligible factor 50 years ago--they're not negligible today.
As I mentioned earlier, the old-school African-American culture (my culture, my father's culture, Martin Luther King's culture), in every way it was noble was in reaction to the ignobility of de jure and de facto institutionalized racism. I don't think that culture can survive without such institutionalized racism, and I don't think the MLK African-American culture will survive beyond the X-generation.
My big point is that America turned a pivotal point in the 60s (the roots of which can actually be found in the ovens of Buchenwald and Auschwitz). Even though it's going to take another 25 years--when we Boomers are dead--black Millennials will really be in a very different America in a lot of ways. They won't be able to dance to the old beats, and that includes identifying oneself primarily by one's race.
Will those older white Millennials at that time be able to do that? As a black Boomer, I have very little faith in the ability of whites in general not to lump us all together (yeah, I know exceptions myself, such as my old college roommate, who is still a liberal white guy). But I can't make that generalization about whether white Millennials will share that mindset.
In my generation, whites had not been raised as children around blacks, so the idea that "people are just people" was not inculcated into them.
There was an MRI-based study a number of years ago which determined that white people simply didn't see blacks as "people." Their brains did not respond with the "that's a person" reaction seeing a picture of a black person as it did seeing a picture of a white person. But this was clearly a matter of nurture, because whites did have a "that's a person" brain reaction seeing a picture of a well-known popular black person, such as Michael Jordan. But how would that study work on white Millennials?
That's why I get bugged about politically correct "period" movies and television programs depicting a racially rosey past with black people in places and doing things they were never permitted in history.
I'm not sure of what a good strategy for that might be for black Millennials in 20 years.
One huge factor will be something of a shift in power to other ethnic groups. No other non-European ethnic group gives a fig about the history of black and white in America, and they certainly feel no responsibility for it. These people were a negligible factor 50 years ago--they're not negligible today.
As I mentioned earlier, the old-school African-American culture (my culture, my father's culture, Martin Luther King's culture), in every way it was noble was in reaction to the ignobility of de jure and de facto institutionalized racism. I don't think that culture can survive without such institutionalized racism, and I don't think the MLK African-American culture will survive beyond the X-generation.
My big point is that America turned a pivotal point in the 60s (the roots of which can actually be found in the ovens of Buchenwald and Auschwitz). Even though it's going to take another 25 years--when we Boomers are dead--black Millennials will really be in a very different America in a lot of ways. They won't be able to dance to the old beats, and that includes identifying oneself primarily by one's race.
Will those older white Millennials at that time be able to do that? As a black Boomer, I have very little faith in the ability of whites in general not to lump us all together (yeah, I know exceptions myself, such as my old college roommate, who is still a liberal white guy). But I can't make that generalization about whether white Millennials will share that mindset.
In my generation, whites had not been raised as children around blacks, so the idea that "people are just people" was not inculcated into them.
There was an MRI-based study a number of years ago which determined that white people simply didn't see blacks as "people." Their brains did not respond with the "that's a person" reaction seeing a picture of a black person as it did seeing a picture of a white person. But this was clearly a matter of nurture, because whites did have a "that's a person" brain reaction seeing a picture of a well-known popular black person, such as Michael Jordan. But how would that study work on white Millennials?
I am not even sure that the "system" as we know it now....can survive 25 more years. Our political and economic construct are archaic. If we continue with the two party system construct......it's going to implode. Our economic model is not sustainable either. Soon automation will replace millions of jobs. Issues of blacks or the era where issues of blacks got attention are long gone and the tolerance for listening to them is reduced each year, notwithstanding that our real issues persist. Things will be radically different in 20 years. Things will not be as they were for most people.....the million dollar question is whether things will be better or worse.
It is what it is. Part of that is the dumbing down of America, particularly BET and other media outlets but also the Internet. The other part of that is a change in economics. Atlanta has an enormous metropolitan area and there are vestiges of the cities culture in all of those counties but at the same time there are a lot of impoverished counties with serious issues, and what you're seeing are symptoms of deeper issues there. Just because they are part of the CSA does not mean that they are all created equal. Not to mention that there is still a lot of poverty directly in Atlanta, in spite of prices increasing there. The extent to how far out from the cities center people are going to move is over overestimated; some people just do not leave, no matter how bad it gets.
I haven't BET in years. In fact, I've seldom watched it. I actually watched TVOne more. As for the dumbing down of America, I feel like there has always been a "dumbing" factor in this country. However, that dumbing factor just sells alot more. The Three Stooges is one example.
Atlanta metropolitan area is huge. 5.5 million people. The state of Georgia has 10 million people. The Atlanta area has alot of good things in it. Go to Marietta Square, Cumberland area(where the Braves now play), Decatur city, Buckhead, Midtown, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Duluth, Kennesaw,etc. You can go hiking in a national park within 30 minutes of downtown Atlanta(Kennesaw Mountain). And then you have bad areas, like Adamsville(MLK Drive goes through there), parts of South Cobb County, South Fulton, Clayton County, parts of Douglas County, and then there are some trashy areas within a few miles of really nice areas.
Atlanta is gentrifying like crazy. And even some inner ring suburbs(like Marietta and Smyna) are gentrifying. Before, the "hood" spilled into the inner ring suburbs. Now it's going to the outer ring suburbs. But then, a few of these areas had their own versions of "hood".
Example: A few years ago I found some public housing that I never knew existed. It was literally down the street from a grocery store. Better yet, my high school was interesting. My high school was next to cow pasture. And yet, there was a low end apartment complex and a liquor store within walking distance. For for years I didn't know there was a drug dealer in my school. I also didn't know that there were kids in my school who had that "street life" about them. Never knew it. I wasn't looking for it and and I didn't know where to look. Me thinks some kids who moved to the area still had ties to where they once lived. At one point a drug dealer moved next door to me. Never knew he was one. My father, however, knew what to spot. My father being from the inner city knew the signs.
Down the street from my subdivision, you can find trailer parks, run down houses, and possibly some meth. If you're not looking for it, you won't notice alot of it.
I will say this. In the inner city, predominantly Black areas, these have traditionally been crowded urban areas. The drugs and blight are in your face. Or as in your face as it can get in Atlanta. In the rural areas, the drugs are easier to hide, and are less noticeable. And this takes me into something else. Metro Atlanta is very spread out. It's not like being in NYC metro or Chicagoland where it's more crowded. Atlanta metro, despite a decent size population, is less dense than many places.
And then there is Atlanta's nickname: City In A Forest. Fly over Atlanta and you will see something like a forest. Alot of trees everywhere. You'll have blighted areas surrounded by trees. In some cases, you can drive past an area with alot of crime, and if you've never been to Atlanta, you would have not known. The further out you live, the easier it is to hide the drug problems, the economic problems, and other issues.
As for economics, I will tell you this. I checked the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state of Georgia has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Many people come to Atlanta thinking they might find a job. It's not what it used to be. Metro Atlanta's heyday was in the late 1990s to the mid 2000s.
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