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Old 06-14-2017, 11:34 AM
 
13,806 posts, read 9,667,651 times
Reputation: 5243

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Quote:
Originally Posted by green_mariner View Post
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.
Atlanta is one of those areas where the vast majority of homicides do not take place in the city proper. Up North this is virtually unheard of. Granted, the city of Atlanta proper is only like 10% of the metro population, but this does not explain that. What explains it is that blacks and their condition exists in high numbers outside the principle cities in the south. Blacks traditionally lived in rural areas in the south and as metro areas grew many of these areas became part of metro areas. Up north, blacks are traditionally urban. Thirty years ago when you left the major principle cities....you would hardly see any black people. Go to the country and forget it.....you are not going to see black folks. Down south black folks were everywhere....city and country. Today I still find myself taking note of black people who live in the exurbs as something that is noteworthy.

Is there anyplace that is not rapidly gentrifying? Wow.....its funny how these things become national trends and not just local. You know its really popping off when even DETROIT is gentrifying....lol.

 
Old 06-14-2017, 12:59 PM
 
72,847 posts, read 62,306,314 times
Reputation: 21798
Quote:
Originally Posted by Indentured Servant View Post
Atlanta is one of those areas where the vast majority of homicides do not take place in the city proper. Up North this is virtually unheard of. Granted, the city of Atlanta proper is only like 10% of the metro population, but this does not explain that. What explains it is that blacks and their condition exists in high numbers outside the principle cities in the south. Blacks traditionally lived in rural areas in the south and as metro areas grew many of these areas became part of metro areas. Up north, blacks are traditionally urban. Thirty years ago when you left the major principle cities....you would hardly see any black people. Go to the country and forget it.....you are not going to see black folks. Down south black folks were everywhere....city and country. Today I still find myself taking note of black people who live in the exurbs as something that is noteworthy.

Is there anyplace that is not rapidly gentrifying? Wow.....its funny how these things become national trends and not just local. You know its really popping off when even DETROIT is gentrifying....lol.
Metro Atlanta used to have the majority of the metro's homicides. As suburbanization took place, that changed. Most of rural, predominantly Black areas in Georgia are further South, in the traditional cotton belt region. Something else I would like to point out. Atlanta actually has a higher percentage of Blacks than St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Kansas City, DC. And yet, those cities have a higher murder rate than Atlanta does. Newark,NJ has about the same concentration of Blacks as Atlanta, but Newark has a markedly higher murder rate, and more blight

Black rural areas tend to be concentrations in the lowland regions of the South, places where the cotton belt was. Go out to rural northern Georgia, you might not see any Blacks in alot of places. Mountains of North Carolina, very few Blacks around outside of Asheville.

As for metro Atlanta, this is how things evolved. Alot of suburban/exurban areas that have sizable black populations now had very few, if any Blacks as late as the 1980s. Clayton County is a big example. In 1980, the county's population was 91% White. By 2000, it was 51.5% Black. Cobb County was a major White flight county during the 1950s and 60s. Today it's close to 40% minority. Douglas County was 90% White into the 1990. Today it's around 45% Black. Douglasville as a city is majority Black.

I moved to Paulding County in the late 1990s. Very few Blacks living there. It had a very large "redneck" element to it. It was rural. As soon as people found out they could get a house built for cheaper than Cobb County, the population increased rapidly. The drugs were out there than, and they're out there now. One reason that it was kept under the rug was the local paper. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution will mention drug busts. Where I live, the local paper had a policy of not publishing that stuff. And being in a spread out area where there is still cow pasture and trailer parks, it's easy to hide drugs. Low Black population didn't mean no drugs or no crime. Alot of areas seeing increases in drug use and crime were traditionally the "redneck" areas. Many of these areas also have issues with meth. Many have had issues for years.

Gentrification is all over. I remember when Marietta was sketchier. Marietta Square has become a well loved hangout. Smyrna is seeing gentrification. Kennesaw city limits is even seeing somewhat of face lift with Kennesaw State University building new student housing. At one time, Downtown Kennesaw was basically nothing. With more emphasis on building up the downtown areas, some places are seeing gentrification. In the whole suburban rush, some small towns saw their downtown areas decline and shopping centers became the new thing.
 
Old 06-14-2017, 08:27 PM
 
Location: La lune et les étoiles
18,258 posts, read 22,480,278 times
Reputation: 19593
Thank you for responding to my posts.


The lack of interest in discussing issues which affect black women actually IS the answer to my question.


The concerns of the black community = the concerns of black men and black men only


Earlier in this thread I posted regarding if black men were supportive of black women and the resounding answer from black men was no.


I hope that black women young and old will take the time to really read through this thread. Read it without agenda or allegiance. Read the comments as they pertain to black women. And observe how many times they stepped right over a black woman's body to discuss their own concerns and issues. Read it all.


Black women are the ONLY group that can collectively be viewed as an ally to black men yet black women have no reciprocity.

Let the scales fall away from our eyes.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
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.




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."
 
Old 06-14-2017, 09:52 PM
 
28,617 posts, read 18,654,300 times
Reputation: 30889
Quote:
Originally Posted by calipoppy View Post
Thank you for responding to my posts.


The lack of interest in discussing issues which affect black women actually IS the answer to my question.
So state one of those issues again and let's see.

But if your only statement is "Black men suck," then there is nothing about that to discuss.

Quote:
The concerns of the black community = the concerns of black men and black men only
Are you stating that as a fact or are you saying it's someone else's opinion?


Quote:
Earlier in this thread I posted regarding if black men were supportive of black women and the resounding answer from black men was no.
Did you ask the question exactly like that and actually get "no" for an answer? Or is that your interpretation of what you asked and the answer you got?

Quote:
I hope that black women young and old will take the time to really read through this thread. Read it without agenda or allegiance. Read the comments as they pertain to black women. And observe how many times they stepped right over a black woman's body to discuss their own concerns and issues. Read it all.
A lot of drama there. "Stepped right over a black woman's body," indeed.

Black women are the ONLY group that can collectively be viewed as an ally to black men yet black women have no reciprocity.

Let the scales fall away from our eyes.[/quote]

So what is actually your goal? For black women to reject black men? Yet you also rejected the idea of black women marrying out.

So what is your goal? What do you want black women to do once the scales have fallen from their eyes?
 
Old 06-15-2017, 05:43 PM
 
Location: La lune et les étoiles
18,258 posts, read 22,480,278 times
Reputation: 19593
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
So state one of those issues again and let's see.

But if your only statement is "Black men suck," then there is nothing about that to discuss.

Perhaps I will post another question related to black women's issues. But I was honestly disappointed in some of the comments from the previous attempt.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
Are you stating that as a fact or are you saying it's someone else's opinion??

The black community has always been black male centric but there has been a rise of blatant meanness and disrespect towards black women that must be addressed. This is my opinion as well as the opinion of many black women.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
So what is actually your goal? For black women to reject black men? Yet you also rejected the idea of black women marrying out.

I never stated that black women should reject black men. I also never stated that black women should not marry out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
So what is your goal? What do you want black women to do once the scales have fallen from their eyes?
I do not understand why asking black men to be invested in the concerns and issues of black women is so difficult. How are black men able to ask black women to care about black men being murdered by the police yet these same black men do not care that black women are murdered at twice the rate of white women or that 1 in 4 black women will be raped in her lifetime?


Is it too much to ask of black men to support black women?
 
Old 06-15-2017, 06:07 PM
 
28,617 posts, read 18,654,300 times
Reputation: 30889
Quote:
Originally Posted by calipoppy View Post

Is it too much to ask of black men to support black women?
If there is going to be a "black community," that's going to have to be black men and black women mutually supporting one another to a common goal. Without a common goal, it's not going to happen. People headed in different directions do not support one another.

Define the common goal.
 
Old 06-15-2017, 06:20 PM
 
Location: La lune et les étoiles
18,258 posts, read 22,480,278 times
Reputation: 19593
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
If there is going to be a "black community," that's going to have to be black men and black women mutually supporting one another to a common goal. Without a common goal, it's not going to happen. People headed in different directions do not support one another.

Define the common goal.

I will defer to you, a black man, to define our common goals.
 
Old 06-16-2017, 09:13 AM
 
28,617 posts, read 18,654,300 times
Reputation: 30889
Quote:
Originally Posted by calipoppy View Post
I will defer to you, a black man, to define our common goals.
So that whatever I choose, you can somehow accuse me of ignoring something that you, as a black woman, consider important?


As I've pointed out a couple of times to you in this thread, black men and black women in America have been injured by slavery, oppression, and racism in this country. Whatever relationship we might have had with one another has been crutches by having an alien culture impressed upon us, and then being prohibited from fully achieving the white culture's ideals of being male and female. No black man can meet the white American ideal of masculinity, no black woman can meet the white American ideal of femininity, because meeting the gender ideals of white America requires, first, being white.


Black men and black women in America act in ways that are bandages and crutches, and--not realizing that we each have been injured--we blame each other for not meeting the white ideals. So we yank off each other's bandages and kick away each others crutches, and blame each other even more.


Genuine immigrant groups have come to this country bringing their own concepts of male and female with them. The Chinese came here knowing what it was to be Chinese men and Chinese women. To the extent they needed to adapt their gender ideals to America, they have done so--or not, but it has been their choosing and their ability to move with choice from one ideal to form a new ideal for themselves.


At this point, we black Americans don't even know what we ought to be for one another.


We have to take the time to evaluate where we are in this society, where we want to be, and what we have to be for one another to reach that goal. Then we have to do the hard work--as individuals and as a group--to determine our own race to run, and to hell with what white culture says we ought to be...because their culture requires, first, being white...and that's not going to happen for us.

Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 06-16-2017 at 09:42 AM..
 
Old 06-18-2017, 03:36 PM
 
Location: La lune et les étoiles
18,258 posts, read 22,480,278 times
Reputation: 19593
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
So that whatever I choose, you can somehow accuse me of ignoring something that you, as a black woman, consider important?


As I've pointed out a couple of times to you in this thread, black men and black women in America have been injured by slavery, oppression, and racism in this country. Whatever relationship we might have had with one another has been crutches by having an alien culture impressed upon us, and then being prohibited from fully achieving the white culture's ideals of being male and female. No black man can meet the white American ideal of masculinity, no black woman can meet the white American ideal of femininity, because meeting the gender ideals of white America requires, first, being white.


Black men and black women in America act in ways that are bandages and crutches, and--not realizing that we each have been injured--we blame each other for not meeting the white ideals. So we yank off each other's bandages and kick away each others crutches, and blame each other even more.


Genuine immigrant groups have come to this country bringing their own concepts of male and female with them. The Chinese came here knowing what it was to be Chinese men and Chinese women. To the extent they needed to adapt their gender ideals to America, they have done so--or not, but it has been their choosing and their ability to move with choice from one ideal to form a new ideal for themselves.


At this point, we black Americans don't even know what we ought to be for one another.


We have to take the time to evaluate where we are in this society, where we want to be, and what we have to be for one another to reach that goal. Then we have to do the hard work--as individuals and as a group--to determine our own race to run, and to hell with what white culture says we ought to be...because their culture requires, first, being white...and that's not going to happen for us.

If all of this is true then why keep up the façade of wanting to "build a community"? Let's just be honest and say that black men have no desire to build their own communities but they want to be squatters who reap the benefits of the hard work of other men. This is why black people (particularly black men) are treated like shat in this country; men respect other men who BUILD for their community.


Again, let's be honest....black men want what white men have but are not collectively willing to do the work to obtain it. And black women want what white women have which is the protection and support of their men.


Black men have used the advances if the Civil Rights Movement to simply become better squatters. And black women in turn had to use the advances of the CRM to step into the roles vacated by black men.


...but no one wants to talk about ANY of this...
 
Old 06-19-2017, 09:11 AM
 
16,212 posts, read 10,776,206 times
Reputation: 8442
Quote:
Originally Posted by goofy328 View Post
I have to disagree, respectfully. Blacks were more aware of their actions in the sixties and seventies because the ramifications of actions we take for granted today, could have gotten you killed back then, depending on the circumstances. So while we were coming off of the civil rights movement we definitely did not have the freedoms we take for granted now. You are talking about conscious movements, I am talking about consciousness as mindset, more of a dictionary definition not the way that we loosely talk about consciousness today as an ideology philosophically.

I do like your take on libertarianism but I also disagree; not in that it will never have mass appeal in the Black community, that much we know for sure, but that Blacks should not consider it. Conservatism and libertarianism do have their racist practitioners but at the same time you also have a lot of racist liberals out there as well. You mention how people really are; so you think that we should continue to trust in government that consistently build up the prison industrial complex and other systems of oppression with our money, off of our hard work and labor, and intellectual capital? No way. The only thing a libertarian is, is someone who believes in the doctrine of free will. We need to get out from these safety nets. It is going to happen anyway so the sooner we get into that mindset the better off we will be. For myself I don't know what anyone else is going to do, but the older I get the more skeptical I am of government in general, both parties, both sides. Not that a third party is going to fix anything but I do believe that it is worth looking at all options that are on the table.

And another thing is that you do not have to be in the inner city to struggle with the street experience. A lot of that experience is now in the suburbs, particularly in Georgia where you also have exurbs and some rural areas with that same mentality. But I also see it back in Ohio. I brought up the HBCU because I also saw that ghetto experience continue into the collegiate world; now I don't know what happened after they graduated and went into the work force, but we had our share of students selling drugs and continuing with the same lifestyle they had before they went into college. You wouldn't know it because a lot of them have great jobs and some even have their masters now, but the mentality still persists. A lot of the time we like institute a hard cut off for behavior and draw lines in the sand but the Black experience, as I'm sure you know, is full of grey areas, contradictions, idiosyncrasies and so on and so forth.
I agree with you on the blue in regards to general consciousness. I did believe you were speaking from more of a "conscious movement" perspective.

I agree that black Americans today are not as conscious in general about what it means to be black and what "black culture" really is and many attempt to be "color blind" like many whites claim to be, when IMO that is not possible. Basically I think blacks today are trying to get away from being black. They want to be just a person and IMO in this country, that is not possible. If you "look" black, you are going to be perceived to be black and going to endure stereotypes associated with being black and it is silly to try to act like that is not going to happen. IMO, there is no such thing as one "black experience" though. And the "mindset" of the streets IMO is not something that is unique to black Americans either. As I've shared in the thread, I grew up in a very integrated area and whites, Latinos, and Asians in my neighborhood were similar to the black residents in their mindset. Dysfunction is not a "black thing." Selling drugs is not a "black thing." Living in the ghetto is not a "black thing." When black people continue to associate the above with "being black" they are 1 - ignoring our true culture and heritage as a demographic, and 2 - buying into the concept of black inferiority (that we are "worse" than other demographics or have some sort of negative characteristics that are inherent to us as a demographic). For #2, I actually saw a lot of this in metro Atlanta and it was one of the cultural things that I never got used to experiencing. IMO people who exhibit behaviors of #2 are black people who are traditionally racist against their own people (racism, traditionally is believing that someone is superior or inferior based solely on race/ethnicity).

On your last paragraph, I found it interesting considering that I also lived in metro Atlanta for over a decade. I am also from Ohio and I went to an HBCU. I honestly felt that the culture in Atlanta and southern black culture in general is very different from where I grew up in the Midwest.

On HBCUs, I admit I did know some students who sold drugs. But ironically, they were not from the hood. So they didn't continue some sort of ghetto lifestyle. They sold "good weed" basically to those students who liked to smoke weed. Many college students, no matter their ethnicity sell drugs. I knew a couple students who did when I went to college in the late 1990s/early 2000s. They were not from poor families and didn't have any sort of street mentality.

On libertarianism and your reference to me trusting government, I don't trust government and I don't trust capitalists. Our current form of society is a mix between the two. Both use each other and both keep each other in check in some form and fashion. Libertarianism, in its purest sense, basically places capitalists in a superior position to government. I don't think either should be in a superior position because both can cause harm to a society if they are allowed to do whatever they want to do or if they are not monitored closely by the populace. I also believe that all people can be racist, no matter their political ideology. I've had more racist interactions with liberals than any other political ideology, primarily because many liberals are under the impression that black people are inferior in some way and always need their "help" when we don't. I am an independent and do not support, in full, any political ideology. But I do fully reject libertarianism. IMO it is basically a mosaic of other political philosophies and many of the tenets of libertarianism exist in liberalism and conservatism.
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