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Right. Things like redistricting have no effect on black people whatsoever, right? The constitutional challenges that have been mounted against imporant provisions of Obama's healthcare law? No biggie, right? Studies on early childhood education in the black community? Who needs those?
Now I'll tell you what would really make a difference in all of our lives: The Sooooooooooooooul Train Awards. Followed by the "Real Housewives of Atlanta." My heart's swelling with pride right now. We've made it through slavery, Jim Crow, and finally to the red carpet of the Soul Train Awards on Peachtree Street!!! Dr. King's dream has finally been fulfilled. Cue up the Negro spirituals.
Forget medical researchers, policy analysts, bankers, traders, economists, lobbyists, scientists, journalists, public intellectuals, engineers and transactional attorneys. The black community needs more entertainers. Lord knows our community has always had a shortage of those! So raise your bottle of Muscato to the sky! Raises those glasses, ladies. It's a celebration!
Your city can't be a mecca if only 1 out of 3 people can read, if your city has the highest hiv/std rates in the country and if the county that suppose to have the most blks making the most money is the most violent county in the region (PG County). Let's talk about the real DC. I see you want to skip around the facts.
Last edited by tonygeorgia; 12-02-2011 at 10:27 AM..
Right. Things like redistricting have no effect on black people whatsoever, right? The constitutional challenges that have been mounted against imporant provisions of Obama's healthcare law? No biggie, right? Studies on early childhood education in the black community? Who needs those?
Now I'll tell you what would really make a difference in all of our lives: The Sooooooooooooooul Train Awards. Followed by the "Real Housewives of Atlanta." My heart's swelling with pride right now. We've made it through slavery, Jim Crow, and finally to the red carpet of the Soul Train Awards on Peachtree Street!!! Dr. King's dream has finally been fulfilled. Cue up the Negro spirituals.
Nope, none of that matters. All the damn studies and protests have been done to death and many people are pretty much in the same place.
What is needed is economic power, and that's not going to happen with some government agency token "working within the system". Companies need to be created and nurtured by Black people so that they can hire 20 Black people at once. That's not likely to happen with the government agency puppet. What's needed are banks and biotechs. And Atlanta has a better chance at that than D.C.
That's where the real change happens, those companies grow so they can lobby and demand a bailout
What about the unemployment of black men in NY being the highest in the nation.
(NNPA) - The unemployment rate for Black men in New York City has hit a new high. Nearly one-half of them are jobless, according to a new study released called, "A Crisis in Black Male Employment: Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2003." The Community Service Society (CSS) of New York reveals that unemployment rose among Black men during the nation’s recent recession and that only 51.8 percent of Black men between the ages of 16 through 64 were employed. This is a dramatic decline of 12.2 percentage points from 2000.
What about the unemployment of black men in NY being the highest in the nation.
(NNPA) - The unemployment rate for Black men in New York City has hit a new high. Nearly one-half of them are jobless, according to a new study released called, "A Crisis in Black Male Employment: Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2003." The Community Service Society (CSS) of New York reveals that unemployment rose among Black men during the nation’s recent recession and that only 51.8 percent of Black men between the ages of 16 through 64 were employed. This is a dramatic decline of 12.2 percentage points from 2000.
What about the unemployment of black men in NY being the highest in the nation.
(NNPA) - The unemployment rate for Black men in New York City has hit a new high. Nearly one-half of them are jobless, according to a new study released called, "A Crisis in Black Male Employment: Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2003." The Community Service Society (CSS) of New York reveals that unemployment rose among Black men during the nation’s recent recession and that only 51.8 percent of Black men between the ages of 16 through 64 were employed. This is a dramatic decline of 12.2 percentage points from 2000.
Ya New York is already dismissed and LA was a mirage as far as Black culture. Atlanta and D.C. are truly speak above those two. NY just has raw numbers.
I have not personally witnessed blacks from all over canonizing any one city as much as they do Atlanta. There's nothing "abstract" about that statement, whatsoever. It's dead on with what Nairobi has observed. It isn't a fact, and it isn't an opinion. It's an observation; my observation.
I have a high opinion of Atlanta, but there are people who have opinions of the city that I would perceive to be too high, to the point that you can't tell these folks nothing.
I have to strongly agree with this assessment. It seems that people in Atlanta work for the convention and visitors office who sound out talking points about how great the area is. People who visit Atlanta, that I know, are always coming back talking about the number of successful black folks they see and how many fine women or men there are and how much there is to do. I moved to Atlanta for a short period in the early 90’s from Michigan……and I am sorry……I was not impressed. The only thing that impressed me was that I could quit a job and have a job the next day. Summer was hot as hell. Yes, winters are better but the summers are worse.
I view the Atlanta phenomenon like this. It’s a popular trend. We live in a trend based society where people like to with the latest trends. When baggy pants were the trend people started wanting to wear baggy pants. When skinny leg pants came in style, people wore skinny let pants. When Mohawks became the trend, people wore Mohawks. When dread locks became the trend, people wore dreads, etc. Atlanta is a popular trend, especially for relocating black folks who want or need to leave their current location.
Trust me, no matter how prolific you are, you are never going to have a relationship with the millions of black folks in the area….lol. People have the same relationship issues and problems in Atlanta as they do everywhere else. If you are an average looking person you are not going to move to Atlanta and get you one of them fine women or men. You are going to end up with the same rank person that you had wherever you came from. You might find some country girl impressed that you from New York or California and your game might pick up a little as a result of being “new meat”, but that will fade. All those successful black folks that you see might as well be successful white folks because their success has no tangible benefit to you, other than maybe the psychological boost of knowing that you can make it too, if they made it. However, you can look at TV and see evidence of black success and I think that in this day and age most black folks know that while it may be difficult for black folks, we can make it if we can break free of the paradigms of poverty and oppressed culture.
Thus, to me Atlanta is way overhyped. I like Detroit much better than I like Atlanta, ignoring the job situation. When I say Detroit, I mean the Detroit area which has 1.2 million blacks living there, not all of which live south of 8 mile. Detroit is like the complete opposite of Atlanta in regards to hype. Nobody has anything good to say about Detroit and even many of the people who live in Detroit don’t have good to say about it. Both Detroit and Atlanta are case studies in self-reinforcing prophecy. Atlanta made itself into more than it is by hyperbole of how great it is. Detroit made itself worse than it is by hyperbole of how bad it is. The national media picks up on these vibes and helps to fulfill the prophecies. Thus, everyone wants to go to Atlanta because they hear how great it is and nobody wants to go to Detroit because they hear how bad it is. Detroit is not that bad and Atlanta is not that good and given the unemployment problems in Atlanta now, it’s not that much difference in the two places.
I live in Minneapolis now and my quality of life is high. All these people running to Atlanta just does not make sense to me....in this economy. I would put my quality of life, as a Middle Class African American, against the quality of life of my counterpart in Atlanta any day……and I am a very pro African American type brother. If you have a quarter of a million black folks in the area……then you should be able to sow your cultural oats. You don’t need to live in Detroit, Atlanta or DC to get your “black” on. I would venture to guess that Minneapolis area has the fastest growing, percentage wise, black population in the nation….or at least in the top 5. However, If could I would move back to Michigan because that is where most of my family is. When I moved here from Detroit I did not want to stay long because there is not a lot of black folks here....compared to Detroit. However, I found that 200,000 black folks still allows me to get my grove on......and have a good job, safe neighborhood, good schools for my kids, low traffic congestion (my commute from the burbs to downtown is less than 20 minutes). It is cold as hell......even compared to Detroit....but other things offset that. There are not as many black plays and concerts that hit here like Detroit.....but I make enough money to to Drive to Chicago or fly back to Detroit to see what I want to see....and having properties in Michigan.....putting it on my taxes as a business expense
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 12-02-2011 at 10:40 AM..
No. I understand that it's been a center of black culture for a long time. I just take issue with the branding of what's going on down there as a "Renaissance," particularly when the city's primary contributions to black culture in recent years have been snap dances and gospel plays gone to the Big Screen.
Come on dude; you know better than this. Nobody's running around here talking about "Renaissance Atlanta" and you know good and well you can't legitimately come to that conclusion based on a thread that was started almost four years ago by somebody who probably doesn't even post here anymore and that was last commented on a year ago. You had to really go fishing to dredge this anomaly up from the murky depths to begin with. Hell, if you even Google "renaissance" and "Atlanta," the only hits you'll get will be related to hotels.
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There's a big difference between NWA rapping about black dysfunction and a flat out minstrel show. And the overwhelming majority of the music Atlanta has put out is minstrelsy. I don't think Atlanta is responsible for the direction hip hop has taken (as a lot of other rappers from different places are also minstrels), but people are celebrating the absolute low point in hip hop's overall history (fingers crossed) as Atlanta's hip hop "Golden Age." Are "snap" music and Madea movies really valuable contributions to black and American culture?
Black dysfunction in hip hop goes way beyond gangsta rap, although I'd argue that that subgenre did much more harm than any self-perceived "minstrel show" could ever do. And again, who's arguing that this most recent period in hip hop is Atlanta's "golden age"? I'd say that most informed people would no doubt say that in Atlanta, that era was when OutKast and Goodie Mob were cranking out the hits.
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DC and Atlanta are very different. The professional associations and networks are larger, more varied, and more active in DC. Blacks in DC have more education than they do in Atlanta. You meet people doing cutting edge work. You meet black people who work for the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, USAID, and the Inter-American Development Bank, which deals with all types of issues related to the Caribbean. It's not uncommon to meet a black person there who writes for Reuters, teaches microbiology at Howard Med, or graduated top of his class from a top-tier law school and now clerks for the very prestigious D.C. Circuit. You also meet a lot of people from Africa and the Caribbean whose families basically run the countries they came from. You're not finding that caliber of professional in Atlanta.
I disagree that DC and Atlanta are "very different." I do agree that the networks are different in DC due to it being the seat of federal government and thus being home to many different organizations and institutions that rely on government, but let's not forget that Atlanta has one of the largest concentration of federal government jobs outside of DC, being the home of the Southeast regional offices of several federal government agencies as well as the CDC and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. And of course, there are the several F500 companies that are headquartered in the area. According to the most recent studies I could find, Atlanta's top tier university, Emory, has more (both in raw numbers and percentages) Black faculty, tenured Black faculty, and Black department heads than DC's top tier university, Georgetown. And for the record, I don't really consider jobs in journalism, law, and policy to be "cutting edge." To me, that refers more to the STEM disciplines, art, fashion, etc. I don't think either DC or Atlanta bests each other in those categories.
I have to strongly agree with this assessment. It seems that people in Atlanta work for the convention and visitors office who sound out talking points about how great the area is. People who visit Atlanta, that I know, are always coming back talking about the number of successful black folks they see and how many fine women or men there are and how much there is to do. I moved to Atlanta for a short period in the early 90’s from Michigan……and I am sorry……I was not impressed. The only thing that impressed me was that I could quit a job and have a job the next day. Summer was hot as hell. Yes, winters are better but the summers are worse.
I view the Atlanta phenomenon like this. It’s a popular trend. We live in a trend based society where people like to with the latest trends. When baggy pants were the trend people started wanting to wear baggy pants. When skinny leg pants came in style, people wore skinny let pants. When Mohawks became the trend, people wore Mohawks. When dread locks became the trend, people wore dreads, etc. Atlanta is a popular trend, especially for relocating black folks who want or need to leave their current location.
Trust me, no matter how prolific you are, you are never going to have a relationship with the millions of black folks in the area….lol. People have the same relationship issues and problems in Atlanta as they do everywhere else. If you are an average looking person you are not going to move to Atlanta and get you one of them fine women or men. You are going to end up with the same rank person that you had wherever you came from. You might find some country girl impressed that you from New York or California and your game might pick up a little as a result of being “new meat”, but that will fade. All those successful black folks that you see might as well be successful white folks because their success has no tangible benefit to you, other than maybe the psychological boost of knowing that you can make it too, if they made it. However, you can look at TV and see evidence of black success and I think that in this day and age most black folks know that while it may be difficult for black folks, we can make it if we can break free of the paradigms of poverty and oppressed culture.
Thus, to me Atlanta is way overhyped. I like Detroit much better than I like Atlanta, ignoring the job situation. When I say Detroit, I mean the Detroit area which has 1.2 million blacks living there, not all of which live south of 8 mile. Detroit is like the complete opposite of Atlanta in regards to hype. Nobody has anything good to say about Detroit and even many of the people who live in Detroit don’t have good to say about it. Both Detroit and Atlanta are case studies in self-reinforcing prophecy. Atlanta made itself into more than it is by hyperbole of how great it is. Detroit made itself worse than it is by hyperbole of how bad it is. The national media picks up on these vibes and helps to fulfill the prophecies. Thus, everyone wants to go to Atlanta because they hear how great it is and nobody wants to go to Detroit because they hear how bad it is. Detroit is not that bad and Atlanta is not that good and given the unemployment problems in Atlanta now, it’s not that much difference in the two places.
I live in Minneapolis now and my quality of life is high. All these people running to Atlanta just does not make sense to me....in this economy. I would put my quality of life, as a Middle Class African American, against the quality of life of my counterpart in Atlanta any day……and I am a very pro African American type brother. If you have a quarter of a million black folks in the area……then you should be able to sow your cultural oats. You don’t need to live in Detroit, Atlanta or DC to get your “black” on. I would venture to guess that Minneapolis area has the fastest growing, percentage wise, black population in the nation….or at least in the top 5. However, If could I would move back to Michigan because that is where most of my family is.
Who is still running here ? You lived here in the early 90s, that's a long time ago. Who is hyping it? Where is Atlanta hyping itself?
Minneapolis is a joke. The average person could not even point it out on a map lol. Michigan is a dump. More people moving here from Michigan than people from here moving to Michigan
You see how people here do not want to skip over these topics. Why cant so many people in DC read with all the opportunity DC has? Why is hiv so high in DC?
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