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You are putting words in my mouth. By saying Atlanta is worse I would've made comparisons which I did not. Does Atlanta have all kinds of people there? Yes. Are they all living together? Not exactly. He asked if Atlanta is a melting pot. It isn't.
It is Atlanta folks who assume people are asking about the entire metro. People in other cities don't do that, which is why some other forums have separate forums for their suburbs/other cities and metro Atlanta does not. Atlanta is no better or no worse in my opinion as far as that goes.
Do you really think that a person who is even asking such questions coming from the west coast is checking for Forsyth County (which is nearly 90% white)?
This comment is pretty accurate.
No I dont,.
People just dont stop at the borders and act differently all of sudden.I used to live in the city now I dont but I still hang out with the same types of people ,IN THE CITY.
In fact half of my friends are not in the city.
We all realize the city coreis not as diverse as the suburbs but there are no boundaries that prevent people fro m doing so as they do.I was at Piedmont Park last night and I can honestly say there were groups EVERYWHERE that were mixed.
Its simply not an issue until you try to compare it to areas that have more diversity.
Yall act like diversity is engineered to just happened.It only happens due to trade and the built environment.
Whats not accurate is you stating that 98% of people live in suburbs .FALSE and totally irrelevant
Or that Gwinnett County is the only county that is diverse. Dekalb,Fulton,Clayton.
Even in D.C. there suburbs that are Lilly white and Asian or suburbs like Prince Georges county that are mostly black.
the city of D.C. was more than 65% black like Atlanta 20 years or so ago.
The city of D.C. has almost near the same demographics as Atlanta as far as racial identified groups.
Of course it has more sub groups and ethnicities,but in the city and in the suburbs i have seen no difference in the attitudes in which people interact.
Seems like every time this poster posts many of you jump on a crazy tirade against her which is odd lol.
FWIW, I agree with the bolded sentence.
And on the City of Atlanta, it is still segregated by both race and class. On the metropolitan area, it IS mostly white in the north and mostly black in the south.
However, I do believe it depends on the person and their idea of "melting pot."
I never really felt that Atlanta was all that diverse on the surface or a melting pot, but I always have made sure to have a wide variety of friends/associates and via my work, I met people from all sorts of backgrounds.
IMO it is more likely that someone will work in a diverse environment and live in a segregated environment and this is true all over IMO not specific to Atlanta. But I do feel Atlanta's suburban communities are very diverse (the most popular ones mentioned in the thread) and they are much more of a melting pot than the city itself.
Well there were several false statements made for one.
I dont think Atlanta is as diverse as it could be,but some of you seem to suggest this is somehow due to forces that are fighting ot rather than other reasons like history or geography.
Atlanta is not a port or border city so there are not international ties that would create such diversity.
Yes if we are talking about the city is is segregated but thats not quite a realistic statement.those very black areas are usually poor.
Those white areas tend to be very wealthy.Even in the historic core of Toronto,its very white because its very expensive.
However those white areas in Atlanta are not devoid of blacks like I have seen in Philly.You dont go to Alpharetta and not see black people within 5 min you are there.Even in Johns Creek you see blacks,
My point wasn't that Gwinnett was the only area. I was using that as an example, which I still think is more diverse than the city itself. Do you believe that the Emory and CDC area would be as diverse if those places were not there? I doubt it, nor would the area be as wealthy.
Universities enrich the neighborhoods they are in, no doubt. I'm not going to argue with you there.
Do you believe New York ,LA or Miami would be as diverse if they did not have a port or Miami not close to the Caribbean or Latin America?
So why does it matter how it happened,but that it did.
People always try to negate anything the South(Atlanta) has to do with diversity,growth.tourism or integration by always needing to explain it away.
Why not make excuses for D.C.,SF,NYC,Philly,etc?
So how do you explain places like forest Park or Morrow where I live close to?Why are there Thai Monasteries,Cambodian and Hindu temples,Vietnamese Pho restaurants everywhere or Latino grocery stores,Asian farmers markets and HMART?Jamaican restaurants?WHY?Or WHY does it matter?
Again, I don't live in the Emory neighborhood. Five miles away on the other side of 85 is a completely different area and vibe. It isn't wealthy either, but it is solidly middle class. It just so happens that several of my foreign born neighbors are connected with the CDC or Emory, but not all of them by any means.
You agreed with this quote, claiming it was pretty accurate:
"I personally don't believe it's really a "melting pot". I just believe it's diverse, however; very segregated communities spread throughout the region that tend to stick together within the vincinity they're situated, not so much any intermingling, they tend to keep to themselves."
I find it to be anything but accurate, as my neighborhood and multitudes of others are very mixed and very engaged with their neighbors here.
Again OP, rest assured that Atlanta is a melting pot. If that is what you are seeking, you'll love it.
I lived in that very area about 20 years ago and even then it was just as you described.I had neighbors from all over the globe and they did have their own cultures and stuck together if they did not speak English but that was the older ones.
The high school students you saw were many times in a mixed group.That was just as common to see.
I routinely spoke to most of my neighbors and many would invite me to whatever ethnic function they were having.
This is simply not true. Just BS most of what you said.
It's rude to call that person's experience b.s. What if that person were to call your experiences b.s.? The only thing that would make it b.s. is if they are lying.
This is exactly what I was saying, however, I was accused of saying that Atlanta is worse than other cities when I didn't say anything of the sort.
You will find that some people on the Atlanta forum like to put words into people's mouths and make insinuations. I don't think that this is only found on the Atlanta forum, however.
It's rude to call that person's experience b.s. What if that person were to call your experiences b.s.? The only thing that would make it b.s. is if they are lying.
Some people's opinions are based on false premises. That is a common occurrence on city-data for some reason. Is it still rude to question someone's opinions when you know that they aren't reality? For example, if someone opines that Chicago isn't really urban because they saw a parking lot or something else that isn't considered urban, is it right to validate that opinion simply out of courtesy? I don't think so. It's not necessarily lying either, but it's based on a very limited vision/experience or a truly false premise.
I think a lot of the negative opinions we get concerning Atlanta are due to negative perceptions that have continued to exist because of media that uses terms like "poster child" and "endless sprawl" and "longest commutes" - all of which have Atlanta been evolving away from (and others like them) over the past 2-3 decades. People like me who have lived through this evolution process see things differently than someone who just showed up here or visited here back in '97. But some people, who specifically comment on this site, refuse to see an improved/changed Atlanta no matter what has improved or changed...they will always see it as sprawling suburbia with no redeeming qualities even though infill, streetscape, and other such improvements in the city have produced a complete turnaround.
I think many of use just get tired of the negativity and respond to it with real answers, but often to no avail. I don't see it as rude, but more as trying to help some people see Atlanta for what it really is - not what it used to be. It's funny that people from certain cities who respond to negativity with positive comments about their city are generally seen as knowledgeable, while people from southern or sunbelt cities who do the same are seen only as boosters or homers or even now rude for not validating someone's misconception. I'm sure the same people will continue to make the same negative comments that will draw the same responses from people who know better...that's the main reason I don't venture in here much anymore. It gets tiresome and I would not normally associate with the kind of person who constantly dogs my city in real life.
**I wasn't necessarily responding to you with all this DreamerD, but just responding to BS in general. I just happened to click the quote thingy under your comment.
Last edited by JoeTarheel; 06-25-2016 at 05:45 AM..
It is Atlanta folks who assume people are asking about the entire metro. People in other cities don't do that, which is why some other forums have separate forums for their suburbs/other cities and metro Atlanta does not.
It depends on the city. Certainly that's true for Chicago, NYC, Philly, etc. but less true for LA, DC, Boston, Miami, etc. Some cities have a psychological wall between it and the 'burbs while others, due to a variety of factors, blend more with their suburbs. It's a bit disingenuous to depict this as an Atlanta phenomenon exclusively, especially in the 21st century when entire metropolitan areas matter more than ever. You've done this before and have basically implied that it is "wrong" for metro Atlanta residents to do so, which is odd. Chicagoland isn't the golden standard here, nor should it be.
Seems like every time this poster posts many of you jump on a crazy tirade against her which is odd lol.
FWIW, I agree with the bolded sentence.
And on the City of Atlanta, it is still segregated by both race and class. On the metropolitan area, it IS mostly white in the north and mostly black in the south.
However, I do believe it depends on the person and their idea of "melting pot."
I never really felt that Atlanta was all that diverse on the surface or a melting pot, but I always have made sure to have a wide variety of friends/associates and via my work, I met people from all sorts of backgrounds.
IMO it is more likely that someone will work in a diverse environment and live in a segregated environment and this is true all over IMO not specific to Atlanta. But I do feel Atlanta's suburban communities are very diverse (the most popular ones mentioned in the thread) and they are much more of a melting pot than the city itself.
Neighborhoods in the city of Atlanta are far from racially segregated...I'm not sure where you're getting that information. The city is the most racially and ethnically mixed area of the entire metro - and we don't even have true ethic neighborhoods like some other cities have, so Atlanta never experienced that type of segregation to the extent of many northern cities. Higher income areas are generally mostly higher income and the same goes for lower income areas, with the exception of more urban areas like downtown and Midtown. This is pretty common for most cities, and I think recent studies have shown Atlanta to be one of the less racially segregated major cities, which is very surprising to some that still believe otherwise.
The northern suburbs are not "mostly" white. Examples that are common for the north side: Roswell is 12% Black, 4% Asian, and 9% other or more than one race; Sandy Springs is 12%, 3%, and 7%; Dunwoody is 13%, 11%, and 6%. You can't get much closer to the national average in any of those categories than that...which is 13% Black, 5% Asian, 9% two or more races. So you can easily conclude that the north side of Atlanta is NOT mostly white but, in most places, is racially very close to the US average.
The south side is a different story, but it's obviously not de facto segregation in 2016. Much of the area south of I-20 has traditionally been lower-income and mostly Black, but even that has been changing over the past 2 decades. I would challenge you to find a metro area where low income and high income folks live side by side in an established (non-gentrifying) community that isn't urban in nature. It's very common for similar economic classes to live in the same neighborhood.
There are more than 2 sides to Atlanta, and the east and west sides are a stronger mix than either north or south in general. To paint an image of the city as north/south only and segregated as such is to make sweeping assumption based on perception. Reality is a whole different concept.
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