When Blacks Get Their American Dream 'Burb On
| Fri Jul. 25, 2008 10:40 AM PDT
The WSJ reports that, for the first time, 'black' cities like DC and Atlanta are losing their historic black populations to the suburbs. News, certainly. But why they gotta turn it into a big ol' drama?
The only difference between this and white flight is that blacks are running toward something (supposed peace and tranquility) and not away from something (coloreds). We'd a done it sooner but for the economic discrimination that kept us from affording to join those stupid commuters with their 'bowling alone' anomie. And, oh, y'all killing us for trying.
Now, we get our American Dream 'burb on—and we media types can't just report already dramatic news. It's gotta be a race war.
Here's the WSJ's sub hed:
For the First Time in Decades, Cities' Black Populations Lose Ground, Stirring Clashes Over Class, Culture and Even Ice Cream.
Heavens! Formerly black churches are courting newly gentrifying whites rather than, oh, I dunno, closing. White candidates have a shot at winning 'black' mayoralties and municipalities are flinging up jazz spots all over town, knowing that Negroes can't resist a hot sax anymore than Paris Hilton can resist a camera. Race war!
Why can't news about blacks just be that—news about blacks? White folks: Everything ain't about y'all all the time.
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Comments
It does sound like they hyped it up a lot and it's true that it speaks to the fact that the media seems to be looking out at the world through strictly 'white', middle class eyes. Still, Deborah, I'm wondering if there is significance in your language style for this article: heavy on slangish styling. You frequently pepper your writing with a bit of it, which I think adds individualism to your posts, but it's really over the top here. It doesn't matter to me; I just find it interesting. Somehow makes your comment seem more like a verbal tirade than a thoughtful observation.
A couple of decades ago, I left the nation's 12th largest city to live in the country.
Not to escape 'the coloreds', Debra. I'd pal'd around with black kids in grade school, played in rock & blues bands with black & hispanic musicians, and shared apartments with them prior to getting married. It was a black buddy who stepped up to help me out of a bit of trouble I'd gotten myself in with the school system (young punk that I was) when none of my white pals would.
We moved here to live in more peaceful, laid-back surroundings, and our city friends (ALL of them) have always been welcome to visit and stay over till..., whenever. And they have done so.
What are friends for?
I was quite pleased when, a few years later, many black folk started moving from that same city into this area for the exact same reasons we had done so.
Just to live in a nicer place, and bring their kids up somewhere safer and healthier.
10, maybe 15 years ago, one black family bought acerage adjoining ours, and happened to have kids of an age to be in the same classes at the school in the tiny little 'burg my own two attended. Theirs came over here to bounce on the trampoline. Ours went over there to shoot hoop and get thumped at it. Pretty much exactly how I had grown up in a mixed neighborhood in the city, back in the '50s & '60s (less the trampoline).
I cheered with them as their boys excelled in basketball & tennis (yeah..., tennis!) at Owen Valley High School. Was thrilled to see one of them elected by his classmates as Homecoming King, (opposite a blonde, blue-eyed Queen no less...) and then go on to make the Indiana State U. basketball team (Larry Bird's alma mater) as a freshman walk-on, and now be acknowledged as having assumed a leadership role on the team.
We're as proud to call them neighbors as any neighbors I could ever imagine having.
In January, my Mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and when she was released to go home in hospice care, one of the very first people to rush the 70 miles from Indy to visit her in the small, midwestern farm town where she lived was a black friend, who was in none-too-good health herself. Black & White friends both attended the funeral of this 1920's Mississipi born white woman, and mourned her equally.
Come on Debra.
The '50's & '60's movement for equality is paying off!!
Black churches in your cities are welcoming and even recruiting white folks to join and worship with them.
The small towns and rural communities are welcoming and enjoying having black people live as equals in our midst!
What the hell is Wrong with a little equality at both ends of the spectrum, and why on Earth are you bemoaning it?!?!
It ain't about y'all all the time, Debra.
It's becoming about US!!
So REJOICE!!
I like what you wrote, GVC, and I am glad that has been your experience. That doesn't mean that racism and, specfically, institutional racism isn't a major issue in our society and has played none to small a role in forming Deborah's views. I respect both her take on things and the story you shared, but have to argue the point that there is a less idyllic reality for some people than the life you have lived.
Paul, of course racism still lurks in the minds of some folks. I still see them.
Folks of all races have their own share of racists..., "just mix with my own, all others are suspect at best..." types, truth be told.
I see it out here, but what I also see is that it's being overcome and overshadowed by a better, more inclusive spirit, at least in this community.
Other communities and their situations, of course, I can not speak about with any knowledge.
What wonders me, though, is that Debra seems to be regretting the movement of acceptance running in both directions, as if Black folk should be viewed as just 'folk' in the 'burbs and out here in the sticks (with which I wholeheartedly agree), but at the same time she seems to want black folks to be able to retain exclusively 'Black' institutions, churches, neighborhoods, colleges, etc.
That's just a mirror image of the mindset the last couple of generations has worked by their individual actions to Put to Rest, only with the exclusive institutions, churches, neighborhoods, colleges, etc having been 'White'.
If it was wrong for us (pale people) to expect that exclusivity, it's equally wrong for Blacks, Koreans, Mexicans or any group to want and expect it..., IMHO.
That's the thinking that divides us, and a divided people aren't a 'whole' people.
There was an article on the web today about a set of Twins being born to a couple (a German father and West African mother), one baby obviously black, the other light skinned and blue eyed. The parents were all smiles, and that story gave ME the biggest smile of the day.
Now That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!!
My folks bought into our little working class'burb in '65. Our street then mirrored the rest here and was about 75% White with one Black family and the remainder Latino (about the same proportion of California as a whole then). Now, we're 50-50 "Minority" - White, (roughly our currant population proportion) with two Black families and the remainder of the "Minority" families Latino or Asian. We've even got a Lesbian couple who've lived here almost 30 years now. It's always surprised me that we Whites think we're gaining anything by secluding ourselves. My little 'burb boasts a Mexican Supermarcado and a large Pan-Asian Supermarket in addition to the standard big-box. And they opened in former grafitti-magnet abandoned big-boxes filling up a lot of other formetrly empty local retail space surrounding them. If it weren't for the increase in Minority residents here, this place would look like crap.
Debra:
Let's not kid ourselves (I'm Af Am too) middle-class blacks are leaving those cities to get away from poor blacks who have made large sectors of DC and Atlanta unliveable. The greatest problem facing America is the woeful state of the poor and working classes--poor school performance, widespread ignorance, low rates of stable family formation, high rates of crime and anti-social behavior. These sorts of things are most acute among African Americans but whites and Hispanics seem to be catching up. Progressives do a disservice by being in denial about the destructive nature of the culture of poverty and how it hurts the nation as a whole.
daaldridge, you are not keeping it real. You should have stayed in the inner city to be an example to other brothers and sisters. You are an Oreo sell out. And for the good brothers who stay in the inner city, send your kids to public schools so that way they will bring up the test scores and be active in the PTA. Too many brothers that live in DC send their darlings to private school. What hypocrites.
Down:
Piling on stale '60's cliches and epithets ("Oreo Cookie" belongs in a museum) won't fix the problem we all know exists. Lord knows conservatives are wrong about many things (free market economics will fix all) but progressives don't do any favors by sticking their head in the sand and pretending nothing is wrong with ghetto and trailer park folks. Why should stable balanced blacks have to be martyrs for the dysfunctional? Successful middle-class types are not the problem. Namecalling them is just silly blacker than thou posturing.
