{"id":10682,"date":"2017-12-08T02:37:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T02:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10682"},"modified":"2017-12-09T02:41:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T02:41:46","slug":"can-atlantas-new-mayor-revive-americas-black-mecca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/can-atlantas-new-mayor-revive-americas-black-mecca\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Atlanta’s new mayor revive America’s ‘black mecca’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maurice J. Hobson<\/a>, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Atlanta mayoral showdown between Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood was a political battle 30 years in the making.<\/p>\n

Atlanta was poised to elect its first white mayor in decades. However, Bottoms, who is black, claimed a narrow victory<\/a> with a few hundred votes more than her opponent. Norwood, who is white, has called for a recount that is unlikely to alter the results.<\/p>\n

The election demonstrated the complicated nature of race, class and gender in southern politics. The world has watched Atlanta \u2013 the \u201cBlack Mecca\u201d \u2013 emerge as the vanguard for political inclusion through black electoral politics. Yet, tensions have long simmered<\/a> just below the surface of the so-called City Too Busy to Hate, as I write in my book, \u201cThe Legend of the Black Mecca<\/a>.\u201d Atlanta\u2019s pomp and circumstance of the \u201cBlack Mecca\u201d is in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Will keeping Atlanta\u2019s executive leader black help resolve these tensions?<\/p>\n

The black new South<\/h2>\n

It has been 44 years since Maynard Jackson Jr.<\/a> became the first black mayor of Atlanta. And yet, by and large, Atlanta\u2019s working and poorer classes have suffered as the city has risen to global prominence.<\/p>\n

The 1980s dealt a deafening blow when President Ronald Reagan cut federal funding<\/a> to American cities. During that time period, Atlanta\u2019s mayors had no choice but to expand the city through developments made by international investors with profit in mind, but no interest in helping the city\u2019s poor. For example, by the 1980s, Atlanta had the second-highest poverty rate in the country, a large homeless population, a high high school dropout rate along with a drug crisis and a recession. As I explain in my book, Atlanta was also one of the top-ranked cities<\/a> in the country for incidence of violent crimes. <\/p>\n

In 1987, Atlanta\u2019s white business community and the black city government started a bid to host the Centennial Olympic Games. In the bidding process, they promoted the city to the world but did little for Atlanta\u2019s natives. Since then, as I see it, Atlanta\u2019s black leadership has been compromised. <\/p>\n

The city\u2019s white business elite saw the Olympic bid as a means to recapture Atlanta\u2019s urban center from blight, triggered by white flight of prior generations. They constructed the Atlantic Center<\/a>, a master-planned, multiphase office complex with 3 million square feet of premium office space. They also created the Red Dogs<\/a>, a military-style police outfit, an aggressive police force in black neighborhoods with high occurrence of drug sales and use as well as violent drug-related crimes. In just seven months after its founding, the Red Dogs were responsible for 721 felony arrests.<\/p>\n

During this time, white money transcended black political power. Black politicians became pawns between the city\u2019s white business, black middle classes and poor, and international Olympic delegations.<\/p>\n

Atlanta anticipated<\/h2>\n

As I explain in my book, the popular political sentiment of the black masses is one of distrust and resentment toward leadership. They believe black leaders pursued policies that benefited white and black elites to the exclusion of the vast majority of black citizens who had brought them to power. <\/p>\n

Take housing, for example. From 1974 to 1984, funding for the city\u2019s public housing was slashed by 74 percent. So, Atlanta\u2019s leadership demolished much of it, displacing thousands. The city is now 30 years into a 40-year plan to take back downtown real estate and set housing at market prices \u2013 making it unaffordable to working Atlantans who don\u2019t have generational wealth.<\/p>\n

I am disheartened by my generation\u2019s negligence. As of Dec. 5, 2017, 640,861 voters were registered<\/a> in Atlanta\u2019s Fulton County and DeKalb County districts. Only 92,169 voters cast ballots for the mayoral race. For black Gen Xers, this mayoral race demonstrates how negligent we are in understanding history. Our parents bore witness to disenfranchisement and second-class citizenship until the mid-1960s, only for us \u2013 the black electorate of Atlanta \u2013 to became idolaters of power and popularity, splitting the black vote and forgetting to perform politically.<\/p>\n

Narrowly, black Atlantans delivered this election for Bottoms. The vote was divided by race. Maps show that Bottoms\u2019s victory came from predominantly black<\/a> neighborhoods of Atlanta\u2019s west, southwest, south, southeast and east sides. Norwood carried neighborhoods in the predominantly white northern half of the city. Strikingly, the numbers indicate poor voter turnout<\/a> for both candidates. What does this mean for the future of a city branded as \u201cthe City Too Busy to Hate,\u201d \u201cThe Black Mecca\u201d and \u201cHotlanta\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"TheLet\u2019s be clear: Atlanta is liberated territory for black, brown and other communities on the fringes. Yet, it may be too much to ask our city to live up to all of its competing images. Journalist John Helyar once wrote, \u201cIf New York is the Big Apple and New Orleans is the Big Easy, Atlanta is the Big Hustle.\u201d Perhaps Atlanta can focus inwardly \u2013 recalibrating virtue and merit \u2013 casting aside its conniving spirit.<\/p>\n

Maurice J. Hobson<\/a>, Assistant Professor of African-American Studies, Georgia State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maurice J. Hobson, Georgia State University The Atlanta mayoral showdown between Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood was a political battle 30 years in the making. Atlanta was poised to elect its first white mayor in decades. However, Bottoms, who is black, claimed a narrow victory with a few hundred votes more than her opponent. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[501,3665,3663,2676,3664,420,2343],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10684,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10682\/revisions\/10684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}