Re:MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipa...
by SwellJoe on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @02:40PM
(#12646554)
The more I think about it, the more I think it's less about Atlanta being more racist...there's just more opportunity for white people to be shitty and racist because they interact people of color much more often than in most of the other major cities I've lived in. So, I probably should soften my accusation of racism. I still see it, and it is still uncomfortable, but I also have to acknowledge that Atlanta seems to have proven itself to be a great place for black folks to build careers, build businesses, etc. So, race relations may be tense in Atlanta, but it is probably not because the people are inherently more shitty than people everywhere else. And, I also have to acknowledge that some of my favorite cities that are not overtly racist are seemingly racist on a systemic level in ways that I as a white person don't see very clearly; Austin, for example, has a rapidly shrinking black population. That's probably a useful measure of racism, as well.
Imho, Marietta/Cobb County (NW of Atlanta) and Alpharetta/North Fulton (N of Atlanta) especially tend to have... less than cosmopolitan perspectives. DeKalb (NE & E of Atlanta) can go various ways.
My rebuttal to Atlanta being casually racist is always "Have you lived in the NW/NE?" We're absolutely still racially stratified (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Atlanta ), but compared to the other places I've lived and visited you run into a wider variety of people in everyday life. Which is important to me.
Hell, when I was younger I once worked a service gig at a beach restaurant in CT and could count on two hands the number of non-white customers I served the entire summer.