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Election time: Will Atlanta do the right thing?
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I can still hear the lyrics and feel the same wave of emotions I felt twenty years ago:
1989! A number, another summer. Get down—sound of the funky drummer!
The song? Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. By itself, it was powerful, but placed in the context of Spike Lee’s classic “Do the Right Thing”, it became an anthem. “Do the Right Thing” focused on one long, hot summer day and how racial tensions can bubble beneath the surface before eventually exploding.
The movie led to conversations about race all around the country, including on major talk shows like Oprah Winfrey’s. In fact, I remember one show where Spike was debating journalist Juan Williams, who was very critical of Spike and the movie for raising racial animosity without providing answers, as if that was somehow a burden Spike was supposed to bear by himself. I remember thinking at the time that there’s no better way for someone to establish himself as a “responsible” Black person than to take a stand against a perceived racial activist.
Today, Juan Williams is a commentator for Fox News. But I digress.
Somehow, what was arguably the most important film of the decade managed to not even receive a nomination for Best Picture. Movie experts will probably give a variety of reasons, but for me, and millions of others, the answer is fairly simple. The movie just made too many people uncomfortable. It would take seventeen years before a movie could make the country uncomfortable in this manner and still win the recognition it deserved. I truly hope the producers, director and cast of “Crash” sent Spike Lee a thank you card after their 2006 Best Picture award.
Now, as the movie celebrates its twentieth birthday during which it will be featured at an Atlanta film festival, the sad reality is that the issues of race and racism still make people uncomfortable. Look at ya. Some of y’all are uncomfortable right now just reading this.
Like it or not, Eric Holder told the flat out truth in saying that when it comes to discussing race, this country remains “a nation of cowards”. And if this is a nation of cowards, then please pardon me for suggesting that the capital of the nation is not Washington DC, but Atlanta, GA.
That’s right. I said it.
The whole “city too busy to hate” thing may have helped to get the Olympics, but the smoke and mirrors could not change some basic realities, beginning with the fact that hundreds if not thousands of public housing residents were displaced in order to prepare for those same Olympics. How many of us honestly believe that the same reckless and draconian policies would have been pursued had the vast majority of the residents been White instead of Black?
Speaking of housing, is the resistance to placing “affordable housing” in the north of the city simply about economics?
How many of us actually believe that the shootings of innocent residents such as Kathryn Johnston and Tremaine Miller had nothing to do with race? Speaking of which, when exactly was the last time an innocent, unarmed White person was shot by the Atlanta police?
Do we really think race had nothing to do with why Fire Station #7 (serving West End, and one of the busiest in the city) was the first victim in the Mayor’s budget battle with the city council? And now that the Mayor has her tax increase, how long will it take for the station to be re-opened? I’m happy that the northwest residents around Station #23 have their station back, but are the lives and property of residents served by #7 not quite as valuable?
Black Mecca? As recently as 2005, Atlanta had the 5th highest poverty rate among large cities, and in recent years the poverty figure for Blacks within Atlanta has been as high as 40%.
Are there class issues involved in all of this? Of course there are? There has always been a strange relationship between Atlanta’s Black haves and the have-nots, going at least as far back as the Atlanta Riot of 1906, during which it was perceived that Atlanta’s Black elite sold out the Black masses. And if you think it ended there, just trying asking a Black sanitation worker who was around during the 1977 sanitation workers strike; they didn’t get much help from middle class Black Atlanta.
Nevertheless, in spite of the class issues and the role of Black leadership, it would be mistake to assume that race was therefore not a factor. After all, if a Black slave driver whipped a Black field slave, does that change the fact that slavery was based on the enslavement of Blacks/Africans? If one Roman gladiator kills another Roman gladiator, does that change the fact that both gladiators are tools of the same master?
But let’s take it out of the city context for a moment, and let’s look at state politics. I have been in meetings where folks, who are otherwise very intelligent, scratch their collective heads as they try to understand why it is that Atlanta is treated like a leper by the rest of state government.
Are you serious? Am I the only one who sees the elephant in the room?
I don’t mind disagreeing with someone on this issue, but what I absolutely cannot tolerate is acting like the issue doesn’t exist.
But the good news is it’s election season in the city! Over the next few months, as candidates attend debates and various community events, we can use this as an opportunity to seek their views on race in the city. Yes, we can ask them about the big picture issues like jobs, transportation, and the city’s budget, but we can also ask about how these issues are affected by race and how they, in turn, can impact the ongoing racial disparities. We can ask about the city’s access to stimulus funds in general, but we can also ask how those funds will specifically make it to the city’s neediest residents. And we can ask about issues that seem to only affect the city’s Black and Latino communities, issues like police brutality.
Yes, we can raise all of these issues and then reward the candidates who have the courage to answer them honestly.
We can prove, for the first time in a long time, that we can, in fact, do the right thing.
Get it. Got it. Gone!
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