City gripped by crises seeks a ‘New Atlanta Way’
Long seen as beacon of progress, Atlanta now faces challenge of persistent racial inequality
Last weekend, the cable news cameras of the U.S. turned to the streets of Atlanta. In the midst of a massive nationwide protest movement over police violence against Black people, an Atlanta police officer shot Rayshard Brooks in the back as he ran from them. Officers had responded to a call saying a man was asleep in his car in a drive-thru.
The Wendy’s outlet where the shooting took place was in flames Saturday night, the city’s major expressway was filled with protesters on foot, the officers involved had been fired (and would be criminally charged later in the week), the police chief resigned.
The Georgia city often referred to as America’s “Black mecca” was now centre stage in the U.S. crisis over racial justice.
Georgia was already in the middle of the overlapping American emergencies of 2020. In February, the shooting death of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, after he was chased down by a white former police officer and his son in south Georgia, triggered outrage and calls for justice. Then COVID-19 hit, and the state’s Black residents have paid a heavy price in serious illnesses and deaths, even as the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, is aggressively lifting coronavirus quarantines.
“Georgia is a good microcosmic study of what’s going on throughout the country,” says Hasan Crockett, a political science professor at St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, N.C.
And what’s going on is a set of overlapping emergencies causing upheaval and pain, but also creating potential for historic change.
“There is a level of fear and anxiety and stress,” says Calinda Lee, a historian at the Atlanta History Center, that “may well be unparalleled since Reconstruction.”
“We are at a crucial crossroads where we can decide whether or not we actually want to change unequal structure, or whether we want to continue with the status quo,” says Andra Gillespie, an expert on race and politics at Emory University in Atlanta.
Atlanta was the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. It served, Lee notes, as the “brain centre” of the 1960s civil rights movement. It has become a migration magnet for the Black middle class. And it is a Black cultural powerhouse. There’s a sense in Atlanta that meeting this moment may be especially important, and instructive for the rest of the country.
“I think that Atlanta, out of any other city in the country, has to get it right,” says Nathaniel Smith of the Atlantabased social justice organization Partnership for Southern Equity. “There’s a heavy, heavy responsibility in terms of working to be a true reflection of what the world thinks we are.”
During the weekend protests, a police officer told reporter George Chidi of The Intercept what he expected. “The (protest) leaders will have to come together, settle on a list of demands, and meet with the mayor.”
He was describing something like what’s often called “The Atlanta Way.” It is how, it is said, through the civil rights battles of the 20th century, Atlanta had escaped the more violent and disruptive elements of civil unrest by brokering compromises between politicians, the white business community and Black community leaders.
Lee describes it as “this notion that Black power brokers and white power brokers meet and figure out how we’re going to move forward in a way that does not besmirch the public image of the city.”
Crockett recalls it was summed up in a slogan in the 1960s, “A City Too Busy to Hate,” which he says was a core part of marketing the city’s development as a commercial centre of the American South.
Appeals to that tradition have sprung up recently. “We need to rediscover the Atlanta Way,” a white local council member told constituents this month. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that the city’s Black mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was summoning it when, earlier this month, she cited Atlanta’s legacy of Black leadership and said, “If you care about this city, then go home.”
One problem with trying to apply that brokered approach to the current crisis was well put in Intercept reporter Chidi’s immediate response to the police officer. “Man, there is no leader,” he said. “Anyone who claimed to have the authority to speak for the street would be lying and everyone knows it.”
Those I spoke with agreed, and also said that for all that the Atlanta Way accomplished in protecting the city’s image and bringing a measure of prosperity, it left a lot of people out and failed to fix many of the core racial problems.
“They didn’t change the conditions. People were still poor,” Crockett says. “There was still income inequality. There was still segregation. You still had all the problems that other areas in the nation had, but they just formulated a coalition to suppress the reactions.”
“Was it effective in luring business and jobs, and therefore some degree of economic prosperity across race to Atlanta? Absolutely,” Lee says. “Was it impactful and successful in limiting exposure to certain kinds of racialized violence? Comparatively speaking. Was it sufficient to accomplish equity? Absolutely not.”
Smith says a focus more on “marketing than meaning,” has led to “the reality of Atlanta having African American mayors for the past 40 years, while still continuously being considered the No. 1 city for income inequality, and one of the top cities for the lack of economic mobility for poor kids, and even in the top five for suburban poverty of any region in the country — there are some blaring, blaring, blaring inconsistencies.”
“The culture of Atlanta, and the way that we’ve gone about solving problems, in many ways has made us ill equipped civically to achieve the type of outcomes that we need to achieve for everyone,” Smith says.
Smith has been discussing the need to find a “New Atlanta Way” that could lead the U.S. as it addresses racial problems — and touches on points I heard from many protesters and experts in Atlanta and elsewhere.
He speaks of a program that engages all residents, “not just the wealthy.” One that dramatically reforms policies including housing, procurement, small business, policing and criminal justice to address systemic racism and white supremacy. One that involves reconciliation through acknowledgment by power brokers they’ve done wrong, and that suggests restitution in the form of government and private-sector investment “to create economic opportunities for Black people and traditionally disinvested communities of colour.”
It sounds like a tall order, but many in Atlanta feel it is finally possible.
Smith says he sees white people protesting who have concluded white privilege is a moral burden too heavy to bear, alongside young Black activists convinced that “no matter what it takes, they will never go back to the way things were.” That, he says, “is when you see real change happen.”
Lee says the conversations she’s having now about systemic racism were anathema just a few years ago. “People are marching and protesting, and people are boycotting and picketing, and people are voting and agitating to make sure that voting rights are maintained, and people are legislating and pressuring politicians for certain kinds of policy. All of that is essential to change-making in a systemic way.”
Political scientist Gillespie says the November election is being defined by the current overlapping crises. “Race has kind of catapulted into one of the major issues for 2020,” she says, and voters are demanding concrete policy changes. “If you’re going to deal with it now, that means you get past platitudes, you get past Band-Aid solutions, and actually start to have some really tough conversations and make some tough policy proposals and decisions to help create a meaningful, lasting change.”
Crockett says whatever the short-term policy effect, what’s happening in Atlanta and across the country now will shape the future. “Even if we don’t have a lot of fundamental changes, the movement has shifted. It won’t go back,” he says. “It’s going to be part of the history that shows that this business is significant.”