{"id":44455,"date":"2017-03-19T22:55:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T02:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44455"},"modified":"2020-07-30T22:58:39","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T02:58:39","slug":"so-long-southside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44455","title":{"rendered":"So long, southside"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the fact that I\u2019m feeling a little blue about having just sold my house, when the day was over, it was still a massive achievement in unloading, and opening up the doors to the various paths that the future has in store for me.\u00a0 For every melancholy memory that makes me a little depressed that I\u2019ve said goodbye to my old house, there are at two things I did not like about the area in which my house resided, which contributed to the general notion that I really wanted to get out of the obligation of the house.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a long while, I\u2019ve always thought of the reasons why the area in which my home resided was not a good place, but I often neglected to notate any of them, and eventually I\u2019d forget some of them, inconvenient, for when I wanted to channel my frustrations with long commutes, or the feeling of despair of living in an area that did not have a whole lot of hope for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

I started a Google note file on May 28, 2016, simply entitled \u201creasons south of Atlanta is not a good place,\u201d and told myself to add to it whenever I had something new to add.\u00a0 The thought was that eventually one day when I successfully succeed in unloading the house and moving forward, I would have some notes to look back onto for my eventual post about saying farewell to my old area.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little surreal that that time has finally come, and despite the fact that I\u2019m still feeling bummed about unloading my house, I am in a way relieved that it\u2019s an area that I won\u2019t really see myself going back to any time soon if I can help it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of my general paranoia of the world, I never was very specific to where I lived.\u00a0 Even now, I won\u2019t get too specific, but I will admit that my old house was on the south side of Atlanta.\u00a0 The half of the metropolitan Atlanta area south of I-20 that doesn\u2019t get much acknowledgment or credit for anything, and the half of the metropolitan Atlanta area that pretty much has no hope for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let me just start off by saying that if it can absolutely be helped, I never want to live on the south side of Atlanta ever again.\u00a0 Never again below I-20, for specific measure, as far as the metropolitan Atlanta area is concerned, although this probably applies to the rest of the country as well, since I have little reason to want to ever relocate to places like Florida or Alabama, much less anywhere in Mississippi or further west.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Honestly, I\u2019ve been giving it a lot of thought as far as the rest of the country goes, I think I\u2019d rather not live on the south side of any major metropolitan city if it can be helped, because there seems to be this stigma everywhere, that the south sides of every major city are always associated with the lower class, and sub-par means of living.\u00a0 South Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco come to mind immediately; all have pretty known identities as south-X this, southside that, and are typically where the lower class tend to be.\u00a0 Even Detroit, the most sad-sack city in America in my opinion had the infamous 8-Mile Road which separated poor impoverished Detroit from the even more impoverished and clinging to life Detroit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some places like Miami try to glamorize the south ends with beaches, but can\u2019t hide the fact that outside of the name, it\u2019s definitely the less than desirable places aesthetically and for people who actually want to live there.\u00a0 And then there are places like Washington D.C. that gentrify the shit out of the areas, and Southeast D.C. is hardly the once bullet-riddled war zone it once was.<\/span><\/p>\n

As far as Atlanta is concerned though, I\u2019m. hard pressed to think of another major city that\u2019s as transparent when it comes to using the geographical division of the region as means to divide race.\u00a0 Seriously, it\u2019s almost comical to just how different the racial identity of the city changes the moment you cross over I-20 going northbound from everything else underneath it, and vice versa when driving the opposite direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

To cut to the chase, despite the fact that Atlanta is well popularized as being a very \u201cblack city,\u201d the city as a whole has nothing on the title when it comes to the south side of town.\u00a0 Once you cross I-20 going southbound, you\u2019re not going to find anywhere where the majority demographic isn\u2019t African-American.\u00a0 From College Park, Forest Park, Union City, Hapeville, East Point and so on, if it\u2019s in the south side, you are most definitely in, the black part of town.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I just want to state that as much criticism and my lack of hesitation when it comes to pointing out black hypocrisy, double standards, and reverse racism, I don\u2019t not like black people.\u00a0 Sure, I\u2019m not going to deny when people try and tell me I\u2019m being racist at times, but accuse not those who are free from any wrong doing as well, and whether people want to admit it or not, I believe everyone has a tendency to be a little bit racist from time to time.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t dislike black people, far from it.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the media is so quick to put black people on blast, and it\u2019s easy fodder for me to talk about when I want something to write about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, I don\u2019t want to live in a predominantly black area ever again.\u00a0 Frankly, I\u2019d rather not live anywhere where the majority is in such a high margin, but as far as my own life experiences go, I do not want to live in a predominantly black area ever again.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are a lot of stereotypes that come along with living in predominantly black areas that are unfortunately true, one discovers when living in one.\u00a0 Higher crime rates, slower police response time, and a snail\u2019s pace when it comes to getting community support.\u00a0 Every black activist that cries out about all of the aforementioned issues is rarely incorrect, as living 13 years of my life in a predominantly black area, I\u2019ve witnessed myself the comparison of statistics from where I lived, to various other parts of my own county, that just so happen to exist north of I-20.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unfortunate case of feeling like perception becoming reality, and it just feels like there\u2019s this downward spiral of perpetuating stereotypes and allowing them to be justified, and things never seem to be headed in a positive direction of change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the 13 years of living in my old home, it was always a tremendous challenge to get people to come visit.\u00a0 Often times, we heard the excuse that we \u201clived on the moon\/Guam\/Alabama\u201d and other rehashed jokes about how far from the rest of Atlanta the house was, and although that wasn\u2019t necessarily incorrect, I believe that simply our quality of neighborhood had a lot to do with it. I\u2019ve known people who have lived about as far from civilization as I have, but in nicer, less colored parts of town, and they\u2019ve never had as many complaints as I\u2019ve heard when it comes to visiting.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s always been easy to applaud us from afar for being visionary pioneers or some shitty rhetoric about living in a predominant black area, but I highly doubt and would wager money that\u00a0 most of my friends and peers would not be willing to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jen and I stopped doing our 4th of July parties primarily on the fact that people wouldn\u2019t stop bitching about the distance, and honestly it was depressing seeing people show up and leave early after they realized how far they drove to get to us.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think one of the biggest problems the south side of Atlanta always faced was the sheer lack of help from the media when it came to perception.\u00a0 On nearly a daily basis, there\u2019s almost always a shooting on the south side of the city; regardless of where it happens, it\u2019s almost always portrayed as \u201cshooting in South Fulton County\u201d or \u201cfatality in southwest Atlanta,\u201d as these wide swooping brushstrokes that encapsulate as much of the south side of the city as possible, without being specific.\u00a0 It\u2019s an easy way to widely proclaim \u201cthe black part of town\u201d in blanket statements, despite the fact that a shooting in Atlanta doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that anyone in Union City, Fairburn or Hapeville had anything to do with it, but who needs clarity when there\u2019s a media agenda to denigrate the black part of town as much as possible?<\/span><\/p>\n

Just the other day, there was a story I came across that admittedly made me chuckle at first, but when the context of it in conjunction with writing this post, kind of made a little upset.\u00a0 Basically, a woman flipped out at a Zaxby\u2019s<\/a> and threw her food at the employees before bashing an order terminal on the way out, and is now wanted by the police.\u00a0 Sure there\u2019s an ironic humor in it, but when I realized that just about every major Atlanta news outlet reported on it, there was an air of \u201coh look at the silly stuff black people do\u201d about it, and naturally it was reported to have happened in \u201csoutheast Atlanta,\u201d when it happened in a very specific part of Clayton County, and nowhere near East Point or Atlanta proper.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottom line is that now that I\u2019m out of the south side of Atlanta, this is my goodbye and parting thoughts about it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve waited a long time to put all this stuff in writing, but I didn\u2019t quite feel right doing it while I still lived there, as if it really mattered when I did.\u00a0 As much as I am sad having said goodbye to my house, I am definitely relieved that I don\u2019t really have anything else tying me to the south side of Atlanta.\u00a0 I won\u2019t have to hear any more bitching and complaints about where I live, no more passive-aggressive swipes about the driving necessary to get there, and I don\u2019t feel like I have to periodically look at the security system online to make sure that there were no shady characters lurking around my property.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived my experience on the south side of one city, and if it can be helped, I never want to do it ever again, in any city, Atlanta or any other.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the fact that I\u2019m feeling a little blue about having just sold my house, when the day was over, it was still a massive achievement in unloading, and opening up the doors to the various paths that the future has in store for me.\u00a0 For every melancholy memory that makes me a little depressed … Continue reading So long, southside<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,121,83,143,89,46],"class_list":["post-44455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-bataria","tag-homeownership","tag-observations","tag-ohatlanta","tag-racism","tag-zombieland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44456,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44455\/revisions\/44456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}