Has Atlanta become mono-racial? Honest question based on observation.

reply to post by TDawgRex


The image that is being created is not crap. Go to the airport and walk around. That is what people of the world sees of your city. It may be inaccurate, and I agree probably is, however, that is what the world sees.

reply to post by grandmakdw

Melanin is the chemical in the body that produces skin color. It is how we define "race", by the level of melanin one has in their skin and the shade it produces.

Just a note on this, but Melanin isn't what determines race at all. Is Obama Black? Hmmm.... His mother was white as the Kansas snow she grew up in. He's black by appearance tho. 100% and NO question. Race? Not so easy... I just hate it when people try to boil race down to just skin. A Forensic pathologist can tell racial grouping by nothing by a set of clean bones sitting on a table. It goes a hair deeper...

So... Was it all Black at the airport? All this ultra-PC talk to get around the simple statement of what things are is confusing sometimes.

So...

Your basically saying that you didn't see any white people, and mostly only African Americans?

Where I live we have a lot of registered sex offenders that work at the airport. Apparently being a baggage handler is a popular career choice after being put into the registry.

Damn...I just thought of a really bad joke involving sex offenders and baggage handling. Why god, why?!

reply to post by FissionSurplus



I am a European American and I find this racism outrageous. I have been to this airport and noticed the same phenomenon. How can such discrimination be tolerated? They should be more considerate of their customers and strive for greater racial diversity in their hiring practices, otherwise they stand to alienate a lot of European Americans.

Originally posted by 1/2 Nephilim


Most of the employees are black because most of the people who live in Atlanta are black.

Thank you for an honest answer, Atlanta is basically mono-racial. Nothing wrong with that. So what I saw was reality and not discriminatory hiring practices.

reply to post by Urantia1111

Personally...in my own opinion and having been in/out of Atlanta with trucking for years..I think it's a reflection of the city. Atlanta is, as I always saw it anyway, predominantly black in many sections. Not all..and there are some VERY white areas too. Segregation is alive and well in the deep south. It's just self-created now, in my view. In what I saw as a trucker though ...in business and services, it was majority Black. Nothing good or bad about that...it's just how demographics happened to settle as I see it.

Go to Boise Idaho or Helena, Montana (Or Springfield Missouri in my neck of the woods) where the population is majority white and I'll bet the opposite is seen in those airports. After all, it may be an airport with people flowing through from all over the world ....but the workers are locals and reflect the local community.

Just my two cents on Atlanta's Airport.

reply to post by grandmakdw


I too grew similiar as you, grew up as a mil brat and also did thirty years. I used to see people as just people. I did see racism while in and it was usually squasched quickly. There is no place for it.

But once I moved away from military towns, my eyes were opened. I've been through Atlanta more times than I can count. When there, I still just see people working. I don't look at their pigmentation.

I won't lie to you though, I know there are parts of my city where I am not welcome after hours and I avoid them like the plague.. I'm pretty sure that most cities have those parts of towns. If you have no business there, you just avoid them.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Race is really a subjective thing, but the only real defining characteristic is melanin

Millions of years ago all human descended from the same people, They spread out into the world. They were then in social groups that became isolated. The people interbreed. The interbreeding caused the characteristics we identify as "races". It's kinda like breeding dogs, a white maltese is just as much a dog as a black lab, they are both dogs. Their breed has characteristics that we use to define the breed, but if the two mate we still have a dog.

Children in africa who were too light died from sun exposure and therefore the survivors became darker and darker skinned. Children in northern europe died who were too dark died of a lack of the vitamins we need to survive that are absorbed through the skin. Keep a group of people isolated long enough and they will emerge with common physical and DNA characteristics through interbreeding.

Basically, "races" are a result of massive and long term inbreeding of humans, homo sapiens.

Currently with all the interbreeding going on, we tend to define race by the level of melanin and the tone it gives.
There are people of all races with fat noses and skinny noses, fat lips and skinny lips, etc.

So the only real definable thing we are left with is self definition, which we can not know unless we ask, or the level of melanin we can plainly see in the skin. That is race today, how little or how much melanin and the tone it creates in one's skin.

Eventually, with travel the way it is and acceptance of interbreeding, we will all look alike. So discrimination based on ones melanin level is wrong and evil, be it that one has too little or too much melanin.

What I saw at the Atlanta airport was that the city has become a city of inbreed melanin rich people, confirmed by a previous poster. What I also saw was the melanin rich are not accepting of the melanin challenged and that they are not welcome to integrate into the Atlanta society.

Who in the hell makes all their judgements and opinions of a place based upon the people working at the airport, let alone based upon the race of said workers. That makes no sense. I think you may be too old and have been put away for too long to get on a computer and start trying to put together social and political theories based solely upon the airport terminal. Bury your nose in a magazine next time.

"Melanin challenged people"

Either you are trolling, or your obscene attempt at political correctness has gone full circle right back into ignorance.

Is this seriously how some people talk?

reply to post by 0x00000017


Ok, I think I've made my point. The latest posters have degenerated into name calling and are obviously going to rant until the thread is eliminated. Too bad.

Got to run to lunch anyway.

reply to post by grandmakdw

Thank you for an honest answer, Atlanta is basically mono-racial. Nothing wrong with that. So what I saw was reality and not discriminatory hiring practices.

No problem, I wouldn't say that Atlanta is entirely mono-racial... the neighborhoods are pretty much segregated though. South ATL and West ATL are pretty much all black neighborhoods. There are a few predominantly white neighborhoods in East ATL such as Virginia Highlands and Little 5 points. Decatur would be the most diverse neighborhood I'd say in all of Atlanta.

The suburbs are mostly white people, Buckhead in the North part of ATL is all yuppie whites. The airport is pretty much the Southern tip of Atlanta though, I've known white people that took cabs to the airport because they were afraid to ride the train through South Atlanta, which is stupid to me..

At the same token I doubt there are many whites/blacks/hispanics working at the Tokyo airport, just because Tokyo is asian.

Here is an observation I've noticed over the years, most TSA employees are black no matter what cities airport it is, I do genuinely think for whatever reason TSA hires discriminately.

reply to post by grandmakdw
I've never hung out at the airport in Atlanta, but I've been to Atlanta more times than I can count and I assure you there are people of every racial background there. Maybe next time instead of making a mental poll of airport employees perhaps you should take a walk around downtown Atlanta. I have, and I can honestly say that Atlanta is a "melting pot" just like any other large American city. Besides, there is some interesting artwork you might enjoy during your walk.

reply to post by grandmakdw

I find your post interesting but seriously lacking in accurate context to what is known today as fact. I happen to be in a course this semester with geography as it relates to civilizations and the origin of our species. It's interesting and deep material. The issue of far more than skin separating the races isn't a theory though. Like I said, physical differences between Black, White and Asia (to get lazy..I know the proper terms) are well defined as medical facts.

That is how a pathologist can look at a pile of bones...with no skin, context to location or even time it was found for historic place ..and generally determine what racial group that set of bones belonged to. If Melanin was the case, there would be NO way to tell race by pathology. It'd all be a 'flip a coin..we're all intermixed' type of thing and it's absolutely not that way in medicine and anatomy.

I absolutely draw a fat line where people say race has anything to do with enhancing or limiting mental ability or potential. That's a crock and the nature of people at all levels of society from all races testifies to that better than anything else. To suggest we're "all basically the same" is using a grade school approach to political correctness though. It's not a factual approach to the sciences as we find them, IMO.

Originally posted by grandmakdw
reply to post by jimmyx

 

Are airports the first thing a traveler sees of a town and frequently the only thing they see of the town.

Image is perception and perception is reality to many.

Yes, it does give the perception and image of being a place where the melanin challenged need not apply.

and what research proves that is what people who fly into atlanta think...did you do a study? and is this negative or just the way it is? and if one flew into helsinki, would one assume that anyone that IS NOT pasty white need not apply for a job?
look, i know what you're sayiing...if travelers see all black people working in the atlanta airport, then they will think the entire town is nothing but black people, which then assumes that atlanta is not for any other different type of skin-toned human, and not one of those travelers would want to have anything to do with atlanta for that reason.

Originally posted by grandmakdw
reply to post by TDawgRex

 

You are so wrong about me being scared. I grew up in the military and spent over 50 years living in the military environment. From the time I can remember, neighbors, school mates, friends, the other side of the wall neighbors etc have been of every race. I was just shocked at the blatant racism I saw when walking through the airport.

Why are people denying that it does create an image of "other races" need not apply. Why can't people see that this is racism and really heinous racism that gives the impression of not wanting people of other races there except as tourists.

As I said, I felt very safe there and the people I encountered were very nice.

I was simply shocked at the obvious lack of diversity and then it led me to think of the image it is creating for the city.

Wait a second, a city where the majority of the population is black mostly has black people working at its airport? That is crazy. Also the idea that you could even guess the overall racial make of the 58,000 people that work their in your short time is beyond foolish.

I live about fifteen minutes from Hartsfield-Jackson. In fact my desktop weather applet is set to get my local weather from there. So... I know of what I speak.

There are plenty of employees at the airport who are not black. The problem is that most of the people you see in public there, as employees, are not employees of the airport or airlines - but of sub contractors. Sadly there have been more than a few scandals regarding that subject over the past few years. There seems to be a lot of nepotism in the choosing of these sub-contractors and about who these sub-contractors tend to hire. Every so often the local news will break a story about a convicted ( or even wanted ) felon being discovered as an airport employee... which leads to finding out that the sub-contractor who hired him is actually the brother, cousin, or former business associate of some local politician or airport executive... all leading to the discovery that the airport is paying a fortune for some basic function like sanitation or shuttle service.

The analogy, even if it is not PC, is that Hartsfield is basically run by what one might call "the local black Mafia". But this only applies, really, to the sub-contracted services.

Having said that, the employees that you don't see... the ones who work the flight-line, loading docks, etc. are much more racially diverse and have the better jobs.

So....all the white folks in Atlanta should be rounded up and forced to work at the airport to please you?

Or maybe all the white folks in Atlanta are just too lazy to work, maybe they're all on food stamps, and don't want a job....ever think of that.....No? didn't think so. Maybe you thought the reverse, and were surprised to see so many employed blacks?....been listen to ole Newtie?

So there must be some 'reason' to 'explain' why they were there in large numbers.....not that they live nearby and work at the closest job they can......ever try to commute 'cross town in Atlanta's traffic?

Or maybe there should be some government restriction on where people can live, a quota of black or white per so many sq. miles....


Why don't you, the next time you're so forced to use the Atlanta airport, apply for a job....maybe they'll give you one, ....then you'll know.

Atlanta has a large black population, so of course there are going to be a mainly black workforce. Are you afraid that white people are scarce in certain areas? You should probably get used to it.

I use the term melanin challenged because I personally find the term "white" offensive and racist. White people are varied in color from pink/peach to toffee/latte. And yes the pale among us have little melanin and can not be in the sun long and therefore are challenged.

Seriously? It's just a term, not to be taken literally. Everyone knows most white people are not the color white.

Actually Atlanta is highly diverse. On the northeast side we call this area "The United Nations" because in and given neighborhood a door to door salesman has to know 12 different languages to make any money. A Internationale air port is a reflection of the city its in but the ATL is a exception to the rule.