Re: Making pictures

On 9/27/07, li_sasxsek@nutter.net <li_sasxsek@...> wrote:
> I don't like picking on hometowns,
And yet you bit the bullet and forced yourself to do so:

> that pit known as Atlanta
Good job.

> It is very much the "real" South.
And now you're insulting the entire region!  Excellent.

Everything is relative, I suppose.  But there are marked differences
between Atlanta and the rest of Georgia; for one thing, there's the
large number of non-Caucasians.   Heck, downtown in the city proper,
Whites are a minority.  That's a far cry from some parts of the state
where discussions of race and racism are purely theoretical because
nobody's ever actually *seen* a Black person (except maybe on the
/'ti:vi:/).  Whereas in my daily travels I encounter people who hail
from Ethiopia (took the opportunity to learn some Amharic), India,
Pakistan, Iran, China . . . the UK, Spain, Australia . . . and of
course Central and South America, which is a shorter trip.

It's true that, despite having the busiest airport in the world,
Atlanta is certainly nowhere near as cosmopolitan as New York or LA,
much less London or Paris, no matter what the tourism board would have
you believe.  And it still has its stereotypical Southern aspects, bad
as well as good.  I mean, Stone Mountain is part of metro Atlanta, and
every Saturday in the summer you can find the good ol' boys whoopin'
and hollerin' as they circle the mountain in their pickups with their
Confederate flags flying.

But if you think Atlanta is at all typical, you should go spend some
time in, say, McRae (population in the low three digits, 30 miles to
get to a Wal-Mart, doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry).  Or Hahira
/hej'haj.r@/, which is a little more sophisticated by dint of being
closer to the Interstate.  Those are much more along the lines of what
people think of when they think of the South...

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

Replies