← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 4000 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2002-12-13
2002-12-13 18:32 | User Profile
I'm placing this article in Culture Wars because it- and the full series from which it's drawn- is one of the most explicit inside commentaries on the destruction of traditional American culture that I've seen.
Buford Highway, the setting for these Washington Post stories, has become an absolute hellhole. Those of us in Atlanta are constantly harangued to be grateful that our city is becoming the international dreamtown the business leaders promised when they bribed the Olympic committee into gracing us with the Games. Hull's series is an inside look- from the enemy perspective- of what awaits every mid-major size metro area in the country.
Or even every Lewistown, for that matter.
The full series:
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24908-2002Dec7.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...8-2002Dec7.html[/url]
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28269-2002Dec8.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...9-2002Dec8.html[/url]
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19644-2002Dec6.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...4-2002Dec6.html[/url]
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32660-2002Dec9.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...0-2002Dec9.html[/url]
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37511-2002Dec10.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2002Dec10.html[/url]
Highway A Haven for Immigrants [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28269-2002Dec8.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...9-2002Dec8.html[/url]
Buford Highway is the center of much of the immigrant activity in Atlanta.
Monday, December 9, 2002; Page A13
Buford Highway is home to the largest concentration of immigrant life in the Deep South. It begins at the north edge of Atlanta and climbs through two counties, a blinking jukebox of 15 miles of ethnic density: a taqueria next to Pho 96 next to Waffle House.
More than a physical stretch of road, Buford Highway -- the very name -- has come to symbolize the transformation of the white and black South.
In the 1970s, Atlanta began marketing itself as an international city, a New South renaissance town emerging from the racial tensions of the previous decade. But according to Susan Walcott, an urban geographer at Georgia State University, nothing could have prepared Atlanta for what began to happen along the improbable road called Buford Highway, U.S. 23, in the early '80s.
Two small, blue-collar white towns on Buford Highway, Chamblee and Doraville, began to absorb large numbers of Latinos and Asians. Social and refugee organizations targeted these areas for settlement because of cheap housing and signs of Atlanta's strengthening economy. Suddenly, Chamblee became known as Chambodia, and a city official joked at a council meeting that bear traps should be used to catch the Latino laborers to send them back to Mexico.
The cultural upheaval dominated civic discussion. Still, the immigrants kept coming, pocketing around Buford Highway. The upland Hmong settled in one neighborhood and the lowland Laotians in another.
By the '90s, Latinos, primarily from Mexico, came in the largest wave yet, lured by low-wage work in a boom economy. The thousands of apartment units built along the highway a generation earlier for young Atlanta singles became prime rental housing for immigrant families. Balconies originally designed for hibachis became crammed with tricycles, mops and satellite dishes.
Unlike other immigrant "ethnoburbs" in the United States, Buford Highway is a jumble of intermingled space, with a Mexican video store next to a Korean restaurant. The lives of all the characters of this series weave in and out of Buford Highway. No matter how affluent immigrants here become, or how far they flee into the suburbs, they all return to la Buford, as the Latinos call it, to reconnect to the touchstones of their early immigrant life, to the groceries, noodle shops, barbershops, accountants, apothecaries, churches and flea markets that remind them of home.
-- Anne Hull
é 2002 The Washington Post Company
2002-12-14 21:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by rban@Dec 14 2002, 21:02 As are Germanic neoNazi types, WEISBROT....
I don't know where the "Neo-Nazi" reference comes into play, but Germanic immigrants are not only more than welcome, they are the backbone of this country, for Germans (one example of the Germanic) make up the largest signle ethnic group among Whites in America. Unfortunately, because our country only allows non-Whites into the country, Germanics will be hard-pressed to find the welcome mat that the immigration department rolls out just for them.
2002-12-14 22:11 | User Profile
Originally posted by weisbrot@Dec 14 2002, 06:11 > Originally posted by rban@Dec 14 2002, 01:32 I read through some of the articles, and one thing became even more crystal clear: the Indians are by far the best of the lot. They are true Aryans.**
They are unwelcome.**
There is something about Indians that makes my skin crawl. The dark skin with the straight black hair and Euro-like features combined with the funny odor just make for an appalling experience.
We do not need them in America.