The city’s Public Information Officer Casie Yoder informs us that the city’s recently completed “Diversity Project results PowerPoint presentation from the Aug. 4 City Commission work session is now available here. The full written report is being finalized and will be available later this month.”

Christian Perry, a master’s candidate at GSU in the Public Studies program and a Decatur High grad, who is interning at the city presented some of his findings at Monday’s Decatur City Commission meeting.  You can view the presentation HERE.  Also, Decaturish has a summary of Perry’s presentation HERE.

Among other items, the deck shows that Decatur’s white and “non-black minority” groups have steadily grown from 1990 to 2010, while the black population declined, which is inverse to Atlanta’s race trending over that period.  Decatur is also getting older, as 25-34 year-olds registered the largest decline from 2000-2010 and 55-64 year-olds registered the largest increase percentage-wise.  The report also shows that Oakhurst and WInnona Park have seen large increases in median household income over the last 10 years.

That just scratches the surface.  There’s much greater detail in the report breaking down the changing racial makeup of the city by neighborhood and age.  It also looks at the city’s same-sex city households vs. other Atlanta cities and DeKalb and “educational attainment” over the last 30 years.

As recent DM conversations attest, it’s tough to say, “Support local business” without being accused of being an elitist more concerned with fads than with the plight of the working poor.

Of course it’s not that simple. The value of supporting your neighbors and keeping money in your own community is, historically, neither a fad nor a dalliance of the affluent. Rather, it’s been a cornerstone of survival for the working class.

Exhibit A: This catchy tune from the Reverend J.M. Gates, a 20s-era African American preacher from right here in the ATL.

What a toe-tapper! I don’t think there’s a single thing I don’t love about it, because it shows that promoting local has very little to do with elitism or trendy hipsters and almost everything to do with the basic human values of community building and survival. In short, money spent in one’s own community is like Karma. It comes back to you in other ways.

Or, in the parlance of Decatur, it’s an investment in both economic sustainability and social sustainability.

Being pro-local is not the same thing as being anti-affordable goods. It’s not an either/or proposition, especially in an urban context like Decatur’s. It’s simply an acknowledgment that, when times turn tough, chain retail (which, in our modern world, most often occupies a big box) has no allegiance to you. Your neighbors, on the other hand, do. There’s nothing wrong with doing what we can to keep those connections strong, even when our present reality makes big box shopping a necessity for a whole lot of people.

A trip to Walmart or Target is an acknowledgement of the present. Some money spent with Decatur businesses is an investment in the future. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason we can’t allow people the freedom to do both if they’re so inclined.

Do these homes frighten you? Does their lack of pretension offend your sensibilities? Do their modest proportions fill you with an unsettling sense of dread and leave you counting down the days until an old couch or broken refrigerator winds up on the porch?

Do you fear the criminal element surely lurking inside?

My gut says no. In fact, if anything, I’d guess that most folks would consider these homes a fairly representative sample of the charm we Decaturites like to boast about. And that’s ironic, given that every one of them–along with hundreds of others not shown–would be illegal to build under our current zoning code.

Say whah? Read the rest of this entry »

Tom sends along a link to a recent Census article in the Washington Post, which points out that affluent blacks and Hispanics throughout the U.S. live in neighborhoods noticeably poorer than low-income whites.

The two exceptions are in Washington D.C. and Atlanta, where affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods on par with the neighborhoods of low-income whites.  Why the exception?

Prince George’s County near Washington and DeKalb County outside Atlanta are home to many African Americans with college degrees and good incomes, pushing up the average for their regions.

As a result, blacks and Hispanics in both cities who earned more than $75,000 lived in neighborhoods that were virtually the same as neighborhoods populated by whites earning under $40,000, as measured by average income, poverty rates, education levels, home values and housing vacancies.

“Income, and being successful in class terms, does not necessarily put you in a different kind of neighborhood,” said John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who analyzed census data in his study released Tuesday.

The article doesn’t provide much in the way of answers, Tom sums up the article nicely when he says, “…above all, it seems to highlight the error of simplistic notions about why people choose housing that they do and what policies affect those choices.”

Interesting to think about in relation to our recent discussions about race in Decatur.