Unlike their
previous migrations (e.g., New York, Boston, Miami), the majority of Atlanta’s
Afro-Caribbean population has settled in suburban communities surrounding the
city. Atlanta is a relatively small city at the center an expansive metropolitan
area.[1]
I found that many Afro-Caribbean migrants bought homes in the surrounding
suburbs, as far as an hour outside of the city limits, rather than in the city
of Atlanta. Though they complained about the long commute into the city, the
traffic, and the missed the convenience of public transportation (particularly
by New York-origin migrants), they claimed that it was all worth it for the
opportunity to own a home.
Afro-Caribbeans
live throughout the 10-county metro area. Their residential dispersion may be due to the Atlanta area’s urban sprawl. After
four decades of nonstop expansion, the Atlanta metro area has become the
epitome of modern urban sprawl—a vast expanse of housing tracts and condominium
and apartment complexes, with shopping centers, mini-malls, convenience stores,
and office parks scattered chaotically across the landscape (Keating 2001: 7).[2]
The majority of Afro-Caribbean settlement has been in the eastern Atlanta
suburbs, with the largest concentrations in the towns of Stone Mountain and
Lithonia. Both towns are located within DeKalb County, which is home to the
largest concentration of Afro-Caribbeans in metro Atlanta, with almost half of
the region's Caribbean population according to the 2000 US Census. Communities
with significant Afro-Caribbean populations in the western suburbs include
Powder Springs and Douglasville. In this study, most of the Afro-Caribbeans
lived in Fulton County while the second largest concentration lived in DeKalb
County.
It is
important to note that often when I asked Afro-Caribbeans in this study where
they lived, they typically referred to the county that they lived in. For
example, they would say they lived in Cobb County rather than saying they lived
in the town of Powder Springs (located in Cobb County). The metropolitan area
is broken into a 10-county region. Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton
are the five original counties, and continue to be the core of the metro area,
and Cherokee, Douglas, Fayette, Henry and Rockdale make up the remaining
counties. This is likely due to the fact that the counties that make up metro
Atlanta area have significant governmental authority, creating noticeable differences between
counties. For example, although DeKalb County and Fulton County border each other
and both contain part of the city of Atlanta, Fulton County has higher taxes
than DeKalb County. This became clear to me after I bought the same bar stool
in two different Target stores---one in Fulton County and another in DeKalb
County—and noticed that the store in Fulton County had a higher total cost than
the one in DeKalb County. It is also likely that people in Georgia find it
easier to relate to the larger geographic region represented by a county than a
smallish town no one may have heard of.
Atlanta boasts
what I call a “bling-bling culture,” a cultural economy that endorses the
ownership of expensive, ostentatious clothing, jewelry, homes, and cars. In
Atlanta’s bling-bling culture, possessing these items, or appearing to possess
them—by renting, leasing, or purchasing cheaper imitations of luxury items
(e.g., buying a fake Louis Vuitton handbag, leasing a Lamborghini, or renting a
mansion), allows a person to project to others an image of success, whether it
be real or false. In New York City, for example, many view owning a Manhattan
apartment or condominium, particularly in the neighborhoods of the Upper East
Side, Tribeca, and Battery City Park, as a symbol of wealth and success,
whereas in Atlanta, living in a gated community or a McMansion—large (and in
some cases palatial) homes that have become a standard of living for Atlanta’s
middle-class to upper-class—is a symbol of wealth and success. Another distinct
feature of Atlanta’s bling-bling culture is that a large number of its
consumers are black. If you were to look inside the upscale shops of New York’s
famed Fifth Avenue or its high-priced apartments on Park Avenue, you would
likely see predominantly white faces; however, if you were to look inside the
upscale shops in Atlanta’s Phipps Plaza or in its many McMansions, you would
definitely see a relatively large number of black faces. Because of the large
number of wealthy blacks in Atlanta, it is not uncommon in Atlanta to see a
number of black people driving luxury cars, shopping in high-end boutiques, and
living in mansions. In a CBS News report on black return migration to the
South, it alludes to Atlanta’s bling-bling culture, stating that “black
suburban Atlanta may look like Beverly Hills, but it's Mecca for many new
migrants who are buying homes worth from $200,000 to more than $2 million. And
new subdivisions keep sprouting, marketed especially to blacks” (Leung 2009:
1). Atlanta’s south DeKalb County rivals Prince George County in Maryland as
one of most affluent black communities in US (Bullard 2000). But, you would not
likely find the culture of ostentatiousness there that you see in Atlanta.
Atlanta’s bling-bling culture is greatly influenced by not only its large
number of wealthy and middle class but also its large number of black
celebrities, leading to it commonly being referred to as “Black Hollywood.” No
other “chocolate” city (another name for cities with a large black population)
has such a large mix of black wealth, power, and celebrity like Atlanta has.
During the year
that I lived in Atlanta, I saw more luxury cars (many times with a black driver
behind the wheel) than the entire eight years that I lived in New York. Traveling
around Atlanta, especially in the neighborhood of Buckhead where I lived, you
would likely see many Mercedes, BMVs, Jaguars, and other luxury cars on the road.[3]
I saw so many that it seemed as if the cars were being given away. The bling-bling
culture was also visible in day-to-day life. Going out in Atlanta was like a
daily pageant of what kind of expensive jewelry, high-end clothing labels, and
luxury cars that one had or appeared to have. Several New York-origin
Afro-Caribbean migrants that I spoke to claimed that they didn’t like the
ostentatious behavior, or the need to “show out” in Atlanta, pointing to
examples of seeing while out in public of people “dressing up” to go to the
mall or using a limo to arrive at the local clubs. They said that they didn’t
see this ostentatious, wealth-advertising behavior as much in New York as they
did in Atlanta. It may very well be that they weren’t as close to these kinds
of wealth in New York as they are in Atlanta.
However,
despite how they felt about its ostentatiousness, many Afro-Caribbeans moved to
Atlanta to participate in and enjoy parts of its bling-bling culture, for
example, living in McMansions and driving luxury cars. It mattered to the
migrants that living in Atlanta gave them the chance to have things that
others—particularly family and friends still living in the communities that
they left—saw as symbols of success. Atlanta was viewed as offering better
opportunities for homeownership, due to its lower housing costs, than
traditional Caribbean destinations in the North (specifically New York). Many
of the Afro-Caribbeans that migrated from New York specifically told me that
they were attracted to Atlanta because you could get “more house for your
money” there, compared to New York. Many migrants reported that they were able
to buy a large house in Atlanta for the same amount of money as a one-bedroom
condo in New York, or a small house in its outer suburbs. Dwight, a Kittian
migrant who moved from New York with his wife, told me that he liked how much
one could get in terms of property size in Atlanta. He and his wife initially
relocated to the southern city to start a family and wanted a house with enough
space for them and their future children. When they lived in New York, they
owned a small townhome in the Bronx. But, when they moved to Atlanta, they were
able to afford a large three-bed/three-bath home, featuring a spacious master
bedroom suite, basement, open kitchen living space, dining room, formal living
room, garage, and sizeable backyard. Atlanta offers a variety of housing
options, such as gated communities, McMansions, townhomes, condos, and rental
apartments, to black residents, of varying socioeconomic classes, from the
working class to the upper class. I saw an example of this firsthand in 2007
when I visited my best friend who at the time was a fulltime graduate student
in Atlanta. She was able to rent, with a roommate who was working as a teacher,
a two-bed/two-bath townhome with a garage in a gated community in East Atlanta
for $1225/month, while at the same time I (also a fulltime graduate student) was
renting, with a roommate who was working as a paralegal, a two-bed/one-bath
apartment in a brownstone in Brooklyn for over $1500/month.
Contemporary
immigration research has revealed a growing trend of immigrant suburban
settlement since the 1990s (Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008). More
immigrants are settling in the suburbs than in the cities of the 100 largest
metro areas, opposed to the image of immigrant enclaves in cities where there
are services for them (Singer 2008). As
many new jobs and housing opportunities developed in the suburbs, immigrants
have followed and settled in the suburbs, with many immigrant newcomers
bypassing major cities and moving directly in suburban communities. In Atlanta,
this is especially the case given the high cost of living in the city limits
for people wanting a large home, or just a home with enough space to
accommodate a family.
[1] The Atlanta metro area had a 2010 total
population of 5,268,860, while the city had a total population of 420,003.
[2] Atlanta led
the nation in residential construction between 1990 and 1996. Most new jobs and
newcomers in Atlanta in the 1990s settled outside the city (Bullard 2000: 9).
[3] There were a string of luxury car
dealerships within a mile of each other on Piedmont Avenue, which was main road
closest to my apartment.
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