# Will the Real Black People of Atlanta Please Stand Up

- Link: https://exclusiveaccess.net/will-the-real-black-people-of-atlanta-please-stand-up/
- Published: 2012-06-20T22:46:09-04:00
- Author: EAN

I, like many of you, watched in complete horror as a cable network debuted yet another
reality drama based on black life as it purportedly unfolds in the ATL. I will refrain
from mentioning the name of this show because if you saw it then you already know
what I’m referring to and if you didn’t then I do not wish to entice or encourage
you to seek it out. In fact, the more that I reflect on my feelings about what I
witnessed Monday evening, the more I realize that my disgust lies not just with 
that particular show alone, but with the way that the city which was once a symbol
of black progress is now being portrayed in the media as a whole.

Series after series I have watched with great chagrin as popular reality TV franchises
select the jewel of the south to lift the veil of mystique behind the city’s affluent
and create what ultimately amounts to a ratings bonanza for the networks and a cash
windfall for the producers.

Time after time, executive producers from L.A. and New York, where I currently reside-
bring their camera crews and A/V techs into our city to create what inevitably amounts
to the Jerry Springer equivalent of the franchise’s northern counterparts. A series
that historically featured the diamond encrusted lives of wealthy spouses debuted
an Atlanta version of the series where the wealth was elusive and spouses were no
longer a requirement. More recently, a show about popular entertainers and the women
who love them premiered an Atlanta-based installment where the term popular was 
subjective and women suggested that other women should be put “on the track,” a 
prostitution reference that is particularly damaging for a city that is already 
noted for being one of the largest hubs for child sex trafficking in the world. 
To put it mildly I was offended. To state I plainly, I was aghast.

How is it that a city which was once the crowning jewel in the story of black America
has allowed itself to be positioned as the melting pot of black affliction? The 
Atlanta that I knew and grew up in was one of great pride and self-respect. Our 
achievements were known across the globe, as people from far and wide would often
respond, “Wow, I hear that black people are really doing their thing down there,”
when I would tell them I’m from Atlanta. Today that assertion is often met with “
Yoooo….I hear Atlanta’s got them bangin’ strip clubs.” …Really?!?

So for those who seem to have forgotten who we really are, I’d like to offer a brief
REALITY check on the Real Black People of Atlanta:

If you’d like to make a reality show about prominent housewives, I’d suggest doing
a retrospective on the wife of Alonzo Herndon- a former slave turned businessman
who went on to found the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, became the city’s largest
black property owner by 1900, and made history as Atlanta’s first black millionaire.
His first wife’s name was Adrienne Herndon and she was a teacher at Atlanta University.
I’m no screen writer, but it seems to me that being the wife of a “new negro” in
a post slavery south would be wrought with drama and ratings drivers.

Looking for something more current? Sure. How about doing a docu-series on the Russell
wives? We could call it “Love and Hard Hats.” Herman J. Russell successfully built
one of the nation’s most profitable minority-owned business empires whose construction
and real estate projects include the famed Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport,
the Georgia Dome, Phillips Arena, and Turner Field. Lovette Twyman Russell, wife
of the company’s current CEO, Michael Russell, is stylish, sassy, and savvy. I’ve
never met her, but I’d bet she’s brimming with reality-worthy one-liners and sound
bites.

If music shows are more your speed, I’d think that the hometown of LaFace Records,
the 1989 music start-up that led Atlanta to be dubbed the “New Motown” and gave 
the world such iconic acts as Outkast, Toni Braxton, Usher, TLC, Goodie Mob, and
[Pink](http://ticketmaster.evyy.net/c/4256257/264167/4272?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ticketmaster.com%2Fpnk-tickets%2Fartist%2F718655)
would be overrun with stories about making it in hip hop without cringe worthy commentary
about feminine hygiene product usage and an entire cast of beautiful, distressed
women fighting to stay in relationships with disinterested men.

I’m not going to digress into a history lesson on the great African-Americans that
call Atlanta home–although I could easily do so since we boast such historically
significant and societal shifting institutions as the nation’s largest consortium
of African-Americans in higher education- the Atlanta University Center, Ebenezer
Baptist Church, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Apex Museum, Atlanta
Daily World- the oldest African-American daily newspaper still in circulation, and
the Sweet Auburn Historic District- the incubator for early black entrepreneurship
and the southern hotspot for the likes of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.

My point is only that the city that has had an uninterrupted succession of black
mayors since 1974, beginning with the first black mayor of a major southern city,
Maynard Jackson, to present mayor Kasim Reed, and the city that birthed Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and gave rise to the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington,
baseball great Hank Aaron and modern day mogul Tyler Perry doesn’t have to settle
for being the butt of any reality franchise’s humiliating and reputation-damaging
joke.

Our REALITY is progressive, proud, prestigious, and prominent. No, it is not squeaky
clean, but it is not an eye sore in the American tapestry either. We as Atlantans,
black Atlantans, the Real Black People of Atlanta, whether we currently reside there
or benefitted from its nurturing for only finite periods of our lives, should no
longer sit by and allow our city’s rich legacy–our race’s rich legacy–to be marred
in the name of discount entertainment.

The [Website of the National Registry ](http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/atlanta/africanamerican.htm)
says it best:

> “the story of the largest southern city can be told through the experiences of
> its largest ethnic minority.”

What do the stories in these new crop of so-called reality shows tell our children,
our nation, the world about us?

That Georgia peach that appears at the end of these shows is rotten. It is time 
that we come together to throw it out. Exactly how we go about that task remains
unclear but if there is anything that our legacy teaches us, it is that we truly
can accomplish anything.

** Follow Kelly Smith Beaty on Twitter: [ www.twitter.com/@KellySBeaty ](http://www.twitter.com/@KellySBeaty)**

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