Atlanta is touted to be the Black Mecca of the United States and the home for Black professionals. But it’s now hard for Blacks to get jobs in the city.
“The city’s jobless rates were 11.5 percent for Black residents and 2.5 percent for white residents in 2017, the most recent year of comparative data, according to the Brookings Institution,” Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. This while the unemployment rate for African Americans, at 6 percent, a historic low
“We are still not in a place where we should be celebrating,” said Andre Perry, a Brookings fellow. “Put it this way, if these numbers reflected whites, they would be up in arms. When you look under the hood, Blacks are still in a recession.”
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The rest of Georgia isn’t experiencing the same trend. In fact, the jobless rate in all of Georgia for African Americans during that same period was actually lower, at 11.5%. The rate was still, however, considerably higher than for whites.
There was a time when things were good in Atlanta for Black professionals.
“The first time I visited Atlanta was in 1994 and this was the place to be,” Dionne A. Hampton, a North Carolina native, told the Philadelphia Tribune. “So many Black people were living in these nice homes in places like Stone Mountain. Everybody was in real estate or retiring early. The Olympics were coming. Atlanta was the Black Mecca.”
