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Notes -
There's some good news there, as of June homicide rates are down 30% year over year (although still a ways above the 2017 nadir). Homicide rates will probably always be well above, say, San Francisco or New York, though.
But yeah, it's an interesting city. I remember there was a black cultural commentator on Twitter a few years ago who made the point that because of the longstanding Georgia black middle class, and the drain of college graduates from across the south, the infrastructure is in place in Atlanta for a lot of state and federal initiatives designed in the civil rights era to work better than they do elsewhere. So stuff like affirmative action in contracting or construction, which is a big racket in a lot of cities in the deep south, is still corrupt in Atlanta but the baseline quality of the black-owned firms is much higher, you've got some guy called like Carl Smith IV whose family have been in the business for 75 years bidding for stuff. The talent pool for things like city government is much better, so institutions are stronger. And as you suggest, black people who do very well and go to Ivy schools etc come back to Atlanta for things like the dating pool and social scene, whereas those from elsewhere are more likely to stay in New York or Los Angeles. There also seems to be a lot more civic pride than exists in Baltimore or St Louis.
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