Decent read that
I thought it was very telling that Cobb County voted to reject public transport links with Atlanta city back in the 1960s and still has none
A truly ostrich view of the world
Itâs these little nuggets that let you inside the true mindset of the average Republican voter - both in terms of race and climate crisis denial
Attendances at professional sports in the US are overwhelmingly white but the feeling I get from afar is that baseball in particular is rapidly retreating into being an almost exclusively white manâs sport both in a playing and attending sense, the whole culture around it seems to be retreating into a field sport version of NASCAR
Which is tragic given how ethnic minority players have contributed so much to its history
Itâs amazing to see the success and fan culture that has grown so spectacularly in such a short time with new association football teams in non-traditional areas like Atlanta United and Western Sydney Wanderers
In 1965, five metro-Atlanta counties were asked to vote on a public transit system to link the city to the sprawl, and all but Cobb voted in favor. (Two more would back out in '71.) Here opposition was rooted in the notion that tethering white Cobb to black Atlanta would trigger an influx of crime in the area. Almost 50 years later the resultant bus and rail system, MARTAâwhich for decades has been referred to in certain racist circles as Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlantaâstill doesnât pass through the county.
In 1975, Kruse writes, Joe Mack Wilson, a state representative from north of Atlanta, went so far as to point to the Chattahoochee River, which separates Cobb from the city, and tell a reporter that his constituents âwish they could build forts [on the river banks] to keep people from coming up here.â Flash-forward to 2013 and Cobb County Republican Party chairman Joe Dendy echoed that sentiment, saying access to the new stadium was âall about moving cars in and around Cobb . . . where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.â
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Cobb voted for Clinton in 2016 the first win for a Democrat since Carter in 1976. Hopefully heralds a change in mindset in what was historically a ruby red Republican county.
Itâs close to becoming a majority minority county
This has triggered a further white flight even further north
Lucy McBath won a House district that takes in a lot of Cobb county last time
This was the first time a Democratic candidate had won there in the modern era
It was the same district Jon Ossoff had gone very close to winning in a special election in 2017
Cobb County is of course best known as the home of the WWFâs Big Boss Man (RIP)
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Indeed.
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It seems from your terse, snide comment that you disagree with me
Rather than making a short, snide comment in response, it would be better for you if you actually debated the point
A snide comment doesnât advance your position one iota and in fact only reinforces the impression for other readers that my point is largely correct
Comparing it to NASCAR is laughable.
What you speak of is not a new thing at all.
Baseball is simply becoming less important overall. There are numerous reasons for that.
Ice hockey is a game with a far greater dominance of white people, but the decline is not as severe. Because it was never as popular or culturally important as baseball.
The proportion of black players in baseball has declined significantly
The culture surrounding the game seems extremely white and rooted in an era when white dominance of US society was total
It does not seem a particularly welcoming place to blacks
There may be numerous reasons for the relative decline of baseball including the 1994 strike, the drugs scandal and the fact the sport itself is interminably boring, but that doesnât change the above realities
And this is a very common view
And if itâs a very common view, then itâs reality, because perception equals reality when it comes to the culture surrounding a sport
I imagine MLS does not seem a particularly welcoming place to hardcore Trumpists or Republicans
Thatâs because it isnât - the supporter culture in that league is overwhelmingly hostile to the ideology of Trump and the Republican party - even though there is no official dictat from MLS that it should be hostile to them - MLS is in fact now bending over backwards to appeal to right-wingers with ridiculous rules like banning anti-racism banners from stadiums
Couldnât be arsed. Go to America and report back for us.
You say you âcouldnât be arsedâ writing a reply of any substance to me
Yet you expect me to invest a large amount of money and time to travel to the USA in order to research a reply to you
That is quite the double standard
At least your expectations of my posts are clearly a lot higher than you have for your own
Which is nice to know
Youâve read one article on Atlanta and now are an expert on every MLB and MLS team and the entire sports. Go off and do some more research and come back to us. You might be able to tie together your little thesis then.
I never said I was an expert - youâve called me that
Thanks for the flattery
I would like to think I hold a reasonable amount of knowledge about US sports and their sociological context, not enough to make me an expert but enough to hold a reasonable and legitimate opinion
I merely advanced a commonly held opinion which is held by quite a lot of Americans and seems to make sense from what I have read, seen and heard over the years
And as I said, when it comes to the culture of a sport in terms of how it appeals to an ethnic or other minority or âout groupâ, the perception of that minority or âout groupâ generally equals reality
Rangers Football Club for instance does not have any rules against Roman Catholics or people who have an Irish identity but I would venture that few people who are Catholics or Irish would feel comfortable attending a match among the Rangers support
Iâm not comparing baseballâs âwhiteâ culture to Rangers in terms of the overtness of which the culture is reinforced but the general point holds
It certainly does seem to me that a sort of voluntary racial segregation or separation has been occurring among much of the white population of the US for many decades, probably for as long as the US has existed actually, white flight in other words
Baseball seems a sort of covert sporting outlet for this phenomenon and the likes of Curt Schilling would do nothing to persuade me otherwise
There is not much, if any overt racism in the culture of baseball but it seems that much of the general culture surrounding the game is very much rooted in an imagined past golden era when whites dominated US society
The perceived lack of welcome for the black community in baseball is largely down to things which are not said, but implied
I would have fears that in future decades, if the influence of right wing provocateurs and propagandists continues unchecked, the same sort of thing could happen with the GAA in this country - itâs imperative the GAA does not let this happen and acts as a force of integration, not separation