On the Atlanta Hawks and the black bogeyman

• Joeff Davis/CL File

The email written by Atlanta Hawks majority owner Bruce Levenson wasn’t racist, argues Torraine Walker, a writer and Midtown resident. But it says a lot about fear and metro Atlanta.

There is a hilarious scene in John Waters’ “Hairspray” where one character’s mother ventures into a black neighborhood to “rescue” her daughter, who has been sneaking out to dance to soul music with her black boyfriend at a local teen hangout.

On the way there, the mother becomes hysterical at being surrounded by black men who, in her mind, will rob her of her purse or her virtue. She is so panicked by her fear that she fails to notice that, except for one harmless drunk, the people she’s running from are sitting far away. They are laughing at the woman making a fool of herself.

The film is set in 1962. According to the email by outgoing Atlanta Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson, the mentality of the suburban white NBA fans in Atlanta hasn’t changed much since then.

The underlying argument that Levenson tries to make in the memo, either explicitly or not, is that too many black people in one place makes white suburbanites nervous. And that those suburbanites also seem to think that that behind every corner in Atlanta there is a black criminal waiting in the shadows to rob them.

Levenson said a couple of times in the email that he doesn’t agree with the fears of white fans, but that they have to be taken into consideration. It would be easy to make Levenson’s email out to be the work of a bigot and file it away as an isolated incident to be quickly forgotten. Instead of making him a scapegoat, why not examine why he felt this type of email should even be necessary?

Many cultures have their version of what’s known as a “folk devil.” Basically, it’s a community’s collective fears given a human form and endowed with malevolent capabilities blown up to mythological proportions. That irrational fear can take many forms.

In the South, historically, it only has one: The big black bogeyman. It has been that way since after the Civil War when racist propaganda labeled newly-freed slaves as unruly, unthinking violent beasts. This folk devil was a socioeconomic threat to Southern white male power that had to be ruthlessly oppressed and segregated.

It’s a mentality that still exists, sometimes subconsciously, but often vocally on the Internet or when those who believe that to be true talk amongst themselves. For those people, black people and neighborhoods are synonymous with crime, and a black crowd is a magnified version of their fear.

I’m not saying there isn’t the potential for crime in the city. But too often the perception overshadows the reality. I remember when Freaknik used to come to Atlanta and people would close their shops and leave town, as if the city was being invaded. Mostly it was college kids coming to party like college kids do anyplace else. Right-wing media has grown rich catering to white fear and conservative politicians across the country learned long ago that the big black bogeyman is a convenient tool to scare clueless suburbanites into voting for whatever security blanket legislation that will keep the nightmare away. It comes down to fear, and for a lot of white metro Atlantans, that fear is wrapped in dark skin.

I don’t think Levenson’s email was racist. It reads like the response of a businessman trying to adapt his business to the atmosphere of the town where his business is located. Unfortunately, much of the town’s atmosphere is based on getting as far away from its citizens of color as possible. It’s a large part of why MARTA expansion has been resisted by most counties surrounding Fulton and DeKalb. It’s why some communities seemingly want to break away from those counties and metro Atlanta — or just farther from the city — in a sort of modern-day secessionism.

Atlanta prides itself on being “the city too busy to hate.” But the flip side of that belief is that all too often, it’s the city too busy to face the racial issues buried just below its surface.