Why I Am Homesick

Beautiful Atlanta skyline from Donald Glover's Atlanta series

If you've ever walked between terminals in Hartsfield Jackson instead of taking the plane train, you're sure to have seen the African exhibit along the walkway. When I walk it while traveling through the airport, I am always subdued into silence. Its a striking exhibit with beautiful sculptures, incredible photographs, and a soundtrack of African folk music. The soundtrack in particular is powerful as many a person has been silenced by its booming drums and its harmonious melodies. You hear people comment about it every time.

African Heritage exhibit in between terminals at Hartsfield Jackson

It seems odd as to why there is this incredible but slightly out of place exhibit sitting beneath the world's busiest airport. What does Africa have to do with Atlanta? Why is this what the city choose to display before the world?

To put it in simple terms, it's the city's heritage. While my dad and I can trace our family history back to Italy and then across the alps to Scandinavia (a history that spans thousands of years), most black Atlantans can only trace their history back to just over a hundred years ago to a slave market in Savannah, Mobile, or Starkville. So when I hear the passerby comment on what Africa has to do with Atlanta, I wish they understood that the exhibit isn't just on African culture but on a city's lost heritage.

Georgia State Capitol "the Gold Dome" with accompanying racist confederate statue 

Recently, I've been homesick. When I think about home though, the picture is bleak. Recently, the Georgia State Senate passed a bill that could prevent same-sex couples from adopting a child. My district's state senator choose to support this bill, too. So logically, my head wracks itself to understand why my heart is homesick. Why should I miss a place that cannot see past the sex of the person I love? If the populace back home can't accept me for who I am then why should I call Atlanta a home?       

When people think of Georgia, of the deep south, they think of guns, white trash, and poverty. They group us up as a "deep" red state and say, "Oh Georgia, that's Trump territory." But let's be honest with ourselves! Killer Mike loves his guns just as much as Nathan Deal. Atlanta is a city of 5.5 million, but over ten million people live in the state. A substantial proportion of the state is a left behind rural pocket of white people that city folks call trash. And of course, every place in Georgia is marked with poverty: the homeless that line Peachtree Street, the trailer park behind the country club, the shanties underneath the plantation home. These simple thoughts of guns, rednecks, and poverty are ungenerous, but they're not wrong either!

Yet even still, despite all these sound turnoffs, I am homesick. I yearn for the warm sun. I ache for the long nights with loud crickets. I seek out a drive through the city with its zippy lights at night. I dream of the luscious green trees and cool shaded forests. I think about the people I left.

I left my family of course, but they are always a phone call away, so the people I miss aren't quite my friends or family then. What I miss takes me back to what is beneath the airport with the emphasis on beneath. What I miss isn't pretty to talk about; in fact, its ugly and most southern mamas would discourage such conversation matter, but I miss race. I miss it so much that it tugs at my heart.

Demographics map of Atlanta with a clear divide. 

And as you know, Atlanta is no angel when it comes to race and race relations. The city is one of the most racially divided places in the world. A black person born in the southside has a very small chance of making it out of the southside. A New York Times article in fact reported about how acute the racial divide is in Atlanta in 2013. According to the article, one's geography in the city predicts their ability to climb the income ladder. The divide is obvious too. Its Olympic village, once the eye of the world, has become surface parking lots surrounded by neighbourhoods that white people call the ghetto. The city's prized position is its airport which sits on top an African heritage installation about the people who keep the city running at unjust wages. The irony and symbolism is start.

Outsiders call Atlanta a black city. Americans call Georgians racist. Politicians colour the state red. Republicans outline the city in blue (albeit with a red pen). People love to characterise my home so much, but the other reality is that you don't have to dig too far into the clay to find something special. I grew up in a MLK generation: my friends were of every race, ethnicity, gender, and colour. I shared bubble tea on Pleasant Hill, listened to Outkast below Spaghetti Junction, marched for women's rights to the Gold Dome, and cheered every autumnal Friday under the lights. I did so with such a broad and encompassing set of friends that it took me to leave home to realise such.

So I am homesick. I am homesick for a place and generation where we acknowledge our faults while simultaneously strive to better ourselves along with our brothers and sisters. A place where we care about each other and wish to lift each other in a likeness to that of God while also struggling to understand one another. I come from the land of Martin Luther King and Jim Crow. I come from a city of black power and a state of white might. I come from the Migos and Luke Bryan, from Childish Gambino and Jimmy Carter. I come from white picket fence and grit. 

MLK's home on Auburn Ave

These are my roots. And while I struggle to come to terms with what my home means to me, I will forever be grateful for the lessons its taught me around the table of brotherhood.