Home > DeKalb.Talk > Archives > 2007 > February > 28 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USWas Clarkston misjudged?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After the New York Times ran an article about a plucky group of refugee kids in Clarkston, residents felt their town was misrepresented. Read AJC story
The soccer team — a mix of kids from war-ravaged countries including Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia and Kosovo — was having a tough time finding a permanent field to play on.
The story said Clarkston Mayor Lee Swaney, who is white, issued a decree last summer banning soccer in a town park.
“There will be nothing but baseball down there as long as I am mayor,” Swaney said.
The New York Times article went on to say:
In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game.”
“But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. … Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people.”
It pointed to “some town residents, opposing players and even the parents of those players …hurling racial epithets and making it clear they resent the mostly African team.” The story noted that Clarkston is in a region “where passions run high on the subject of illegal immigration” and people don’t know or don’t care that the Fugees are in the United States legally.
City Clerk Tracy Ashby said she fielded about 300 e-mails, 40 letters and more than 50 calls from people around the country criticizing the town and suggesting that it was run by racists. That’s a lot of feedback for a town with about 7,000 residents that covers 1.1 square miles.
(The New York Times article is available online for a fee from the New York Times archive. The text can also be found with a Google search.)
Is the Times right to represent the mayor as discriminatory?
Or has the town been unfairly represented?
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Comments
By jsc
February 28, 2007 4:58 PM | Link to this
Who gives a fig what the NY Times thinks?
By John
March 1, 2007 9:35 AM | Link to this
When I first saw this story title in the AJC site, it wasn’t too hard to connect the dots. Let’s see, New York Times doing a story criticizing Georgians…just who would the paper be criticizing? Blacks? Nah. Orientals? Nope. Anyone other than the Southern Anglo natives? Never. They were critical of the WHITES! The bad ol’ whites mistreating poor, misunderstood minorities from the lower latitudes. I chuckle every times the Jew York Times tries to get me to subscribe to their paper. Will it ever happen? Never.
By Actually Read It
March 1, 2007 12:15 PM | Link to this
Ok, did the ban happen, yes. Did Clarkston’s mayor actually say such balderdash, yes. Its not just quotes: its also ACTIONS that HAPPENED! Dont blame NYTimes for reporting a story and then try to cover up with pie all over the farce—after the fact.
Its not about the races of races who live in Clarkston—The article was about the team and team manager efforts to keep this team going without funding—and the struggle they had as the mayor of Clarkston withdrew the field for them to practice at. The AJC likes to make it sound like another racist article but it wasnt. AJC should link the actual articles before putting blogs up.
By mmm
March 1, 2007 12:47 PM | Link to this
It is complicated. I have lived in and just outside of Clarkston for about 15 years. I know “old timers”, some of whom moved away. I know some of the folks involved—-and I think that the reporter was not very sensitive to how complicated it is to navigate a large number of diverse people to a sense of shared community. The people of Clarkston have worked very hard, but not everyone is happy all the time with every compromise made. I’m sure that over time Luma expressed frustration—she is trying to pull off a very difficult mission. It was easier, lazier, and a more “sell-able” story to paint a single villian. Even if these are only people that each believe themselves to be doing the right thing. At least they continue to talk to each other—-that is what is really needed.
By Another Reader
March 1, 2007 2:51 PM | Link to this
By Confused
March 1, 2007 3:11 PM | Link to this
What a confusing article. The first half makes the case that the NYT got it all wrong by saying there are tensions in Clarkston, and the second half makes it seem as if there are lots of tensions in Clarkston. Which is it?
Also, something I don’t understand after reading both articles. If the Fugees soccer team wasnt banned from playing in the town’s parks, how come they had to go a City Council meeting and get a special vote to play in the town’s parks? Couldnt they just have gone to the park and started playing, if there was no ban? Am I missing something? I think if you have to go to a city council meeting to ask for a vote to play soccer in a park, that means there’s a ban. And then the mayor kicks them off again because some men are playing soccer in the park. I thought the Fugees were boys. That doesnt make any sense either. Seems like he had it in for them for whatever reason.
Anyway, this article seems like sour grapes to me, plus it’s confusing as all get out.
By Susan Garrett
March 1, 2007 4:08 PM | Link to this
I have lived in Clarkston for seven years and know most of the people who have been quoted in the media. The mayor means well and is not a racist at heart. But, he is old school, does not have great communication skills, and often comes across as heavy handed. Even the NYT piece acknowledged that he had done good things for the city and the immigrant population such as bringing in the new police chief, who is awesome. It’s a blue collar town and has its fair share of wingnuts of all ethnicities. But overall it’s a pretty good place to live, and much more tolerant than the NYT would have you believe. The middle class subdivision I live in could not possibly be more diverse. Most people actually try very hard to get along; those who don’t at least leave each other alone. I thought the AJC article seemed truncated as if an editor had cut large parts of it, but it did tell an important story missing from the NYT: that there are many former refugees who have remained in Clarkston as home and business owners, and they are an integral part of the city and generally well accepted. It’s far from perfect but here we cannot hide from racial and ethnic tensions like people do in the white AND black suburbs of Atlanta. The bottom line is that unless you’ve walked in our shoes you probably cannot really know what you’re talking about.
By mmm
March 1, 2007 4:19 PM | Link to this
Confused—Luma needed to know her team could practice at certain specific times—and that she could bring portable goal posts. So this is a little bit more than whoever get there first keeps the field. There are always issues of liability as well—so having a conversation with the City Council was a neighborly thing to do. My understanding is that City Hall started an organized baseball league. The debate seemed to be over whether a football program might also be started by the city—and whether that means that they can’t promise practice time to the Fugees. Even after the NYT article the city council agreed that Luma could use the field until the end of the year—-but they also apparently promised that a football program might start next September. So a question remains whether which program would get priority, or whether the timing would allow both to use the field. This is obviously frustrating if you need to count on having a field within walking distance of where these kids live, but it is also the nature of communities that just because someone wants a foodball program doesn’t mean that that is assured of happening unless volunteers and participants step forward to organize it.
By Allen (for real)
March 1, 2007 4:28 PM | Link to this
I “actually read it” and the letters to the editor (including one fatuous New Yorker’s insinuation that all Clarkston residents were racists because of what he read—I wonder how we should interpret the gunning down of a black groom in NYC last year). As a journalist the one thing that was immediately obvious to me was that the “reporter” had written 3/4 of the story before he ever got on a plane here. It’s rather obvious when an angle has been decided on and quotes and events cherry-picked to support it. As for the NYT’s defense of this “fine” journalism, well, they’re still defending Judy Miller’s not-encumbered-by-reality Iraq reporting as well.
In other words, the NYT article makes a nice basis for the Hollywood script it was apparently always intended to be, but anyone believing it’s a true picture of Clarkston probably needs to be reminded that the Dukes of Hazzard was not, in fact, a documentary.
A few specific points: —no, you can’t just go out and play on Armistead Field, or the baseball field, at Milam Park. Permission is needed. An interesting sidenote—the NYT carefully did not show any views of the sign at Armistead park that depicts a soccer ball—in other words, soccer is not some foreign concept in Clarkston, as the NYT would imply. —the NYT reporter’s key quote of the Mayor was lifted out of context from an AJC article published a year earlier, with no acknowledgement. This borders on plagiarism, not “fine journalism.” —the NYT made no effort to develop what would have been a good, if less Hollywood story, placing the Fugees in the context of the larger story of legal and illegal immigration into metro ATL and the even larger story of Atlanta’s sometimes painful expansion via influx over the past 30 years or so. A better reporter would have done this, but it would have taken actual effort. —Sure, you can find people in Clarkston who will say inappropriate things. Probaly in the NYT newsroom too. To its credit, the AJC did this, at least secondhand, but they presented a true picture of Clarkston rather than just seeking out the malcontents and ignoring other voices as the NYT did.
I moved to Clarkston 9 years ago BECAUSE of the diversity. Many people have. Statistically, it’s the most diverse place in all of GA. That’s not always going to go smoothly, especially since that happened in less than 20 years. But one fact compleletly left out of the story in the NYT, though pointed out in the LTEs, is that our community supports a wonderful International School—not an enclave for the children of wealthy expats but a place where refugee and non-refugee children learn and play together every day. Some of the kids in the NYT story go to that school. I’m proud to say mine do too, proud to live in Clarkston, and proud NOT to subscribe to the New York Times.
By NRB
March 1, 2007 4:43 PM | Link to this
While its not surprising that the New York Slimes would fall all over itself at the opportunity to bash white people, it appears they have put foot in mouth on this particular issue.
Clarkston, at 20% white, is hardly an enclave of southern white supremacists. No, the NYT does appear to take a mighty issue that the mayor is gasp white!
I’m pretty sure that the left wing news media, and this includes the AJC, would probably not be happy until America is 0% white. Even then I’m pretty certain we’d still get blamed for everything.
By mmm
March 1, 2007 5:09 PM | Link to this
The NYT reporter is working on a book, by which we can judge whether there will be a fuller, more balance picture—or whether we are going to have a good guy/bad guy stereotyping. He is out of the picture locally and Luma can’t control what bias he may have had as he followed her around.
For good or ill there is now a magnifying glass on Clarkston—especially as the screen writer works on the movie script. Her quotes in the AJC article clearly distance her own views from the South/small town/white bashing tone in the NYTimes article.
By 20 year resident
March 2, 2007 10:01 AM | Link to this
I lived in the 30021 zip code (Clarkston) from 1986-2005, and I can tell you that Clarkston WAS a town that was not tolerant towards others. However, things have changed dramatically for the better. I think it is cool that Clarkston made it into the NYT. Go Angoras, go Thifttown!!!
By miranda
March 2, 2007 10:28 AM | Link to this
I love the NY Times!!! Great reporting as always!!
By Allen (for real)
March 2, 2007 2:17 PM | Link to this
Miranda— So Judy Miller’s verbatim hacking up of press releases about WMDs is your idea of “great reporting”? I hope you’re trying for snark