Should I start arbitrarily numbering these? At this point, I don’t see why I shouldn’t considering that it really doesn’t feel like more than a day goes by where I don’t pat myself on the back for unloading my old house when I did.
But anyway, my old stomping grounds is now the City of South Fulton, which at first was supposed to be something of an interim name, but considering they just spent $1,500 tax dollars to “design” a new crest for it, it looks like it just might be for reals. Normally this wouldn’t really be worth mentioning, because it’s not uncommon for towns and cities to want to brand/re-brand themselves, so that they can try to establish some semblance of an identity. But because I’m mentioning it now, obviously there’s got to be something ironic, cringe-worthy or really stupid to warrant mention.
For reasons completely unknown to the vast majority of South Fulton residents, the city’s new crest features imagery and symbolism of the Egyptian sun god Ra, some ankhs, and for more unknown reasons has some Swahili word around the crest as well.
Look, there’s no denying the prominence of African-Americans in the metro Atlanta area, but I think a little bit of the wrong message is being sent when a city basically creates a crest to represent the entire population of it, loaded with all sorts of African imagery. Yes, South Fulton is very predominantly black, but there are people that are not black that actually live there too. Granted, me leaving reduced their Asian population percentage by high double digits undoubtedly, but there is plenty of diversity in the entire region regardless.
I can’t say I’m surprised that those in charge of the city went ahead and slapped some crap on a wall and designated it as official, given the fact that I lived there for 13 years and saw just how bad the government there was, but damn are they ever disregarding the existence of life-not-black for an entire populous, and to no surprise, upsetting and offending a whole lot of people, and justifiably so.
All this African symbolism basically doesn’t really create much of a sense of inclusion and diversity, when an entire city is basically revolving their official crest around Egyptian and/or Swahili messaging. The phrase “Kujichagulia” supposedly means self-determination, which is of course a decent message, but . . . why not . . . have such a message . . . in English instead?
Needless to say, this is just another reason why I’m glad I got the fuck out of South Fulton. I’m not pleased with the gargantuan bump in property taxes that I have to pay this year in comparison to years previously, but I can at least take solace in the fact that none of what I’m paying is going towards such blatant racial favoritism and inconsideration. And that alone is a little bit of another win for the choice to move.
