White and black Atlantans defined racial harmony in fundamentally incompatible ways.

Evidence

Mayor Allen responded by convening a televised meeting with the city’s top business and civic leaders. In a remarkable address, the mayor frankly discussed the different meanings blacks and whites gave to “racial harmony.” “The white community as a whole tends to define racial harmony as the absence of disturbance,” the mayor noted. “The Negro community—to a man—defines it as the establishment of their full rights as American citizens. I am determined to use all of the authority I have to see that, in Atlanta, both definitions are fulfilled.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 492

Categorization

• XREF: The white ‘absence of disturbance’ vs. black ‘full rights’ split anticipates the later ‘color-blind as status-quo preservation’ critique central to the reader’s project. — connects to: Businessmen reframed racial discrimination as a universal individual right to choose customers. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 493; City neglect of black neighborhoods was misread by whites as black-caused decay — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 180; Whites accept racial equality in principle but reject the measures that would achieve it. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics as a showcase of racial harmony #corroborates (0.80)
• Whites accept racial equality in principle but reject the measures that would achieve it. #expands (0.78)