Black belt

Raymond is a black belt in karate.

I had the good fortune of being engaged to participate as a trainer to GE Capital Corporation, where we helped to launch their now well-known and highly regarded black belt program.

Bernard Cosman found that in Georgia, it was the black belt whites who gave Goldwater his largest percentage of the vote.

The Black Belt region, also called the Black Prairie, extends 300 miles across central Alabama and northeast Mississippi and into Tennessee. […] The dark soil for which the Black Belt was named was once famous for its richness and the abundant cotton produced in it.

The most politically powerful southerners were those who hailed from the black belt region— distinguished by its dark and fertile soil—which contained the bulk of large-scale plantation and hence the highest percentage of slaves.

Together they reveal a national culture split among three regions: cities and their suburbs; rural areas; and what we’re calling the extended Black Belt — a swath that extends from the Mississippi River along the Eastern Seaboard up to Washington, but also including city centers and other places with large nonwhite populations.