Storm on the Horizon
There’s a political storm brewing in my current home state that I only became aware of because of an attention grabbing headline at the Drudge Report this morning.
White Atlanta suburbs push for secession…
It’s just the sort of thing to make this former New York Yankee now living in the Deep South here in Savannah perk up and take notice of some state politics. So I did a little quick poking around ala Google and here is what I found out.
Background
Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton county although a portion of the city extends over into DeKalb county, which seems to be a curious result of the original sight selection for a railroad terminal. Apparently there was a strong “not in my back yard” mindset in North Georgia in the 1830’s because the residents of Decatur were worried about train noise and insisted the proposed terminal be built well outside of town to the west across the Chattahoochee River. From what I can gather Fulton county was formed from the western half of DeKalb count round about 1853 as the area west of the river grew (due to the railroad terminal, of course).
Then skip ahead to the Great Depression in the early 1930’s. The two poor, rural, scarcely populated counties just to the south (Campbell county) and north (Milton county) of Fulton county were all merged together because the poorer counties were going bankrupt at the time. It created a sprawling elongated Fulton county, with the areas of the two former counties being referred to as North Fulton and South Fulton. It seemed all was well.
The Issue Today
Skip ahead again to today. It appears the Depression is over and now the previously poor area of North Fulton county is remarkably affluent. And there are some up that way who are clamoring that the county government down in Atlanta is not representing them very well.
It’s so bad in fact that some would rather have their old county back than continue to try to improve things as they are.They say they pay a disproportional amount of the county’s taxes and utilize a far smaller portion of the county’s services. Re-creating Milton county is the only viable solution left, they claim.
Those who are most outspoken against the new move are from balance of the county and say the motive for the move is racism, plain and simple. They say that because North Fulton is mostly white, of course they’re rich. According to their view point the intent of the move is to maliciously destroy the city of Atlanta and cause the balance of the county to go bankrupt, all because they have the wrong skin color and are poor to boot.
Of course there are some significant obstacles to reconstituting the old county. One is the state constitutional limitation on the number of counties that can exist. Then there are the county services and contracts with outside entities.
Personally I don’t have very strong feelings either way. It does seem a bit shady for the folks to say, “Thanks for bailing us out during the Depression. But we’re OK now so we’ll take it from here. All y’all are on your own.” Of course with the huge influx of folks to the southeast from other parts of the country over the last 30 years I’m guessing that the majority of the families in North Fulton weren’t around back in the day.
And from what I’ve seen, Savannah is the most separated city I’ve ever lived in. I’ve never lived in a place where the Whites and Blacks seemed to mix so little as they do here. And the Hispanics are mostly ignored by the other two groups.
Yet, from what I’ve seen, the cultural separation here (or if you prefer, segregation) does cut both ways, in spite of the rhetoric and finger pointing that seems to mostly be aimed mostly at the whites. Savannah seems to be one of the more divided places I know of. It cuts across more than just skin color too. Different religious affiliations, and economic standing don’t mix much either.
If Savannah is still that divided, what must it be like up in Atlanta?
And more importantly, how do we fix that sort of problem? You can’t make people like each other and hang out together, can you?
I don’t see any easy answers here.
Regardless it is a complicated enough issue that I expect to be entertained for quite some time. So I’ll just sit down here in Savannah (outside the city limits. For now anyway.) and watch the fireworks.
Chris Cree is a regular contributor here at Successful-Blog and he helps businesses fuel growth through blogging with his consulting business, SuccessCREEations.
