How’s this for a national headline: White Atlanta suburbs push for secession.
I think the headline is somewhat unfair in its implication. I really don’t think (most of) the pro-Milton people are motivated by racism so much as by thinking they’ll get out of paying for MARTA and Grady, which they wouldn’t.
That said, the Republicans are damn lucky Casey Cagle was wise enough to kill the Voter ID Constitutional amendment. If both the secession effort and the Voter ID laws were trying to be passed at the same time it wouldn’t be just one headline like that; it’d be hundreds. You can argue ’til you’re blue in the face that the measures aren’t racist. But put them both together, foment suspicion of ulterior motives with some anti-gay bigotry from last session and the batshit crazy folks trying to pass HB1 this session, and it becomes difficult to believe otherwise.
I am really tired of these headlines. Georgia seems to be making the national news a lot in the past few years for all the wrong reasons. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s coinciding with the Republican Revolution™. And before commenting on this post, please refer to rule #2 on my list of 10 ways to avoid triggering my bullshit detector.
Maybe not overt racism, no. But dig a little deeper with a lot of the folks pushing for “secession” (not all of them, of course, so nobody start with that shit) and you’ll find they associate Grady and MARTA with the scary brown people. And specifically, with the scary lower-class brown people. That is the type of racism that’s much more insidious and hard to chip away at than some yokel waving a Confederate flag and shouting about white power.
Our continuing need to cut off our nose to spite our face in the Metro area really depresses me.
Forget to trackback your post, but I gave you shout out on the Metblog: http://atlanta.metblogs.com/archives/2007/01/white_atlanta_s.phtml
Cool, thanks man.
Lets not forget the “we don’t want marta to go all the way up 400 ’cause then the brown people can get to our suburbs! Gasp!” crowd.
From the article:
Speaker Glenn Richardson has referred to his top lieutenant, Rep. Mark Burkhalter, as “the member from Milton County.”
That’s pretty freakin’ arrogant.
Independent of his politics, I’d love five minutes alone in a room with Glenn Richardson on general principles. He’s a guy who needs his ass kicked.
I live up this way, and allow me to say, as a denizen — if it’s NOT racism (which I think it very well could be) then it’s certainly classism. It’s pretty nasty.
It’s racism and classism. The two are intricately woven together, esp. in the minds of people who seriously believe that scary poor brown people are going to ride MARTA up to the suburbs and steal their big-screen TVs.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of Cobb County?
Make sure you get a video of it, so you can live in infamy on YouTube.
I dread jumping into this — but here goes. I think everyone is projecting their own “mistaken” politics on the people of the northern suburb just a bit too much here. I am a resident of Dunwoody, which is much closer in than the proposed Milton County county, and I support both cityhood for Dunwoody and a county of Milton if that is what the people there want.
It isn’t a fear of brown people or MARTA or Grady or any of that silliness mentioned above. It is primarily based on the time tested constitutional notions of compact and contigious communities of interests.
For example, Dunwoody, like the proposed Milton County area, is a completely self-contained area. The community even has its own local newspaper, shopping, hospitals, “townhall”, etc. I-285 acts as both a physical and psychcological barrier to the metro area.
From Dunwoody, a drive to the courthouse in Decatur is a 17 mile drive, or about 40 minutes. For the people of the proposed Milton County, it is more than 25 miles to the Fulton courthouse crossing both an interstate and a river. That is why Milton was originally a separate county — it is too far for Fulton to deliver services and too far for the communities to have a shared interests.
More importantly, there is a permanent tax disparity, with the “Milton” area of the county contributing far more than they get in services — repeatedly — year after year.
These communities have complained for years about this issue and they have in effect, been given the finger. They are now proposing the one solution that every person is entitled to. They want to vote with their feet. Fulton can get the “signal” and begin to take corrective action or they can do as they have done in this case and throw racist language, threats and self-rightous indignations in every direction. The reality is they should be addressing legimate community concerns — but they can’t — because they don’t share the “community’s” interests with people so far away.
Finally, I want to say that most of the comments on this item are unfair. Most of the comments are what amounts to “projecting” of racist, suburbphobic bias by people that rarely go north of the city and it is unfair to these communities that have legitmate concerns and complaints about their government. One of the biggest problems this region has is the reckless charges of racism that fly everytime someone attempts to address problems occuring within a “minority” government. It is this mean, abusive, recklessness that causes people to throw up their hands and “vote with their feet” How could they decide to do anything else?
My reptilian tail-brain keeps scrambling headlines on me and giving me “Radical Georgia Racist?”
And no, you’re not allowed to ask why my reptilian tail-brain is in charge of reading. This is family entertainment, people.
ARBY,
I believe you when you say that’s your motivation for it, and probably even for a majority of people who support Milton (though the tax burden of Grady and MARTA inevitably enter that discussion, so I think it’s off base to totally dismiss that regardless of the motivation).
The flip side is I grew up in Cobb County and my mom’s best friend is from Dunwoody (and, as such, I’ve spent a fair amount of time there), so it’s not as if I’ve had no interaction with OTP communities (and Thomas and Nikki live in Alpharetta, FYI).
In 2004 a little before the August primary, I was invited to a rally by a fringe Republican 6th District candidate that I had been led to believe was a generic campaign event, but which turned out to be an anti-immigration rally. And any sane person sitting in that room would be hard-pressed not to call those people bigots and racists.
So, I know an activist core motivated by racism exists in Cobb because I’ve seen it first-hand. I haven’t seen one in Dunwoody, but I have spent enough time in Dunwoody to know it’s not that much different than Cobb, and that it’s not a stretch of the imagination to imagine one with similar motivations there.
I know that’s not everyone. I know that’s not a majority. I’m not saying it is. And I know just because a bigot supports something that someone else supports does not make that someone else a bigot him or herself (racists love to breathe air the same as you and me).
But, taken with the Voter ID bill as it was originally drafted and HB1 and the anti-gay amendment last year, I am not convinced the political leadership on some level isn’t pandering to those people.
Gunine tax reform for Fulton County would take care of this mess.
Living in Alpharetta, newly Johns Creek (where you find multiple men seeking prostitues standing in free-flowing streams), and having been to a few political events involving the subset of pro Johns Creekers and pro Miltonians, allow me to say that I beleive, based on my experience and the behavior and words of those I observed there, that this stands a 98% chance of being racist at its core.
It ain’t that bad up here. And, as Johns Creek is rapidly demostrating, governing with ignorance and the desire to seem to be doing “something” is just as bad as whatever the hell it is they think Fulton County was doing previously.
First of all:
LOL!! Hilarious.
Secondly, re: racism. Growing up in Augusta has given me a finely tuned sense for racism. Not that I’m the end-all be-all authority; but if it smells like bullshit, well… you know the rest.
This is how the deeply entrenched, institionalized racism asserts itself. And this is why it’s so insidious; because on the basis of individual situations, it’s easy to attribute it to something else. And, of course, nothing exists in a vacuum, so there are obviously multiple motivating factors. But, this is what people mean when they talk about institutionalized racism; it’s not somebody waving a Confederate flag and yelling about white power. And it’s at our peril that any of us choose to believe that’s what racism is limited to. The dismissiveness of the phrase “crying racism” and the ways in which it silences people of color worries me more than the overt bigotry and ignorance.
ARBY wrote: most of the comments on this item are unfair. Most of the comments are what amounts to “projecting†of racist, suburbphobic bias by people that rarely go north of the city
That doesn’t seem fair…
Amber wrote: The dismissiveness of the phrase “crying racism†and the ways in which it silences people of color worries me more than the overt bigotry and ignorance.
ITA. Everyone can look at the overt yahoos and quickly decide they don’t carry much say in important matters. It’s the insidious slick white underbelly that has power to change things for the worse.
I can’t speak for your situation down there in G-State, but beyond all the ‘isms’ that I have been reading, these thing usually boil down to $$$. Is it possible that the region which seeks to succeede has come to the point where, per capita, they believe they are pulling the majority of the costs for the other region? At the micro-level, that’s like the breaking point where the parents turn off the Comedy Channel, kick the living room couch and tell their 25 year old son, “that’s it Bubba, now you’re on your own.”
I relocating from South Florida to Alpharetta GA so I am not as familar with the situation. However, I do believe that the color we are concerned about is GREEN not black or white. Money wants to be around money and to place itself above the rest(whether that money is real or on credit). This kind of mentality is here in South Florida as well as many other parts of the country in upper middle class areas. The segregation from the haves to the have nots will always be there even if its financed to the hilt. Separation means increased value in property and the desire to bring others like themselves to want to live in the community.
indeed Georgia and in the whole country, I feel that people at one time or another someway, will turn to be racist.
Georgia is making a racist statement in many ways all the time, more specifically in the laws, regulations and eforcement of it, I am not born in this country, many of my friends and relatives were not born here, my son is born here, however I learned the way this country behaves, I learned and keep learning of all the diversity and multi-cultural backgrounds everybody has, because I don’t know that many that has ancestors that were born in this country, they bring all the spices to this plate… There is such thing as voice and pride, when I see my son or myself are been treated different because of our color, I make sure they listen and understand that I am not going to allow it, never had, never will. I respect when they respect me, and most of the times, even when they don’t even try. Because my parents thought me so. Diplomacy, respect, patience, tolerance and open healthy mind always will make a difference, that is the core of the society. Take apart and you’ll win, is not always a good filosophy to follow. Hopefully one day, whoever that makes a difference, actually starts doing it. and really compare me, taking away my color, the area where I live right now, and that you do, just think about it a second,
Are you really different than me???