Whitey Ford
12-24-2020, 10:04 PM
Forsyth County Meets the New American Majority
What happens in a Whitopia as a red Georgia turns blue?
I’d chosen to peek into Forsyth as a Southern example of what I call a “Whitopia.” A Whitopia is a suburban or exurban county that is at least 85 percent non-Hispanic white, with population growth of at least 6 percent since 2000, and with the majority of that growth, 80-plus percent, coming from non-Hispanic whites. Living in Forsyth for four months, I wanted to see what makes a Whitopia tick.
Forsyth County is 78 percent non-Hispanic white, compared with 91 percent when I first arrived. The surrounding metro Atlanta region is now roughly 52 percent white. The county’s tableau of high-skilled professionals makes it the highest-earning county in the state: Its median household income, $101,743 per year, is almost double the nation’s and the state’s. But if you look more closely—in the strip malls on connector mini-highways, in the day-jobs lots, in rural hamlets—you can also discover residents living in abject poverty, working sore-back jobs and eating hand to mouth.
Behind the county’s 5G, techno-hub, café latte façade, though, the history of racial terror is palpable. Forsyth County is a former sundown county, and a place where unmarked slave graves were literally plowed over to make way for developers to build gated communities not so long ago.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/forsyth-county-georgia-new-american-majority-whitopia.html
What happens in a Whitopia as a red Georgia turns blue?
I’d chosen to peek into Forsyth as a Southern example of what I call a “Whitopia.” A Whitopia is a suburban or exurban county that is at least 85 percent non-Hispanic white, with population growth of at least 6 percent since 2000, and with the majority of that growth, 80-plus percent, coming from non-Hispanic whites. Living in Forsyth for four months, I wanted to see what makes a Whitopia tick.
Forsyth County is 78 percent non-Hispanic white, compared with 91 percent when I first arrived. The surrounding metro Atlanta region is now roughly 52 percent white. The county’s tableau of high-skilled professionals makes it the highest-earning county in the state: Its median household income, $101,743 per year, is almost double the nation’s and the state’s. But if you look more closely—in the strip malls on connector mini-highways, in the day-jobs lots, in rural hamlets—you can also discover residents living in abject poverty, working sore-back jobs and eating hand to mouth.
Behind the county’s 5G, techno-hub, café latte façade, though, the history of racial terror is palpable. Forsyth County is a former sundown county, and a place where unmarked slave graves were literally plowed over to make way for developers to build gated communities not so long ago.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/forsyth-county-georgia-new-american-majority-whitopia.html