On the Beach: The Fall of America's Best County as a Microcosm for America's Future

(PK NOTE: Second part of Public Housing article will be coming Friday. Exciting times at SBPDL... we are so close to the release of the billboard campaign. Hang tight -- it will be worth the wait.)

The Black Undertow overwhelms one of America's Best Places to Live and Raise a Family

We have concentrated on Atlanta as of late, because the city is a microcosm of the future of America if Black-Run America (BRA) prevails.

Sure, whites can flee to states (metro Atlanta suburbs) far away from the racial chaos that afflicts other states (think downtown Atlanta) -- but eventually the Black Undertow will come. Today, news broke that one of the top counties in all of America - Fayette County, Ga, home to one of former best small cities in America to grow up in, Peachtree City - has seen its white population drop from 84 percent in 2000 to 67 percent today (Census: Fayette getting grayer, numbers of households with kids drops/White population falls to 67%; homes with children dip to just over 1 in 3, Ben Nelms, The Citizen, July 11, 2012)

It has often been said that the only constant is change. And that is true of Fayette County as reflected by estimated U.S. Census figures for 2011.

Compared to 2000, the 2011 figures show Fayette with a population that is aging, with the number of households with children shrinking and one that is becoming much more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity.

Fayette County in 2011 had an estimated population of 107,784 compared to a population of 91,263 in 2000, according to census.gov.

The 2011 data showed 25 percent of Fayette residents under age 18, down from 29 percent in 2000.

Meantime, the 2011 data also showed 13.9 percent of residents are age 65 and over, up from 8.9 percent in 2000.

While on the surface those numbers might not seem significant, a look back at the 2000 census begins to show a different story. Here’s how.

Fayette County in 2000 had a population with a median age of 38.2 years. In 2011 the median age had increased to 43.3 years, an average age increase of more than five years in just over a decade.

Back in 2000, Fayette County households that included children totaled 43.1 percent but by 2010 that figure had dropped to 36.3 percent. That’s a telling decrease of numbers of children, including — most ominously for the Fayette County School System — school-age children. But there is more to the story.

Recession notwithstanding, there is a projection by the Atlanta Regional Commission from a couple of years ago that showed Fayette with the third fastest growing senior population in the 10-county metro Atlanta area. Combined with the aging population in general, the projection was that Fayette’s senior population is expected to increase by 450 percent by 2040.

Those aged 65 and older already account for 13.9 percent of the county’s population, so if the projection is anywhere near accurate it will mean a much larger senior population relative to other age groups in Fayette in the coming years.

That increase in Fayette’s aging population will likely have an impact on property tax revenue for the Fayette County School System. The reason is that at age 65 the homeowner is eligible for a 50 percent exemption on school taxes. Also at age 65 the homeowner or couple is eligible for a 100 percent school tax exemption if the Georgia taxable income is $15,000 or less. 

That might not seem like much income, except that Social Security and up to $35,000 of retirement income per person plus regular deductions are not counted in the taxable income equation. The slope for school tax revenues continues to be downhill.

Another adjustment in Fayette County demographics is in terms of race and ethnicity.

A breakdown of census figures in those categories showed a population that was nearly 84 percent white in 2000. Eleven years later, the percentage of whites relative to all other races in Fayette had fallen to 67.2 percent white, a decrease in relative numbers of nearly 17 percent.

During the same period all other race and ethnic populations categories showed increases. The black population in 2000 was 11.5 percent, though by 2011 the black population had increased to 20.8 percent, a relative increase of more than 9 percent.
Similarly, the Hispanic population of 2.8 percent in 2000 more than doubled in relative terms to 6.5 in 2011 percent while the Asian population increased from 2.4 percent in 2000 to 4.1 percent in 2011.

The Black Undertow swept aside businesses, wealth, and prosperity in Clayton County (which borders Fayette), a county that went from 90 percent white in 1980 to less than 20 percent today; it is coming for Fayette County. There is no escape for white people.

Fayette County has one of the top school systems in all of America, boasting students whose combined test scores far exceed those posted in the state (even those fraudulent scores from the Atlanta Public Schools system) and the national average. It's school system is but a reflection of the abilities that the sons and daughters of the predominately white community there produce, just as the poor Clayton and DeKalb County school systems are a byproduct of abilities of the Black children whose parents reside there.

As the Fayette County attracts more Black residents, the school system will go the direction of Clayton County. The same can be said for the business community, with once thriving shopping complexes boarded up or the new home of Title Pawn shops and hair accessory stores.

The final scene from the movie On the Beach, after a nuclear winter kills off the last inhabitable place on earth. There is still time... brother. BRA can end.

To illustrate this change, as more Black people call Fayetteville (a city that borders Clayton County), Fayette County High School has switched from having an enrollment that was nearly 80 percent white - class of 2000 - to just 29 percent white in 2011- 2012. The school is now 47 percent Black, and rising.

 Large corporations from around the world have settled in Peachtree City, knowing that their employees will be able to send their children to safe, productive schools that reflect the community at large. All of this will change with the advance of the Black Undertow from Atlanta(2010 Census: Minorities gain in Fayette, Cal Beverly, March 23, 2011, The Citizen):

The demographic change in Fayette is dramatic, compared to decennial censuses for the past 30 years, with big increases in the Hispanic and black population and an actual net decline in white residents.

The white population of Fayette County has fallen by 2,789 persons over the past decade — a decline of 3.7 percent — while the black and Hispanic populations have doubled and tripled respectively, according to figures from the 2010 U.S. Census released Friday by the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Fayette County has a 2010 counted population — not an estimate — of 106,567 persons. Neighboring Coweta has an official count of 127,317.

According to just-released reports, Fayette saw a jump of 16.8 percent over the 2000 population count, while Coweta exploded by 42.7 percent.

Fayette’s black population doubled in 10 years to its current level of 21,117, nearly 20 percent of the total county population. That’s an increase of 102.2 percent, according to the Census. The black population in 2000 was 10,446.

Fayette’s Hispanic numbers also have increased dramatically — from 2,582 at the beginning of the decade to the current count of 6,760, an increase of 161.8 percent.
Coweta has experienced a growth in all segments: an increase of 34.3 percent in the white population, 36.2 percent in the black numbers, and 203.6 percent in Hispanics, the ARC says.

What is striking is that Fayette and Coweta now have nearly identical numbers of black residents — 21,117 in Fayette and 21,744 in Coweta.

In raw numbers, Fayette has 6,760 Hispanics, while Coweta counted 8,493 Hispanics.

Fayette is not alone in its declining numbers of whites. Neighboring Clayton County saw a decline of 46,468 whites; Cobb lost 32,986; DeKalb dropped 13,352; Douglas was down 5,198; Gwinnett lost 41,985; and Rockdale declined 16,279, the ARC report said.

Picking up the most in numbers of incoming white residents were Cherokee (46,314), Coweta (23,643), Forsyth (49,962), and Paulding (33,444).

Fayette County emergence as one of the top counties in all of America (and Peachtree City's ascendance to the top of CNN Money and US News and World Report's lists of Best Places to Live, Raise a Family, etc.) are the result of white flight from Atlanta, the thriving business districts and school systems, coupled with safe, virtually crime-free communities are a direct representation of what white people can create in but a generation.

Clayton County, which went from 90 percent white in 1980 to 20 percent white today, represents what Black people are capable of creating, lacking the ability of sustaining any semblance of a business district, property values, or a quality school system.

And when the Black Undertow arrives, so do the demands from Organized Blackness (NAACP suit: Fayette County disenfranchising blacks, Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 10, 2011):

The Georgia and Fayette County chapters of the NAACP have joined 11 Fayette County voters in a lawsuit against the county's board of commissioners and board of education, alleging that its practice of at-large elections is disenfranchising black voters.

The federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday also lists as defendants the Fayette County Board of Elections. According to the 2010 Census, Fayette County is nearly 73 percent white and 21 percent black. The lawsuit says that because of the practice, no black candidate has ever been elected to the county's board of commissioners or board of education.

"Plaintiffs assert that Fayette County's at-large method of electing members to these boards, given the levels of racially polarized voting, guarantees precisely this result," the lawsuit reads. "Elections in Fayette County show a clear pattern of racially polarized voting. Although black voters are politically cohesive, bloc voting by other members of the electorate consistently defeats black-preferred candidates."

Ryan Haygood, director of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund's Political Participation Group and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, said the group has been analyzing the latest Census data and how that growth coincides with what they consider to be potential voting schemes. He said the Voting Rights Act is the best vehicle for addressing the issue.

"Fayette County's at-large election method is a structural wall of exclusion that guarantees that black voters, in spite of having tried in election after election, cannot elect their candidates of choice," Haygood said. "There's no benefit to any system that weakens the voting strength of a jurisdiction's voting rights. That catches our attention."

 So start the demands. The eternal question of "And Then?" to each concession by whites will never, ever cease. Fayette County will be submerged by the Black Undertow; property values will plummet and charming subdivisions will become the breeding ground for poverty, crime, and desperation, where only a decade early white parents snapped photos of their children on graduation day; the only crimes committed then the occasional toilet papering of a yard.

Were restrictive covenants still constitutional, Fayette County could have insulated itself from the onslaught of the Black Undertow (the growth in Hispanic population in metro Atlanta is directly correlated to the need for extra construction workers to build new homes for white people to move into as they flee a city/county that has fallen to the Black Undertow). Actually, the county wouldn't have existed as a white flight refuge, because whites would have been able to maintain the integrity of their neighborhoods in Atlanta.

The point is simply this: metro Atlanta is the microcosm for all of America; whites can flee areas that go majority-minority and set up thriving communities that are implicitly white (though everyone will say they moved there for the "good schools" -- an explicitly white comment masquerading in egalitarian terms), but the diversity they fled will find them.

And the process will have to start again.

Idaho, Montana, North Dakota... yes, these sound like great options, but the storm clouds reside on horizon. Just like in the Cold War story On The Beach (a nuclear war between America and Russia devastates the planet, making Australia the last inhabitable place on earth, though a nuclear winter cloud heads their way which spells imminent doom), whites who flee to these states only delay the inevitable.

Fayette County and Peachtree City... once the best place in America to call home, are prepared to become just another Clayton County.

The Black Hole of Atlanta grows, pushing whites further and further out, destroying property value (real wealth) and uprooting businesses at the same time.

Meanwhile, the instruments of our liberation reside in North Fulton County.

There's a reason you should be paying to Atlanta; the Gordian Knot for a true American Renaissance is there.