Bloomberg: St. George is The New ‘White Fortress’ City of the South

quote:

---

The Louisiana Supreme Court last month cleared a path for the creation of a new city, St. George, after a prolonged legal battle over the feasibility of the city and its implications for tax revenue.

St. George would take almost 100,000 residents away from East Baton Rouge Parish, and critics say it will deplete the parish of the resources from this wealthier, whiter community.

As researchers on racial equity, we have been studying moves like this to create new cities. What we’ve found is that these secessions perpetuate modern-day segregation and limit opportunity for left-behind communities, a form of opportunity hoarding that we call “white fortressing.”

---

quote:

---

St. George’s demographics are quite different from the parish it is part of: Only 12% of the proposed new city’s residents would be Black, while nearly half of the remaining population in East Baton Rouge Parish would be African-American.

White fortressing, and other kinds of opportunity hoarding, concentrates resources — such as well-funded public schools, access to local revenue and zoning control — among white communities that are already economically and politically advantaged. Meanwhile, they also constrain access to opportunity among people of color.

When white communities fortress themselves, they siphon away resources from the larger region, including communities of color. In Louisiana, it is estimated that St. George’s secession would take away $48.3 million in annual tax revenue from East Baton Rouge Parish — nearly 8% of the parish’s total tax revenue

---

quote:

---

Racial segregation and the unequal allocation of resources have long shaped American cities, through a history of both overt and subtle racist policies and practices, including racially restrictive covenants, violent resistance to integration and White flight from desegregating communities.

The impact of these practices is well known. They perpetuate inequities in crucial ways, by limiting the quality and types of services that already-underserved communities receive, which adversely affects the health and wealth-building potential of people in marginalized communities for generations. In addition, having more governments in a geographical area — for example municipalities or school districts — has been shown to negatively affect health outcomes for Black Americans, but not for whites.

---