re: Interesting, Atlanta is no longer majority black.

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Well I read recently that blacks are having less children than whites for the first time ever. Just another example of how it’s getting weird around here. (Weird Genius reference)

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They are good schools. I'd certainly rather my kids go there than a lot of the schools in Gwinnett and Cobb that have hoards of kids who can't even speak English

Its like some of you haven't looked at the demographics of the Atlanta suburbs lately. Its certainly not 1990 anymore I can tell you that.

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Sandy Creek in Tyrone.

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Nearly one in five residents lives in poverty ($20,000 or less income annually for a family of four, according to federal guidelines). Of Georgia's 159 counties, 105 have lower poverty rates than Augusta-Richmond County. The school district is in disarray.

Talk politics for even a little while in Augusta and it soon seems that an inordinate number of politicians' names are followed by the phrase "who was later indicted" or "who went to jail" -- three local or state pols from Augusta in the last four years. Augusta's governing commission, whose districts were drawn to favor either blacks or whites and whose commissioners are colored accordingly, regularly splits (and gridlocks) along racial lines. Sometimes the commissioners simply abstain so divisive issues don't get decided -- one frustrated resident/activist finally sued last year to make the county's leaders vote more often.

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A few turns and you enter a neighborhood (one of several in Augusta) where you reflexively reach for the door locks. One day I walk from the National to downtown, through a corner of the old Harrisburg neighborhood. Couches cough up their stuffing on crumbling porches. On the sidewalk spent lottery tickets sit beside crushed Newport crushproof boxes, and ketchup packets, unzipped and bloodlet. A closed appliance store. A locked storefront church. Later, a church in what appears to be an old appliance store. A Catholic Social Services Thrift Shop (also closed, with a sign: "Rosary Broken? Let 'Boots' fix them for you"). Further on, two crosses nailed to a tree, with plastic flowers and no explanation. Even the dogs in Harrisburg sound hungrier

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"We've got more churches than -- I was going to say liquor stores -- but I'm not so sure about that,"

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Most corrosive is the lingering, hobbling mistrust. One Sunday afternoon I talk politics with a deacon from Springfield Baptist named Roosevelt Robinson, who spent 24 years in the Army. Earlier, we had attended services. The Rev. Martin, his voice rumbling at the rear, had given a sermon about loving your neighbor. Small girls in choir robes sang off-key to near-empty pews. Now, over lime Kool-Aid, Robinson says that, yes, he's experienced racism here. And yes, he's got some thoughts about the race for mayor.

"They do this every time," he says. "They get a couple black candidates to run against one white candidate, and split up the black vote."

"They?"

"I don't know who it is. Somebody. This one black lady, she gave her vote to the white guy in the last election, to break the tie, and now she's living in a nice new house on Riverwatch." Robinson looks me right in the eye.

"Now you tell me."

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Then the car steers into neighborhoods not seen yet, more heartbreaking areas that look as if a tornado has preceded you, and where once again you feel so conscious of your skin that it nearly burns. You wave to a young man in baggy sweats who's watching. He returns it without enthusiasm, and his stare follows you all the way down the block. He's wondering who you are, and why you would bother, and maybe wondering, with your big sunglasses and your big sedan and your out-of-place whiteness and unearned friendliness, if you are a cop.

But by then your big car is already drifting out of the neighborhood, out of his life, out of Augusta, and probably not taking his mistrust with it.

But here, too, is where the Spearses are like so many members of the area's upper-middle class: Though Frank's business is still in Augusta, the couple long ago moved over the county line, part of the white exodus to swelling Columbia County. The "education system is 10 billion times better" there, Spears, a former Columbia County commissioner, says simply. In fact, "the vast majority" of the Masters rentals aren't in Augusta at all.

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Grayson, Wheeler, Lanier, Roswell, Sprayberry, North Cobb

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The white population is still only 38%

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The Atlanta suburbs are loaded with Illegals and a bunch of other stuff that didn't exist when I grew up in them. Its not 1985 anymore. Things have significantly changed.

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Looks like a bunch of 25 year olds making $50k barely hurdling the "must make 3x rent in monthly income."

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