13. Shortage of affordable housing;
14. Housing discrimination in rental and owner market;
15. Racial steering by real estate agents;
16. Spatial mismatch between black residence and job centers;
17. Hyper-job sprawl into the suburbs;
18. Black suburbanization--albeit re-segregation in low-jobs suburbs;
19. Expanding "food deserts" with closure of grocery stores and supermarkets;
20. Breakdown of the de facto power- sharing "arrangement" between white business elites and black political elites.
These 20 trends are not meant to be exhaustive. Nor are they ranked in any order. However, taken together, the trends acted as a powerful force in depopulating Black Atlanta--a long-term trend that will likely continue into the future.
The 1996 Summer Olympics was Atlanta's Hurricane Katrina -- setting in motion a surge of policies and practices that fueled the black depopulation trend. Atlanta's 20-point plan is strikingly similar to the "20-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans," written several months after Katrina and floodwaters devastated that majority black port city in 2005.
The 2010 census trends show Black Atlanta gradually moving toward a numerical minority in a few years. This shift has profound implications on local electoral politics. This smaller Black Atlanta footprint will likely translate in loss of black political power in the city.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed won by a slim 714 vote margin in 2009. Some pundits predict Reed may be the last black Atlanta mayor we see for some time. However, these pundits made the same predictions of former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin who preceded Mayor Reed. Time will tell.
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