The Atlanta Racial Consensus Model is teetering

For decades Atlanta has styled itself as the City Too Busy To Hate.  In many ways it is a strange city given its youth, explosive growth, tolerance, can-do attitude, etc.  

One attribute has been the longstanding deal between the white business community (bankers and developers principally) and the black political class.  Atlanta has long been a minority majority city with African Americans being more than 50% of the population.  In 1990, the city was 61% African-American.

The deal was that the Black Political leadership class was taken care of financially with positions in companies and universities and received City Government bounty in terms of City jobs for distribution to constituents while the business community received political stability.

Nowhere in the deal were the interests of residents well represented.  

The deal did deliver against its objectives.  Business growth has been strong for decades.  Businesses and residents have moved to Atlanta and its accommodating environment in droves.   While incompetent and often corrupt, Atlanta City Government is nowhere near a San Francisco or Seattle or Chicago or New York.  

However, as the City has grown in population and diversified, the old deal is fraying.  The racial monolith political machine is collapsing.  In 1990, with a 61% African-American dominance, the Atlanta Racial Consensus Model was politically unassailable.  But in some ways it was not a diverse city.  Yes, majority black but few Asian Americans (<1%), few Hispanics (2%), etc.  In the intervening decades, not only are there more new Atlantans (immigrants from other states with no commitment to old norms as well as suburbanites finally having reached the limits of their commuting tolerance and rolling back within the City) but the new residents are more diverse and less tolerant of invisible backroom policy making which clearly benefits establishment insiders and not very clearly benefits anyone else.  There are more foreign born residents with no intention of being drawn into archaic and ineffective racial politics, more Hispanics, more Asian-Americans from all over Asia, etc.

The most recent Census ACS data, the basis for between decade population estimates, has the Atlanta black majority down from 61% to 52%.  Given that Atlanta has a notorious reputation for both over-estimating population growth (to access more Federal dollars) and downplaying the mix of population, we are approaching a point where no racial group is in the majority.  A large black plurality will still be important, just not quite as determinative as it once was.  

It is becoming a racial rainbow city where the old binary black-white model still creaks along, not serving many other than the establishment Black Political Class and the old business institutions.  The disconnect between residents, government time-servers is profound and the architects of Racial Consensus Model.  

In the past couple of election cycles, a white female City insider, widely characterized by the establishment as a Republican in a Democratic guise, has come within a whisker of defeating the Atlanta Racial Consensus Model candidate, once with Kasim Reed and most recently with Keisha Lance-Bottoms.

And with notable suspiciousness, given the most recent shenanigans, she lost by some 700 votes in last minute resolutions of the count.  

Even without the demographic shifts occurring, the old Racial Consensus Model was pretty rickety.  Ever since Maynard Jackson's second term in 1990, the City has endured Mayors being investigated for crimes and/or convicted of them.  Education has declined, public infrastructure has declined, public safety has become more tenuous in more parts of the city, boondoggle social policies have blossomed and failed, Mayors have indulged in dangerous and or illegal behaviors, Mayors have flaunted the law.

And, perhaps most critically, the Atlanta political establishment have failed to address resident concerns which cut across racial bounds.  Keisha Lance-Bottoms (KLB) never proposes or supports legislation, she waits for City Council to pass and she just lets it drift into law without ever signing it or objecting.  

Raging issues in social media and neighborhood associations which are being actively denied or passively ignored by the administration, and the broader political establishment including the City Council, include

The Council was perfectly willing to defund the police (narrowly defeated) while residents, regardless of race, want many more police (Atlanta Police Department/APD), not fewer police.

The Mayor was perfectly happy to fire police during riots for what appear to have been policy compliant behaviors.  Residents saw the police as heroes doing a hard job under difficult circumstances while being arrested or punished by the Mayor.

The Mayor has suspended the rule of law by allowing own cognizance bail.  Arrested and released immediately.  The public, across racial lines, wants criminals caught and punished for their crimes.  

The Mayor has imposed operational constraints (no pursuit of criminals in vehicles) which double the burden on an already overburdened police force.  Citizens want the police to have reasonable latitude.

Several sections of the city, for some months now, have been overwhelmed by midnight to four in the morning crowds of 50-200 people doing drag racing, donuts, and other street blocking dangerous activities in muscle cars without mufflers and with blaring music.  It is a deliberate tactic to keep whole neighborhoods awake at a time and the APD are very limited in what they are allowed to do.  Residents want the anarchists arrested and their cars sold.  The Mayor has explicitly wished to not address the problem.

Violence and property crime have blossomed.  The Mayor ignores and citizens want it addressed.

The Mayor has been systematically closing homeless shelters which, in combination with the shackles on APD, has meant a blossoming of crime via urban camps all across the residential parts of the city.  Residents want the camps closed immediately.  The Mayor and City Council don't want to take actions. 

On and on.  The political establishment is between a rock and a hard place given the terms of the Atlanta Racial Consensus Model.  The Black Political Establishment is at increasing risk of not being able to deliver on their terms of the bargain given rising radical demands and declining demographic dominance.  

Which is why KLB is so inactive.  Yes, she is a damp squib with ambitions unfounded in demonstrated ability.  Her core issue, though, is that she has to give in to the hard left and the BLM/Antifa mob of her coalition in order to deliver the "black" vote.  But middle class black voters living in midtown and being woken every night for 2-4 hours will end up voting like a card carrying Republicans rather than a beholden "black" voter.  

The narrower the racial majority, the more KLB has to concede to absurd demands which in turn increasingly endanger or inconvenience the majority of middle class residents (regardless of race) who are not party to nor have received any direct benefit from Atlanta Racial Consensus Model.  A model for the benefit of establishment interests not residents.

Residents are getting more demanding about corruption, ignorance, incompetence and hypocrisy.  The goals of the Atlanta Racial Consensus Model (low conflict so that all can gain from growth) remain good but demographic changes are highlighting the deficits of the model.  It can work in a world with a clear demographic dominance.  Not so much in a plurality.

And while everyone benefitted, the greater majority of the benefits went to establishment insiders.  The sooner we move to a model with transparency and accountability, the  more likely we will be to solve what are presented as intractable problems.  Problems which are not intractable, merely inconvenient to the establishment and their self-interested machinations.