AMERICAN TALE OF TWO CITIES: THE GROWTH OF ECONOMIC APARTHEID

	  The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce will produce reams of	hype about
     the city this summer for the Democratic National Convention.  In turn,
     the media will dutifully hype the rest of the nation about	Atlanta.
     But there is another side to Atlanta that has gone	largely	unreported
     by	the U.S. Media.
	  Economic forces at work in Atlanta are "producing a new kind of
     segregation, which	threatens to leave blacks out of the great job
     reshuffling that is taking	place not only in the Jewel of the South
     but throughout the	country."
	  In Atlanta, corporations are moving their operations and jobs	to
     Cobb and Gwinnett counties, two overwhelmingly white, affluent,
     Republican-voting suburbs to the north of Atlanta.
	  Though many media have profiled the MetroAtlanta economic
     renaissance, specifically highlighting Gwinnett County, the fastest
     growing county in the nation, most	have failed to state that both Cobb
     and Gwinnett, though considered part of MetroAtlanta, do not share	the
     tax base or government with the city.
	  Black	citizens of Atlanta have no share in the new economic
     affluence profiled	by the media.  In fact,	with the particulars of
     this MetroAtlanta economic	demography in mind -- no shared	tax-base,
     no	shared government, no shared public transportation system, new
     freeway project connecting	outlying suburbs and bypassing inner city
     access, corporate flight, and the traditional (racist) dividing line
     of	Interstate 20 -- the proliferation of an economic apartheid is
     easily seen.
	  When asked why corporate development went north, J. Patrick
     Murphy, the senior	vice president for economic development	of Gwinnett
     County's Chamber of Commerce, pulls out a map and points to Interstate
     20, which runs from east to west straight through Atlanta,	halving	the
     metropolitan region.  "Since before the time of the Civil War, it was
     understood	that free blacks weren't to come above this line. And most
     of	them still live	south of it," says Murphy.  "I suppose development
     just follows the money."
	  David	Beers and Diana	Hembree, who exlored this issue	with
     support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, said it "would	be
     a mistake to interpret Atlanta's racially skewed boom as peculiar to
     the South and growing mainly out of the region's historical
     prejudices. It is probably	more accurate to take Atlanta as it bills
     itself -- as the shape of things to come.	Similar	growth patterns	are
     occurring all over	the United States, invariably favoring white
     suburbs and avoiding black	urban centers.

	  SOURCE: THE NATION, 3/21/87, "The new	Atlanta: A Tale	of Two
     Cities," by David Beers and Diana Hembree,	pp 357-360.