Come next month, if Atlanta winds up electing its first white mayor in more than three decades, it won’t mark a step back to the days of Old Dixie.

Rather, it’ll mark a wobbly step into a post-racial future.

It won’t be a step forward because Mary Norwood, the white city councilwoman and Junior Leaguer who is currently leading two other black candidates in the polls, is necessarily the most qualified. Nor will it be a step forward for a white person to govern a city that, over the years, morphed from being known as the birthplace of Margaret Mitchell to being reborn as the black Mecca.

It may, however, be a step forward in the sense that if black voters – recent polling shows they now make up a plurality of Norwood’s support – put her over the top, it may mean that Atlanta has come far enough so that they feel free enough to not have to vote defensively.
 
Those voters may feel free enough to take chances on what they may gain as a city, instead of allowing themselves to be shackled by what they may lose as a race.

And that, to me, is a good thing.

No doubt the possibility that a white woman could possibly sit in the office that has, since 1973, been occupied mostly by black men is, at least for some, an uneasy thought.

Two Clark-Atlanta University professors, apparently concerned about Norwood’s lead in the polls, circulated a memo that urged black voters to rally around Atlanta City Council president Lisa Borders in order to avoid a runoff with Norwood. It inferred that it was in the best interest of the black community to keep blacks in the mayor’s office.

But if the polling is any indication, many black Atlantans seem to be more worried about rampant crime and a struggling economy than what a white mayor might do to them.

Besides, this day was coming anyway.

Thanks to the preceding black mayors, the projects that once housed scores of poor black residents – large blocks of easily mobilized voters – have been demolished. Low-income residents now live in mixed developments scattered throughout the city.

They also encouraged the gentrification of Atlanta. During the 1990s real estate boom, scores of affluent whites moved into the metropolitan area as blacks moved into the counties.

That change contributed to the city’s black population plummeting from 70 percent in the 1980s to around 57 percent now.
 
So now, the possibility exists that the black Mecca might soon have a white mayor. Yet Norwood’s ascendancy is, in many ways, an offshoot of black progress.

It was progress when the previous black mayors decided to help poor black people find better places to rear their children than in public housing projects that, more often than not, wound up being havens for crime and hopelessness.

It was progress when they lured affluent whites back to the inner-city to restore blighted areas and bolster the tax base.

If Norwood wins, it won’t be a testament to the fact that black people can be persuaded to vote for a white person over a black one. Black people have never had a problem voting their best interest over their race. For proof, look no further than black GOP chairman Michael Steele’s U.S. Senate race loss in 2006 to Ben Cardin, a white Democrat.

But what a Norwood win would show is that after a 35-year run of black mayors, some black Atlantans believe they have nothing to prove. They know that people who look like them can lead a world class city; that the battle is no longer about breaking barriers as much as it is about keeping the flame.

All of which tells me that no matter what happens next month, Atlanta’s going to be okay.

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Good stuff from Jazz:
"Black females do not meet their obligation also of normalcy;; having multiple children by the Harlem Globetrotters, walking everyday with a scowl on their face, still sucking their thumb at adult age, mean, nasty, don't work , children are bad, always broke, always want a handout, loud, ghetto, hair done, nails done and overweight. Fifty five percent of sisters are fat. Then you get upset when brothers get a European

by   
Jiggy5
October 28, 2009, 1:00 pm
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Marion Barry is available, let's get him in the race.

by   
Jiggy5
October 28, 2009, 10:58 am
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Lawd! have Mercy!!! Straight up racism.

by   
Pollypocket
October 28, 2009, 10:15 am
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I, Like many other Americans, want a Chinese Mayor.

by   
MikeCockrell9
October 28, 2009, 9:50 am
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Sup my peeps? Feel free to Holla at the Scholar. Jiggy is in da' house

by   
Jiggy5
October 28, 2009, 9:00 am
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I don't like this shyt one bit. We need a black mayor to stay strong and guide us to the promised land. Rise up against whitey peeps.

by   
Jiggy5
October 28, 2009, 8:50 am
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