| Abstract: | The Reverend Joseph Lowery and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus sponsored a 2011 voting rights suit, Lowery v. Deal, that demanded the disincorporation of several majority‐white cities in Georgia's Fulton and DeKalb Counties and preemption against attempts by affluent and majority‐white north Fulton to secede from the rest of the county. Secession would have severe consequences for racial equity in the metropolitan area. Lowery's 2011 dismissal by the District Court reflects ascendant color‐blind racial ideology that defends white privilege in metropolitan space by attributing it to culturally and legally legitimate race‐neutral processes. Historical analysis challenges this color‐blind interpretation, identifying the nominally class‐based interests of north Fulton residents with systemic racial discrimination and the politics of secession with historic patterns of spatial politics that have sought not only to exclude but also to manipulate political space to limit the ability of black voters and officials to make decisions affecting whites and their property. |
