Is Forsyth County bad for minorities? (Atlanta, Alpharetta: transplants, crime, bad credit)

[CHICAGOLAND92]

I was reading on Wikipedia that Forsyth County isn't the best area for minorities. If you would like to read the article, google "Forsyth County wikipedia".

Has anything changed in the past.. 5 years?

[gt6974a]

Georgia is 48th in hate crimes
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_hat_cri_tot_num_percap-crimes-total-number-per-capita (broken link)

[xxman777]

I hate to do this but I have to question that stat. The numbers there seem a little hard to believe. According to that site Minnesota (a state with an only 12% minority population) has 14,550 times the number of hate crimes per capita as Georgia (a state with a 37% minority population). That means if you are a minority or somebody disagrees with your sexual orientation you are 14,550 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime (even higher if you take into account the number of available victims). In DC you are almost 28 thousand times more likely. That just seems a little high. I have a theory though. I suspect that different states have different standards for what constitutes a hate crime. Georgia might be a little more leery toward calling something a hate crime simply because of the stigma the south has. If they call more stuff a hate crime they would just be reinforcing the stereotype that a lot of people have.

With that said I can't argue that Forsyth County isn't much different from a suburban county anywhere else in the US. Atlanta is pretty segregated but the northern suburbs are mostly transplants from other states. You're going to find racism anywhere you go but you probably won't find much more in Forsyth then any other suburban county.

[atlbravo]

I have been living here for a couple of years and there is absolutely no issues here. In fact, I would go as far to say that the quality of life here is very good, except for long commute.
It is true that this area is less diverse in the sense that it is majority white, but I guess the stories of KKK rallies are now deeply etched in the history pages that will not easily disappear, unlike your bad credit.

[atlantagreg30127]

Forsyth gained recognition a number of years ago because a very radical activist named Hosea Williams played the "cry wolf" thing and organized a march in that area where several hundred black people did a 1960s style march against racism. Some KKK members showed up (what.. 8 people) to counter it and it was viewed by some members of the media that the county must be filled with KKK and skinheads.

I've known several people who live or have lived in Forsyth, including a mixed couple (black husband/white wife) and no one has had any problems whatsoever. The biggest problem they have is strain on the public utility system due to rapid growth in the area.

You cannot give much weight to the rantings and ravings of people like Hosea Williams (now deceased) and Jesse Jackson. People like this don't even have real jobs other than to "protest" and look under rocks until they find something they can make look like racism. Racism does exist, but you can find it just as likely 50 miles outside of New York City as you can 50 miles outside of Atlanta, and for that matter, a white person walking through Harlem is just as likely to be a victim of it as a black person walking through Beverly Hills at 3am. Forsyth is no better or worse than any other place.

[FROMCATOGA]

I lived in Forsyth back in 2003 and I'm black and my wife is white. We have two children, and didn't have any problems. We lived in Cumming, and truly loved it there. The kids went to school, met friends, and had a great time.

And to my knowledge, there are more black people living up there, so "racial tension" nope! There are waaaaay too many transplants living there now. The natives are pretty much the thing of the past!

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by xxman777

I hate to do this but I have to question that stat. The numbers there seem a little hard to believe. According to that site Minnesota (a state with an only 12% minority population) has 14,550 times the number of hate crimes per capita as Georgia (a state with a 37% minority population). That means if you are a minority or somebody disagrees with your sexual orientation you are 14,550 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime (even higher if you take into account the number of available victims). In DC you are almost 28 thousand times more likely. That just seems a little high. I have a theory though. I suspect that different states have different standards for what constitutes a hate crime. Georgia might be a little more leery toward calling something a hate crime simply because of the stigma the south has. If they call more stuff a hate crime they would just be reinforcing the stereotype that a lot of people have.

With that said I can't argue that Forsyth County isn't much different from a suburban county anywhere else in the US. Atlanta is pretty segregated but the northern suburbs are mostly transplants from other states. You're going to find racism anywhere you go but you probably won't find much more in Forsyth then any other suburban county.

I live in GA and my theory is that hate crimes are not reported much. You have to take into account the crimes that are not reported. Minnesota may rank as having alot of hate crimes, at teh same time, hate crimes are probably more likely to be reported.

[south-to-west]

Just to clarify a few things:

1) Forsyth County has a bad reputation because most of the county's black population was literally ran out of the county in the 1930s after a white woman was allegedly raped.

2) Hosea Williams, although at times controversial, was a good man and was justified in leading protests for open housing in Forsyth due to the intolerant climate that existed there 20 years ago. It was the locals who chose to throw the bottles and rocks at the marchers, not the other way around.

3) Forsyth County is now one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. Due to the close proximity of Lake Lanier and upscale Alpharetta, as well as the beauty of the countryside up there, families have streamed into Forsyth County over the past 15 years and have thus transformed it from a rural backwater into an affluent suburban community with good public schools. Property values have skyrocketed there as well.

4) A lot of Forsyth County's new residents are not native Georgians with many of them being transplants from the Northeast.

Overall, Forsyth County is still one of the least diverse counties in Metro Atlanta, but I really don't think that there is any sort of racial tension there. More and more blacks are moving there everyday.

In regards to hate crimes, it is a common misconception that the South has a disproportionate amount of hate crimes. While I understand this mistaken assumption due to history, nothing could be further from the truth nowadays. Hate crimes are more rare down here because of the familiarity between whites and blacks down here. Whereas, in many areas of the North and West, you will see hate crimes more often because of fearful locals who may have never had any sort of interaction with someone of another ethnicity. You're way more likely to come across a skinhead in rural Idaho than you are in rural Georgia.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by xxman777

I hate to do this but I have to question that stat. The numbers there seem a little hard to believe. According to that site Minnesota (a state with an only 12% minority population) has 14,550 times the number of hate crimes per capita as Georgia (a state with a 37% minority population). That means if you are a minority or somebody disagrees with your sexual orientation you are 14,550 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime (even higher if you take into account the number of available victims).

Wow... I grew up in the Twin Cities, and I would consider that area fairly open-minded with regard to race, religion, and sexual orientation. I've heard that Minneapolis is known for being somewhat gay-friendly, for example, and I know that those types of things were mostly non-issues for me when I was growing up there.

Of course, in the 60's and 70's the western Twin Cities suburbs were mostly made up of white folks who all came from roughly similar backgrounds, so there weren't too many people to make fun of even if we had the desire to do so.

I also have to admit that there *is* a lot of bad blood in some areas of rural Minnesota between whites and Native Americans (who are running casinos, making money hand over fist, and seen as getting all sorts of tax breaks and such that the white folks can't get), and it has to be hard for farmers who are barely scraping by to see their neighbors benefitting from exceptions to state law (casinos are not allowed in the state of Minnesota except on reservation land). Also, in the Twin Cities, there has been an explosion in Hmong immigration over the past several years, as well as a growing presence of street gangs of other ethnicities (not just Hmong), so I could see a certain amount of it being gang-related. Perhaps.

That said, I have a very hard time with such a statistic. I sense more tension down here in Atlanta than I did up there, and I've not really seen all that much down here, either. There's something funky about the numbers...

[Teaching2008]

Well all it took for racism to rear its ugly head was the election of a (half) African-American president. I am a teacher and my son is a middle school student in Cumming, and the day after the election there were comments overheard including the n**** word, assassination, white house not black house. You be the judge if this is an area of diversity and low hate. There may have not been "hate crimes" reported, but that doesn't mean that there are not hateful people living here. Too many for my taste. I am white, voted for Obama, because he is intelligent, well educated, and his philosophies are in line with mine. The sounds of racism and intolerance across this country make me ill. In fairness to Cumming, I am saddened to realize that we as a country are not as accepting let alone appreciative of diversity as we claim to be.