Williams: New Civil War? Southern legislators take aim at Black-run cities.

Place those scenarios in another state capital — the core of a metropolitan area with more than 6 million people — and you get a sense of the havoc that would occur if the wealthy, predominantly white enclave of Buckhead were allowed to secede from Atlanta.

This effort is being driven by The Buckhead City Committee in tandem with state legislators who do not represent Atlanta, as well as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted: “A vote against Buckhead city is a vote FOR crime. A vote for Buckhead city is a vote FOR freedom.”

But the scheme is so poorly thought out — how do you disentangle Buckhead from Atlanta’s debt and other services without plunging the state’s economic engine into ruin? — that the executive counsel for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tossed a bucket of ice water on the idea. “Without thoughtful consideration, these bills, together, may retailor the cloth of governance for Georgia’s municipalities in ways that will ripple into a future of unforeseen outcomes,” David B. Dove wrote in a letter to state lawmakers.

The effort appears to have stalled, at least for this year. But according to a Bloomberg article, proponents have no intention of going away.

Few political movements occur in a vacuum. The Republican-dominated Mississippi legislature similarly is attempting to sap power from its overwhelmingly Black capital, Jackson, with a proposal to create a separate court system for the mostly white neighborhoods around the state capitol complex.

Perhaps Buckhead and Jackson are what the “new Civil War,” for which some folks are clamoring, looks like. I wondered if what was afoot in Buckhead had larger implications.

Perhaps. But not in Virginia.

Current state law would prevent a Buckhead-style movement, according to Charles Hartgrove, director of the Virginia Institute of Government at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

“There has been a moratorium regarding not only annexations by Virginia independent cities, but also a restriction on granting city charters for quite some time (originally introduced in 1971),” Hartgrove said in an email.

“This issue was also recently addressed in the 2023 General Assembly session. There are companion bills (HB 1676 and SB 1185) that cleared the legislature and are currently sitting on the Governor’s desk for his review. This legislation would extend the proposed moratorium and restriction from its current end date of 2024 until 2032.”

If Georgia’s governor has doubts about the constitutionality of the Buckhead secession effort, why is this even a thing?

“You have to consider how much of this … is a stunt,” says Julian Maxwell Hayter, a University of Richmond professor and author of the book “The Dream is Lost: Voting Rights and the Politics of Race in Richmond, Virginia.”

“The unprecedented amount of political provocation, performative politics and culture wars is at an all-time high,” he said. “And I think this exists within that vein. ... It’s definitely not about public policy. It’s about posturing.”

Hayter’s book details Richmond’s 1970 annexation of white Chesterfield residents to dilute the growing voting power of Black Richmonders. The Buckhead secession movement has a race and class subtext.

According to Buckhead.com, the Atlanta enclave’s population is 12% Black and 72% white non-Hispanic; the rest of Atlanta is 63% Black. Buckhead’s median household income is nearly double that of the rest of Atlanta.

“We all know that using the word secession in the South is a dog whistle,” Hayter said. “The idea of seceding from anything not explicitly elite or white triggers the usual suspects. I think this is like Boomer-specific political rhetoric that speaks to people who get riled up by using the word ‘secession.’”

But Hayter said beyond the dubious political or economic benefits of secession, the timing is, well, off.

Given the rate of gentrification, “cities with sizable minority populations are actually becoming less minority. So for some cities, it just doesn’t make sense to stage a veritable revolution by seceding from the core of a metropolitan area.”

After all, the pro-business strategies of mayors such as Atlanta’s Maynard Jackson and Richmond’s Henry L. Marsh III, in response to the flight of residential and commercial taxpayer dollars to the suburbs decades ago, “laid the groundwork for what we now know as gentrification,” with cities such as Richmond now being repopulated by young white residents.

In this context, suburban enclaves like Buckhead “are still running on 20th century software despite all the demographic shifts that have taken place in cities like Atlanta,” Hayter said, adding: “What we’re seeing now is that more people are moving back into cities in large part because the economic incentives to do so have finally eclipsed the fear.”

But racialized fears — on the local, state and national levels — appear to be a primary driver of right-wing politics today. Citizens too often distance themselves from their city’s problems as they cling to the identity of their enclave. Hayter calls this a predictable outcome of a 20th century in which zoning laws, redlining, freeway construction, slum clearance and urban renewal specifically designated who could live where.

As long as America remains hardwired for separatism, a secessionist movement will always lurk around the corner.