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Edited on Tue Jun-07-05 02:01 AM by happyslug
In the South Black and Poor are often interchangeable terms. Many of these locations are the remnants of the old Plantations, i.e. a lot of Blacks (descendent's of Slaves) and just a few land owning whites (Descendent's of the old Plantations owners). Poor whites are either in another part of the County, or not in that county at all (And since we are talking about the tidal basis of the Carolinas poor whites tend to be nearer Raleigh and the other cities of the south. Remember in the Colonial Period cities in the south were NOT on the Coast (with some exceptions like Charleston SC) but at that point on the Southern Rivers that ships of the time period could go no further (Called the "Fall Line" generally do to some rapids or falls in the River the prevented ships going further inland). The areas between the Fall line tended to be large Plantation areas, with the poor whites in the area around the fall line or beyond the fall line.
When Roads were first built in this area during the 1920s and 1930s, they just connected the existing cities along the fall line (As had the Railroads a couple of Generations before). With the building of the interstate highway system things changed. To speed up travel between Charleston and Virginia I-90 did NOT go along the fall line but right through the Tidal basin. This brought with it the traffic that use to travel along US 1.
With I-90 completion upper middle class people started to move into the Tidal basin. These tended to to white suburbanites types, not your typical Southern Plantation owner. They look at how cheap could they keep their taxes NOT how to keep the blacks down. While not racist in the traditional southern sense, it is anti-poor in that the White Middle Class does NOT want to pay for anything that does not benefit themselves. Thus the Blacks who often have lived in these areas for decades before most of the Whites moved in, found themselves out of the loop. The old white landowners sold their land to developers. The developers than develop the land into the new towns and than sold plots in those new towns to White Middle Class suburban types. The White Suburban types than want what they paid for, low taxation one of the things they paid for.
Remember Poor people cost money, services to poor people often exceed what middle class people cost (Example are that poor people are less educated and thus need higher level of support in the schools system, their houses tend to be of worse construction so higher level of fire protections, and poor people have more unemployment and thus depression which leads to higher costs of police coverage). When I was in College (the 1980s) it was estimated that if your house was worth less than $26,000, you paid less in taxes than the services you obtain from your local government (Thus no one wanted low income housing in their municipality).
Now I am NOT trying to excuse the white towns, just explain how this happened. The solution would be a county wide government, with the Road maintenance, garbage pickup, police protections and fire protection provided by the county (Thus spreading the costs of the poor over most of the people who are benefiting from having low income people near by). I grew up in the City the Pittsburgh and I saw the same division along economic lines (Which sometimes but not always ran along racial lines). Several of the River Towns are poor and have been poor since most of the old Steel Workers moved out after WWII (And moved into the surrounding suburbs). Proposals to merge these river towns back into the surrounding townships have been fought for decades (Most River Towns were formed in the 1800s when it was easier to break off from an existing township than it was to merge municipalities together, thus in Allegheny County, the County the City of Pittsburgh is in, you have 130 municipalities, some very wealthy, others dirt poor and often side by side). The reason for the fight is that the Suburban Townships do NOT want to increase taxes to equalize services between themselves and the old river towns (Which is ironic it that the number one reason for most river towns separating from the townships in the 1800s was the townships refusals to pave roads in the area of the River Towns).
The best solution would be that the functions of local municipalities be taken over by the County. The problem with this for most counties is that the richer municipalities would see their taxes go up to help pay for services in the poorer municipalities. Thus even if we are talking only of a small in cease, they are people who will fight you over that increase. In more rural counties (Like the Counties we are talking about) you have huge areas where no local services are provided, and thus any plan to transfer power to the County also must include expansion of services to parts of the county without ANY local services (and this increase taxes even more).
Thus the reason for the problem is not racism per se (Racism is a factor, but less than economic class) but economics and that people do NOT like to pay for services to other people (and like to shift their own costs to other people). The towns in question are getting the benefit of having within a decent commute poor people to do a lot of the service work in the town, but does not have to provide them any services for their live outside the town. This is shifting the costs to the poor who just can not afford it (the Sewerage system for example, it would be cheaper and healthier for everyone if it would be extended to the poor sections, but the poor often do not have the up front money to pay for such improvements, and in fact the cause of the sewerage smell may just be many of the poor people leaving their septic system overfill to save money).
Cost shifting takes place all the time, the key to good government is designing a Governmental System that shifts costs to those people who can bests afford to pay for it, while at the same time keep taxes low. With the Automobile, the best way is county wide Government, but many people want to use the automobile to leave the costs of the poor behind them. Anyone who has truly study this problem will tell you, the poor will always be with us and you have to account for them, if you do not the system you develop will break down. In many parts of the US this system is breaking down and coming to a head in cases like this one, forcing local and County Officials to address the problem. The biggest problem is NOT defining the problem but getting people to accept that the problem exists AND that the only solution is higher taxes on the Upper Middle Class.
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