Xenophobia or Proper Zoning?

I've noted a couple of times on this blog that my real-life v. cyber friends, for the most part consider me to be a liberal, commie, pinko sort of guy. My reaction to that is to actually use facts and logic. For the most part, they haven't changed their adjectives, so I don't know.

Every now and again, something comes up that challenges my world view. Better put, something comes up that I can't mesh with my several world views.

This time, and again, it's race relations. Atlanta has a simmering, latent, xenophobic ambiance. Merriam-Webster, online, defines xenophobia as: "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign." Given that definition, which I think is correct, we really aren't xenophobic. We are xenophobic relativists with a bit of economic, provincial fear in the leavening.

No one here has a problem if you have a Swedish Au Pair living in your spare bedroom. But we very much prefer our non-blond, non-European hired help to leave the county by sundown, especially in the northern bedroom counties.

Cobb County, on the northwest side of Metro Atlanta has a long history of wanting to stem the tide of "others" moving to its environs. We have MARTA here: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, that operates trains and buses in Fulton and DeKalb Counties, the two most urban counties. Cobb for years would have nothing to do with it. Still won't but in the past couple of years has been sending its own buses to and from Intown train stations. Same with Gwinnett County on the northeast side of town. People on the north side used to, and may still in some quarters, say that MARTA stands for Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.

Given what I've written, you can see I'm not joining with my fearful north side neighbors. So, my dilemma? Cobb County passed an ordinance earlier this year that makes it illegal for people to live in a house or an apartment that doesn't have at least 396 square feet for each resident. Forsyth County the furthest north and most rapidly expanding bedroom county is considering a similar ordinance.

From today's Atlanta-Journal Constitution, online: "Chairman Charles Laughinghouse defended the draft ordinance. 'It doesn't target any specific ethnic group,' Laughinghouse said. 'It targets a specific problem that is becoming more prevalent, not only in Forsyth County but the metro Atlanta area.'"

Well, yes, he's right. The problem is that Cobb and now Forsyth want their "Mexicans" (all Hispanic people in Metro Atlanta are "Mexicans") to live elsewhere. (Back in the old days, way back in the late Eighties, Forsyth County used the old tactic of burning out or harassing black people that had the temerity to try to settle in the County. Hosea Williams, a colorful lesser light of the Civil Rights movement held a march on Forsyth that was hailed as a model of peaceful demonstration. Its peacefulness was enabled just a tad by a thousand or so Georgia State Troopers.)

So, again, where's my dilemma? Well here it is. I don't want to own a house, or live next door to a house, that has twelve guys living in it with six cars in the driveway and and in front on the street. Detracts from the neighborhood ambiance and the property values.

As much as I don't want to, I think I have to side with Cobb and Forsyth Counties. Though their ordinances are targeted directly at Hispanic people, they are reasonable zoning regulations. God, I hate facts and logic.