Racial Apartheid in a Small North Carolina Town

Municipal Underbounding: Annexation and Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns*

“…Contrary to our expectations based on previous research (Aiken 1987;Johnson et al 2004), our results do not reveal a simple or straightforward story of widespread racial exclusion in the South. Indeed, our initial analyses suggested that small towns in the South were as likely to annex black population as white population.…”

“…Is a large and visible black fringe population threatening to predominately white southern small towns, as predicted by the ''visibility-discrimination'' hypothesis (Blalock 1956) and that is manifested in the practice of municipal underbounding? Johnson et al (2004), in their study of a small town in North Carolina, characterize racially-selective annexation as a kind of racial apartheid that effectively keeps the races separated while reinforcing racial inequality in the quality of life. 8 In some additional analysis, we estimated similar models using a weighted regression technique in which we gave proportionate weight to larger municipalities rather than weighting each place equally.…”

Understanding the Complexities of Annexation

“…Furthermore, those communities that faced a situation where the county "percent black" was higher than the community "percent black" were less likely to annex black populations. This research echoes earlier case study research including analysis of the Yazoo Delta in Mississippi (Aiken 1987) and the town of Mebane in North Carolina (Johnson et al 2004), both of which found evidence of selective annexation based on race.…”

Inequities in Long-Term Housing Recovery After Disasters

“…Responding to political pressure from affl uent stakeholders, cities often act to maintain neighborhood homogeneity, support affl uent and fast-growing areas of communities, and neglect poor or minority areas both within and adjacent to their boundaries. Their actions may come in the form of land use planning (large-lot or low-density zoning and building permit caps; Pendall, 2000), annexation ( municipal underbounding; Johnson, Parnell, Joyner, Christman, & Marsh, 2004), or capital investment ( failing to provide adequate infrastructure and services; Marsh, Parnell, & Joyner, 2010).…”