Displacement and the Racial State in Olympic Atlanta, 1990-1996
In: Southeastern Geographer , 53 (2) pp. 198-213. (2013)
Recent contributions to critical race theory and refugee studies can sharpen and extend analyses of urban displacement in aspiring global cities, especially with respect to how these cities demographically envision themselves. In the six years immediately preceding the 1996 Olympic Games, the city of Atlanta displaced many Atlantans from neighborhoods and public housing, while illegally arresting thousands more, thus moving many of the homeless to the city jail. Using David Theo Goldberg's The Racial State alongside the work of Peter Nyers in Rethinking Refugees, this paper proposes that Atlanta's municipal government and its civic allies, in a pursuit of "authentic" global city status, exhibited characteristics of an urban racial state predicated on the image of the displaced and their absence.