Atlanta’s image of racial moderation was elite economic calculation, not conviction

Evidence

As this brief overview of Atlanta’s political landscape suggests, the idea of “the city too busy to hate” was invented and sustained by a moderate coalition born not out of chance but through careful calculation. For their part, white politicians and corporate leaders were just as segregationist in their thinking as other whites of the city. But they were practical. They discovered to their delight that progressive politics—or the appearance of it, at least—resulted in economic progress and profits. … Like their white partners, black Atlantans forged their own kind of progress, social as well as economic, within the workings of the coalition. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 101

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports a possible follow-up to the reader’s segregation/moral-panic work by showing elite self-interest, not genuine integrationism, drove nominal racial progress.
• XREF: connects to: Atlanta’s moderate image concealed its status as a center of African American strength — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 40; Historians of Atlanta focused on the moderate power structure and ignored segregationists — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 42; Atlanta elites sacrificed segregation customs to protect business progress — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 91 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlanta’s moderate coalition allied blacks with affluent whites against white workers #expands (0.85) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 100
• Postwar Atlanta’s desegregation was driven by a white-black moderate coalition, not activists or reactionaries #expands (0.85) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 50
• Racial ideas were deployed to deflect economic class resentment away from elites #corroborates (0.82) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 711
• Racism was invented to justify economic exploitation, not the reverse #corroborates (0.80) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1333
• Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics as a showcase of racial harmony #exemplifies (0.80)
• Racial theory is a product, not a cause, of the deeper value-stripping structure #corroborates (0.78)
• Atlanta civil rights histories overlooked working-class and middle-class whites’ central role #expands (0.75) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 629
• The Negro problem is economic exploitation, not racial coexistence #corroborates (0.75)
• White elites and even Du Bois initially celebrated the Atlanta Compromise #exemplifies (0.70) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 733