The Sad Fact of My Hometown
Griffin, Georgia is a town of approximately 23,000 people, a gang problem, and more Mexican restaurants than we know what to do with. (The quickest way to judge if you want to be friends with somebody is to ask what Mexican restaurant they prefer… it’s weird, I know, but it works.) We are the location of movie sets (Hunger Games anyone?), a church on what feels like every corner, and one of the only Truett’s Grills in the country. We are also the hometown of two high schools and a population divided.
From the age of 14 – 18, you go to one of two high schools if you live in Griffin, Spalding High or Griffin High. And, let me tell you a trick – as bad as it sounds, the easiest way to tell what school someone goes to is to look at them. One is more likely to send kids to college than the other; one school is more likely to produce athletes than the other; one school is more likely to vote republican than the other. The difference in political opinion is an interesting thing because we are a town that is literally split by train tracks – one side is most likely to lean to the left, the other to the right. Griffin is a town that was influenced by an America that had to learn to live with two idealistically opposite political parties.
As stated by McAdam in “Deeply Divided” the two main causes that “pushed the national Democratic and Republican parties sharply to the left and right” were the “civil rights movement and the segregationist countermovement of the 1960s.” The civil rights movement was responsible for pushing the southern conservatives away from the Democratic Party and towards that of the Republican Party, while the segregationist movement pushed northern liberals to the Democrats and away from the southern Republicans. One of the major players in this shift were the “Dixiecrats” – some, who would have lived in Griffin, Georgia.
Griffin is a town that is predominately Republican and, according to Ehrenfreund from The Washington Post, this is because “white southerners are more likely to vote Republican [because of] the racial biases along with political beliefs [that] are transmitted from one generation to another.” To put it simply, Georgia, as a past slave state, is more likely to let racism fuel politics because of the lasting idea that “blacks are simply inferior to whites.” Sadly, Griffin exemplifies this idea. Often times growing up, one hears racially charged comments from parents, and it is not until one is older that one might even think to question them – racism is part of the normal. Also, the football games between Griffin High and Spalding High are more than friendly cross-town rivalries – they are a fueled competition. It is one race against the other. (Don’t get me wrong, the games are fun… there is just a reason why the police are on high alert). Georgia’s, and therefore Griffin’s, racial history still plays a role today.
