Friends, meet my son Isaiah Chapman.
He’s a freshly minted high school graduate.
He’s a new car owner.
He’s a recovering wrestler.
And, he’s a Georgian.
He wasn’t born here.
Our family arrived in Georgia six years ago, under pretty familiar circumstances. The jobs were here, so my wife and I moved to grab two of them.
Isaiah was born in South Carolina.
His roots run deep there. My wife and I grew up in Greenville, S.C. We both attended the University of South Carolina.
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A cousin traced our family back to the South Carolina of colonial America. Some of our descendents were owned by the brother of General Andrew Pickens, a Revolutionary War hero who has a county named after him. In South Carolina. I bought my first home in Pickens County.
You can look at it this way: We were South Carolinians before there was even a United States. To know us is to know that we are Gamecock proud. All day, everyday.
And that has ended. Now. With my son.
He is now a graduate of Peachtree Ridge High School.
That Georgia identifier is about to get cemented further.
He will attend Georgia State University, with a state scholarship in hand. He made that choice because he wants to work in film, which Georgia is pushing as a top priority among the state’s growth industries.
I see new roots being planted.
And I get to see firsthand how two important trends that define both metro Atlanta’s present and future are developing.
Metro Atlanta has been — and will likely remain — among the nation’s pacesetters in population growth. Also, much of that growth will be racial minorities, from within the United States and from across the globe.
Sitting in Infinite Energy Arena on Thursday as more than 700 graduates claimed their high school diplomas, I saw what demographers were forecasting a generation ago.
In 1990, the Atlanta Regional Commission was projecting that Gwinnett would grow to 721,000 residents by 2010. They were wrong. Gwinnett wound up having more than 800,000 residents by then. Today, there are nearly 900,000 Gwinnett residents.
Diversity has marched forward in ways that continue to amaze me as a son of the South.
The names of graduates told a story of racial transformation in Gwinnett that is unlike few places in the country. For every Frank Wills there was a Jogbin Won. For every Garry Henderson, there was a Carlos Herrera. Angelia Scott likely sat on the same row as Jumah Serdah.
I counted 22 graduates with the surname Kim. There were three Smiths, six Davises, five Johnsons, and four Williams, which are four of the top six American surnames.
Recent projections say the metro area could add another 3 million residents by 2046. Atlanta has long been a draw for other Southerners like my family, with African-Americans especially holding an affinity for the "city too busy to hate." Nowadays, the world is choosing Atlanta, and it is predicted that trend will continue unabated.
It is clear who we are becoming. To be seen is how we manage it.
For metro Atlanta to prosper, it must deliberately forge new relationships among a population set that is growing and diversifying and, if we’re not vigilant, could fracture and balkanize. It has happened in other places.
It's the primary reason we launched a team to examine how race defines us. RE:Race is a project dedicated to telling the story of the dramatic racial and ethnic change sweeping Georgia.
Our goal is to create a respectful conversation within our community about this complicated, emotional and personal issue.
Then there is the issue of growth itself. With a burned, collapsed bridge impairing an already overcrowded interstate, many folks here joked that metro Atlanta is closed to new residents. The thought of one more car on the road was frightening to each of us who’ve had to spend an hour or more to travel 10 miles or less in this town.
Well, the growth isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
A recent report on a projection from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, as outlined by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Michael Kanell, says metro Atlanta over the next three decades will "become the sixth-largest metro area in the country. By 2046, metro Atlanta could have 8.6 million people, the report concludes. That's in striking distance of being as large as metro Chicago today.
That’s also a reason for us to talk about how we will move about with that many folks calling metro Atlanta home. What will our schools look like? What should the future of housing look like?
As the AJC continues to cover transportation, housing and education, a primary goal will be leading a conversation about the public investments we need to make today to ensure that the Atlanta of 30 years from now is a desirable place to live and work.
Each of us should be engaged in solutions to ease traffic congestion, erase uneven educational outcomes and adopt smart housing policies that protect our investments and provide adequate options for everyone.
That includes Isaiah Chapman, who in 30 years will be as old as his dad.
And he will remain, I’m predicting, a Georgian.
Reach him at Deputy Managing Editor Leroy Chapman Jr. at Leroy.Chapman@ajc.com.
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