Until recently, St. George was known locally in Baton Rouge both as a Catholic school/parish and the name of a fire protection district in the southern, unincorporated part of East Baton Rouge Parish.  That name today, however, has become a controversial term. So what is “St. George” all about ? To answer this question, some context needs to be provided.

Proposed city of St. George

In Louisiana, school districts are typically synonymous with parish boundaries, with several exceptions. The biggest exception to the “one parish, one district” rule is in East Baton Rouge Parish, which contains the capital city of Baton Rouge.

East Baton Rouge Parish currently has four distinct school districts: Baker, Zachary, Central, and the existing parish school system covering the majority of the parish. At the present time, there is a movement afoot to create a separate school district in the unincorporated areas of East Baton Rouge Parish along its southern periphery. Since that unincorporated area is not part of any existing city, there is a parallel movement to incorporate this area into the city of St. George. This move has a political necessity behind it: the lack of an underlying city is part of what doomed the efforts of the same group in seeking legislative approval to create a new school district.

The proposed incorporation of St. George, coupled with the creation of a new school district, is a polarizing issue locally, given the following “background issues”: (1) East Baton Rouge Parish was under a school desegregation order for several decades, and (2) there have been population movements into neighboring parishes at the expense of East Baton Rouge Parish and its school system.

To add fuel to the fire, the St. George incorporation has been thrust into the national spotlight: in a recent article in the Huffington Post, the insinuation was that the incorporation of St. George had racial undertones to it as a “white flight” phenomenon. JMC Enterprises of Louisiana would like to independently examine voter registration data to evaluate this assertion.

St. George: (2008 and 2013) voter population

East Baton Rouge Parish voter registration for 2008/2013

The above statistics represent the racial breakdown of those registered to vote in East Baton Rouge Parish in 2008 and 2013, and this breakdown is aggregated by the applicable municipalities (Baker, Central, and Zachary have their own school systems).

The data does confirm that St. George is majority white. The data also shows that (1) St, George does not have the whitest population in East Baton Rouge Parish – Central (located in the northeastern part of the parish) does, and (2) an examination of both 2008 and 2013 data shows that the demographic changes occurring throughout East Baton Rouge Parish are occurring in St. George as well – the white percentage there has DECREASED from 78 to 74% in five years’ time.

Furthermore, the assertion that the proposed city of St. George is “lily white” can be further debunked by examining the demographic mixture present in each of St. George’s voting precincts: while St. George has a 74% white voter registration, only 10% of St. George’s voting population resides in voting precincts that are 90% (or more) white. That means this is a more racially diverse area than the tone of the Huffington Post’s article would suggest – in a nutshell, whites, blacks, Hispanics, AND Asians (6% of St. George’s voter population is Hispanic/Asian) of various economic strata have moved here to be in a suburban environment.

St. George: trends in voter population since 2008

East Baton Rouge Parish voter trends, 2008 to 2013

The “white flight” mantra can be further debunked by examining voter registration trends over the last five years (Baker, Central, and Zachary have their own school systems):

(1) East Baton Rouge Parish’s electorate has increased 5% over the last five years. Examining this data in greater detail reveals that the white voter population decreased by 1%, while the black voter population increased 11%;

(2) For St. George, the white voter population only increased 3%, while Zachary (a suburb in the northern part of the parish with its own school district) saw an 8% increase in its white voter population, and Central (which also has its own school system) only saw a 2% increase in the white voter population;

(3) It is not correct to ascribe these population movements as having racial undertones, however, because St. George’s black voter population increased 30%, or TEN TIMES the rate the white voter population increased;

(4) Zachary and Central are considered to be desirable school systems, and the black voter population increase in Central is 43%, or TWENTY TIMES the increase in the number of white voters. In Zachary, the increase in its black voter population over the past five years is 29%, or FOUR TIMES the increase in the number of white voters;

(5) Finally, the suburban school systems in Livingston and Ascension parishes saw a 10% increase in their white voter population, as well as a 29% increase in the black voter population over the past five years. In other words, the data does now show exclusively “white flight” to these areas either.

Conclusion

Given the demographic trends within the Baton Rouge area (particularly in St. George), it is therefore not accurate to state that there has been “white flight” to St. George, or even to Livingston or Ascension Parishes, since in all three entities, black voter population growth has been substantially more robust than the growth in the white voter population over the past five years.