Country Club of the South Part II: A View from Without

While it is clear that the Country Club of the South is an exclusive enclave (Whitney Houston is said to have a home there) where home and property values are held up, partly through privately controlled security systems, questions must be raised as to the value to such exclusivity...both within and without. The "Gated Community" was developed, in part, from a fear of crime. Many wealthy persons are at work much of the day or gone on business trips. Can they feel secure about their belongings? As trust in the Federal, local, and state governments to be able to control property crime declined in the late 1960s and afterward, a move toward private security systems led to what the Suburban Reader calls "government by private association" (p. 440). Yet questions remain as to the effects of such exclusion.

First of all, it has been argued that the "gate" represents an artificial form of protection. In reality, such large homes require maintenance (maid services, landscaping services, floor cleaning, et cetera) which means that the class exclusion is more apparent than real. Second, the private security has not stopped burglars from breaking in (see http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/1996/06/24/story2.html for an example). On the other hand, the gates serve to "screen out" persons that might want to enjoy a Sunday stroll through the American paradise, or those who do not do a lot of planning to secure permission beforehand.

In my case, though I already had photos from my invited-guest visitations, I went back, in part, to get a photo of the gatehouse, views from outside, and to see how easy (or not) it would be to "get in." The security guard at the west gate vaguely recognized me, and even though I had a paper showing that I had a legitimate interest in being there, I was not allowed in. The security guard, wearing a white shirt and bright shiny badge, might as well have been a police officer. I was told I could take pictures...from behind the "white line." The white line marked the boundary between the public roadside and private subdivision.

And so I drove across the street, parked at a non-gated but still upper-class subdivision, and walked back along the road. There, huge detached homes (some as much as four levels) were visible through the woods. I noticed that there were actually two fences: an outer, wrought iron fence surrounding the subdivision; then after a thicket of woods, inner private fences for the homes themselves. Of course, during the summer, the woods provided an extra veneer of privacy, but now the bare trees failed to shelter this Privatopia from my camera.

Later, as I was driving back, I stopped at another gated community, Citadella, to get a picture of the gate. To my astonishment, there was a man, with a dog and children, just behind a row of shrubs. I heard him say to the kids: "don't go too far, there's an electric fence there to protect us from the riff-raff." Standing just a few feet away, I could see him and he could see me. And yet we did not, would not speak directly to each other. The man, his kids, and his dog were in there own private world. And then I realized the real cost of the "gated community": a loss of the moral high road, the idea that we all share a common humanity on a common planet. In a world of separation, division, and difference, some people were seen to be "better than others." Value was measured by ownership, not citizenship. People were judged to be guilty until proven innocent. Yet was I not the same person who I was before, as an "invited guest"? And like the "Night Gallery" (a spinoff of the "Twilight Zone" by Rod Serling) episode where a woman thinks she is "walling in" her husband, only to find herself trapped, I have to wonder whether those inside the "fortress" have built themselves into a mental prison, walled off from the rest of the world and unwilling and unable to see themselves as part of a larger whole.