Cass Tech v. Southeastern: 'The passion and pride that still burns'
Though using sports as a Metaphor for Much More Than a Game is a familiar journalistic chestnut, Darrell Dawsey makes it work this afternoon at Time's blog. [[No, I'm not on the promo payroll, just digging what they post.)
He graduated with academic/athletic honors from Southeastern in the early '80s, where he enrolled despite qualifying for Cass, and his wife is a Cass grad. But that's just a setup scene in his broader view of Saturday's state football playoff game between the schools.
Darrell believes the showdown reflects "the passion and pride that, despite Detroit's well-cataloged troubles, still burns within our city as a whole."
Quote:
This game also serves as a metaphor for the class, geographic and social distinctions that have traditionally demarcated life in Detroit.
. . . Cass Tech is still Detroit shorthand to some for top-flight college-prep education. . . . And then there's Southeastern, . . . traditionally home to no-nonsense, working-class students whose parents got their hands dirty toiling in the area tool-and-die shops and car plants.
. . . The traditional class contrasts that the game highlights are still evident, though not nearly as pronounced as in decades past. . . . The broad strokes and grainy old POVs about Cass and Southeastern certainly can't fully define the current realities for the people or communities vested in either school.
But you can still see in them the outlines of Detroit's past and present, the dynamics that have compelled the evolutions of our assorted neighborhoods and our social, intellectual and professional classes.
As for me, no stake in this one. My Stuyvesant High Peglegs, who are 2-7 so far this year, play at Smith High in the Bronx back east this weekend.
