This has been all over my Facebook feed for the last few weeks, and I am interested to hear what this forum has to say about it.

Detroit’s revitalization is made up of a majority of white people. That isn’t to say that Detroit’s black population isn’t contributing anything to revitalization, rather it suggests that there is a deliberate racially unequal distribution of support and funding. In total 818 individuals were identified from fellowship programs, business incubators, universities, foundations, and other “innovation” programs.
Across all of the programs 69.2% of individuals were classified as White and only 23.7% as Black [[1.6% Latino, 4.8% Asian, 0.7% Arab). Looking at this new data, it is clear that there is a serious imbalance of both opportunity and outcomes in Detroit.

Detroit’s revitalization is completely one-sided. The surge in investment in this majority black city is not going to black residents. I began noticing a troubling trend. First, at Whole Foods one out of the ten featured suppliers were black. Then again when the 2013 Detroit Design Festival interviewed designers and one out of eight were black. A recent United Way campaign featured eight Detroit leaders and only two were black. I could only wonder why these revitalization efforts were so lopsided. Finally, I couldn’t help but cringe at TEDxDetroit 2013 where 80% of attendees were white coming up with “solutions” for Detroit, an 83% black city. To top it off, Wayne State University’s student population doesn’t even reflect the city with almost 50% white students and 20% black with only 9% of black students graduating in 4 years.

http://alexbhill.org/2014/10/16/detr...ite-solutions/

To put these numbers into context, here are the 2010 Census results for Metro Detroit as a whole, and the City of Detroit proper:

Within Metro Detroit, the census of 2010 reported 70.1% White, 22.8% African American, 0.3% Native American, 3.3% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 1.2% from other races, and 2.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.2% of the population. Arab Americans were at least 4.7% of the region's population [[considered white in the U.S. Census). The region's foreign-born population sat at 8.6%.


As of the 2010 Census, the racial composition of the city of Detroit was:



Metropolitan Detroit has been extremely segregated for decades, with a vast majority black population in the city proper, and a vast majority white population in the suburbs. The flight of businesses and residents out of the city and into the suburbs has resulted in devastating financial problems for Detroit city government, and has reinforced the socio-economic and racial divide by adding a geo-political divide on top of it.

In recent years, this trend has started to change due to a significant increase in the black population in the suburbs, and also the still relatively small, but increasing white population in the city, specifically in the greater downtown area.

There are a number of conflicting viewpoints and opinions about these changes, and I'm interested to hear what the Dyes people think...