Abandon Detroit, Abandon Black America

[Detroit Stylin]

The perma-denial mentalities that posters likelike Hemmorhoid and Rabid's have is the resaon that the region has gotten to the point where it is now. I can touch o several other points but it will simply lead to "I didnt benefit off this or that", so I will leave that for another day....

[Ravine]

The perma-denial mentalities that posters likelike Hemmorhoid and Rabid's have is the resaon that the region has gotten to the point where it is now. I can touch o several other points but it will simply lead to "I didnt benefit off this or that", so I will leave that for another day....

Good plan. Maybe then you'll make some goddam sense, instead of tossing around insulting nick-names and dropping off incoherent attempts at being cryptic.
Your "educated sister English" wouldn't do that kind of shit.

[fryar]

This thread has taken an enlightening turn.

Since I'm to blame, peaches and greens and all, let me be the first to refocus this thread.

I don't think it's constructive to think of Detroit as a black city that specifically is going to get help from Black America. Notwithstanding the successful ratings of the Kilpatrick Show, Black America is not one monolithic block concerned primarily with Black America, even if certain authors who frame their pitch for some relief against that backdrop may be making, for all I know, a well-intentioned attempt at media manipulation. Black America is not simply going to fork over some dough to subsidize cronyism and failure. Race, in and of itself, is a dead end. Like a third world aid recipient that demonstrates that it is successfully addressing structural sustainability issues in areas like health, education, the civic process, and that is successfully passing donor-sponsored audits in order to qualify for more funding, Detroit is going to have to demonstrate that the lessons of history have been learned. A subset of these relate to race, in turn, but they alone don't suffice.

As a ferinstance, let's address corruption. What was the deliberative process that led to the decision that federal monies ought to be spent on netbooks for Detroit's schoolchildren? Whether or not they think that was the right thing to do is beside the point, donors understand that to engender change, the process must be bottom-up. The question is can the recipient be proactive about justifying this course of action if pressed. One might think that as a relatively less well-endowed city, many of these children do not have internet access at home; how have you addressed this? Have you addressed legitimate parental concerns about the websites these children might be visiting, and if so, how? Please describe the bidding process and the deliberations that determined the selection of the vendor; did those with appearances of a possible conflict of interest recuse themselves from this project? If you can pass tests like that, you can try to get not only additional money, but a greater quantity of it.
For what it's worth, the netbooks idea sounds sensible enough to me, and this is not just about civic process issues. The same logic applies to getting Target to help build a structure, traditional-looking or otherwise, on a slummy surface lot and investing in downtown. What are you doing to address these other slummy surface lots, which negatively impact our branding? Demonstrate the commitment of your citizens to Detroit and this location in particular. Explain to us that this is not us playing our role in failure, with concrete examples, please. We have heard that Detroit has high crime and so we are reluctant to invest, please address this concern substantively.
I think race, in and of itself, is a red herring. Maybe not for the well-intentioned author being discussed here, but you've gotta admit it's been the lead-in teaser for the Kilpatrick Show and other bad TV for a while now.

[fryar]

As opposed to being a black city, it needs to be a successful city. Yes, it lurks from one financial crisis to another, but here is why we are a successul city:
x
y
z

[Bearinabox]

Black America is not simply going to fork over some dough to subsidize cronyism and failure.

The only people advocating that are the cronies themselves. There are other ways to solve a problem besides indiscriminately throwing money at it.

[fryar]

Which is what Black America will say to itself when asked asked to save a "black" city. That issue is a dead end for anyone other than those cronies, who can try to use it to manipulate for their own ends, so it is a red herring, kind of a bait-and-switch type thing. The author probably means well, but that won't cut it, and may well backfire.

[Bearinabox]

Which is what Black America will say to itself when asked asked to save a "black" city. That issue is a dead end for anyone other than those cronies, who can try to use it to manipulate for their own ends, so it is a red herring, kind of a bait-and-switch type thing. The author probably means well, but that won't cut it, and may well backfire.

The author is admittedly somewhat vague about what exactly he is advocating, but it doesn't sound to me like he's telling black folks to cut a check to City Hall. He spends much more time on the "why" than the "how," and basically leaves it up to readers to figure out for themselves what they have to offer in the way of solutions to Detroit's problems.

[iheartthed]

This thread has taken an enlightening turn.

Since I'm to blame, peaches and greens and all, let me be the first to refocus this thread.

I don't think it's constructive to think of Detroit as a black city that specifically is going to get help from Black America. Notwithstanding the successful ratings of the Kilpatrick Show, Black America is not one monolithic block concerned primarily with Black America, even if certain authors who frame their pitch for some relief against that backdrop may be making, for all I know, a well-intentioned attempt at media manipulation. Black America is not simply going to fork over some dough to subsidize cronyism and failure. Race, in and of itself, is a dead end. Like a third world aid recipient that demonstrates that it is successfully addressing structural sustainability issues in areas like health, education, the civic process, and that is successfully passing donor-sponsored audits in order to qualify for more funding, Detroit is going to have to demonstrate that the lessons of history have been learned. A subset of these relate to race, in turn, but they alone don't suffice.

As a ferinstance, let's address corruption. What was the deliberative process that led to the decision that federal monies ought to be spent on netbooks for Detroit's schoolchildren? Whether or not they think that was the right thing to do is beside the point, donors understand that to engender change, the process must be bottom-up. The question is can the recipient be proactive about justifying this course of action if pressed. One might think that as a relatively less well-endowed city, many of these children do not have internet access at home; how have you addressed this? Have you addressed legitimate parental concerns about the websites these children might be visiting, and if so, how? Please describe the bidding process and the deliberations that determined the selection of the vendor; did those with appearances of a possible conflict of interest recuse themselves from this project? If you can pass tests like that, you can try to get not only additional money, but a greater quantity of it.
For what it's worth, the netbooks idea sounds sensible enough to me, and this is not just about civic process issues. The same logic applies to getting Target to help build a structure, traditional-looking or otherwise, on a slummy surface lot and investing in downtown. What are you doing to address these other slummy surface lots, which negatively impact our branding? Demonstrate the commitment of your citizens to Detroit and this location in particular. Explain to us that this is not us playing our role in failure, with concrete examples, please. We have heard that Detroit has high crime and so we are reluctant to invest, please address this concern substantively.
I think race, in and of itself, is a red herring. Maybe not for the well-intentioned author being discussed here, but you've gotta admit it's been the lead-in teaser for the Kilpatrick Show and other bad TV for a while now.

I didn't read the article as the author trying to rally the troops to write checks for Detroit in the name of black culture. I think his intent was to encourage other black Americans to be a little more sympathetic to the situation of Detroit, since due to the city's demographics, it's basically the ultimate bellwether for black America.

I also don't see why Detroit needs to back away from the image of being a predominantly black city. That is Detroit's reality right now. Images are fluid, so it surely won't always have that connotation. But I don't see that Detroit embracing a Chocolate City image will hurt it [[especially hurt it any more than its name being tied to an industry that many people view as defunct). Other cities have held that Chocolate City image and still managed to see better days than the D.

[fryar]

I didn't read the article as the author trying to rally the troops to write checks for Detroit in the name of black culture. I think his intent was to encourage other black Americans to be a little more sympathetic to the situation of Detroit, since due to the city's demographics, it's basically the ultimate bellwether for black America.

That whole financial aid thing is really just my own spin on my main point, that arguing race is a dead end. I don't mean that focusing on race is not an effective way to bring home some dough, I mean that it is not an effective way to end the city's problems. I was, I guess, trying to illustrate that by using the whole funding and Target idea. Way to drive that idea home, fryar.

[Hermod]

I would like to ask you for your opinion on what is in this box, given what you have seen and observed in your life. I gave what are my knee-jerk suggestions earlier, basically urban sprawl and the decline of manufacturing. What do you think may have happened?

Detroit declined long before manufacturing declined. Detroit was built on manufacturing and when the facilities in Detroit became obsolete, it was more economic to replace them with buildings in the inner suburbs. SE Michigan boomed until the decline of manufacturing hit the area.

If you go out Stephenson Highway, Mound Road, or Sherwood north of eight mile you will see many, many square feet of manufacturing capability [[quite a bit of it still in use). Check out the I-75 interchanges north to Flint and there are a surprising number of manufacturing plants along there.

Detroit was a very ethnic city. While everybody wasn't at everybody else's throat, the various ethnic groups did tend to cluster together. A joke was that you could tell the neighborhood by the name of the saint on the Catholic church. Nobody worried if a German moved into a primarily Belgian neighborhood. Sometimes the older kids would mix it up along ethnic lines, but it wasn't considered to be a big thing. No one got stabbed or killed if there was an inter-ethnic "rumble".

Most of Detroit was very safe as well. Crime was pretty much confined to "certain areas" and people didn't worry about kids riding their bikes considerable distances or walking ten blocks to a movie theater at night.

People made a lot of money in WWII work in Detroit. Those who served came home with mustering out pay and the GI Bill. Lots of families were doubled up from the depression and others were in war emergency housing. This set off a post war housing boom and the inner burbs [[south of 14 mile) had vacant land and it filled up pretty quick.

There was no post war recession because of the pent-up consumer demand caused by no money in the depression and no goods available during the war. Everything boomed until 1954 when we had our first post war recession.

The folks escaping southern poverty [[both black and white) seemed to be the two groups that did not readily assimilate into the Detroit ethnic mix. I never went to school with any black children all the time i was in the Detroit schools [[thanks to residential segregation) but we did get more and more southern whites in the schools. They always seemed to cause trouble and I am not sure why. The DP kids from Lithuania and the Ukraine quickly fit in despite the language difficulties.

[canuck]

Ahh, the crux of the matter. Detroit, East Saint Louis, Saint Louis, et cetera will never prevail as long as the people living there think that they are being oppressed by some outside force.Take responsibility for the place you live. Do not blame others for your problems.

Ok there may be some truth in that you never hear someone complaining of the outside forces oppressing the poor people of Grossebloominghood Heights.

[canuck]

Bearinabox, I hope you realize that most people in the suburbs took no part in the actions that you listed, and therefore have no intention of "taking responsibility" for what has or is happening in Detroit. They have their own problems in the suburbs to worry about. So that leaves only you and your fellow Detroiters to solve your problems. It is not that suburbanites are unsympathetic to all the decent people of Detroit that are trying their best to make a life for themselves and their families; it's that there are so many people in Detroit that really don't seem to give a crap about their city that makes suburbanites less eager to be a part of any solution.

Isnt there a suburban citizen's forum you can contribute to that would be better served by your good judgment on things suburban. You seem to take an unhealthy interest in Detroit for someone as unwilling to be part of a solution as yourself. Next time you peek out your kitchen window at Detroit in the distance, just think how lucky you are to have something to talk about.

[canuck]

Always put black civic administration and corruption in the same sentence. You can substitute corruption for incompetence or ineptitude just as long as the idea that a black majority electing an overwhelmingy black administration is bound to fail. Haiti was steered that way from the very start.
Once it got its independance, France came back and took it back. Then after another heroic struggle the haitian people were forced to pay a huge debt in gold to avoid being ruled by France again. The result was perennial poverty, ill-equipped institutions and a sense that they would never amount to much. That is fertile ground for dictatorships, not the other way around. There were many times more foreign owned sweatshops and lower paid workers before the earthquake than 20 years ago.

Cartoony kids of all colors are devoted to Gangsta rap or Punk Metal. As tattooed, cheek-pierced,
ak-47 wielding video-sotted youth walk the streets of Detroit, Hollywood makes another killing. Real life is even more exciting than the movies.

[mpf]

The folks escaping southern poverty [[both black and white) seemed to be the two groups that did not readily assimilate into the Detroit ethnic mix. I never went to school with any black children all the time i was in the Detroit schools [[thanks to residential segregation) but we did get more and more southern whites in the schools. They always seemed to cause trouble and I am not sure why.

One thing to remember is "John Deere"! The mechanization of agriculture [[affordable tractors, cotton pickers, whatever) caused many to leave the south, because their hand-labor was replaced by a machine... my Arkansas grandparents were sharecroppers who ended up north, looking for work. The farmhouse stood vacant for decades while the landowner worked around it, finally knocked it down and planted soybeans there.
Progress is kind of a bitch, we have to work smarter to overcome all these difficulties!!

[Hypestyles]

it's time to work past the paradigm of "black utopia" that found its zenith in the 1970s... the white flight of the 60s-70s was followed by the black flight of the 90s-00s.. some Detroit city council members, local activists, even residents are still emotionally invested in a certain form of "black-power" in local government, that they have lost sight of what multicultural life in 2010 and beyond is going to be in America.. reflexively holding on to the old political grudges, adhering to a myopic interpretation of Afrocentrism that assumes the worst of all other ethnic groups while presumably looking out for the best interests of "your own". Look at the census figures showing minorities [[working class, middle class, affluent) moving into various suburbs around Detroit.. are they "sellouts", "bourgie" folk? Black folks have been in virtually every facet of Detroit city government for decades now, and look what we have to show for it, in the aggregate. Look at the way local pols can get over if they just talk the right religious rhetoric, or successfully paint their rivals as scary outsiders/white folks puppets. Even when exposed in their misbehavior, they can still count on wrapping themselves in the blanket of conspiracy-victimhood to get black folks to circle the wagons.
Not everyone has been a great role model. Giving a pass to the corruption that various folks assume is "just politics" is not good enough. Being able to say "Well, white folks, you have your crooks, we have ours, let's just call it even" is not good enough.

[canuck]

Hypestyles

You are right to mention the opportunism of politicians but isnt that a given? When irish immigrants landed in New York, Boston, Montreal and other east coast cities they were the undesirable dregs of humanity to many settled folks. They got to wield power eventually and bullied their way into better circumstances. I dont see much difference between that and afro american rise to power especially in civic administration. So far every major american city has had a black mayor. Each and every one of them. That is a good thing. There have been a number of bad apples in the lot, but they managed to get into power at a later stage because of Jim Crow and the inability of forming a strong alliance with white power structures. Detroit city councils may have been corrupt to a higher degree than other cities but that is not a proven fact. I think that the state of the city following deindustrialization of its monoindustrial setting has certainly dealt Detroit leaders a tough set of cards. Wasnt Detroit the promised land to afro americans who came from the south. It may have been harsher in a lot of ways than the pastoral states but then generations settled, managed to buy a house and enjoy the fruit of their labors. This was wholly impossible for most of their ancestors.
That may be a reason for Detroit being something that the black population clings to, and cherishes in away that is punishing also. It must be pretty disappointing to view this once promised land as a declining symbol of the success americans were meant to enjoy. I think that racial and other divisions are issues to be overcome and set aside if there is to be a future for Detroit. There is however a need to acknowledge the history of iniquity that africans endured and not sweep it under the carpet.