Looking for responses to this article on Detroit.

[Django]

My Pop forwarded this to me. He likes to taunt a little bit about me about living in Detroit. I love my Dad but we dont exactly agree on many issues. Instead of responding to this article I thought I would post it here where you all can weigh in. Then Ill send the link to Pop. I have a lot more faith in you all than I do myself in regards to responding to this blatantly racist rant. Im just not as well spoken as many of you, and I trust my fellow forumers will try and enlighten him..

Heres the article.


[[Frosty Wooldridge [[born 1947) is a US journalist, writer, environmentalist, traveler)

By Frosty Wooldridge



For 15 years, from the mid 1970's to 1990, I worked in Detroit , Michigan . I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs, and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses, and school yards. Trash everywhere!

Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it, and ignored it. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing, and food stamps!

With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10, and in one case, one woman birthed 24 children as reported by the Detroit Free Press, all on American taxpayer dollars.

A new child meant a new car payment, new TV, and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's 'Great Society' flourish in Detroit . If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America , outside of Richard Daley in Chicago , rode Detroit down to its knees... He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence, and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant "in charge".

You can figure out the rest. Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state.

Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same tim e, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan , but most work in Detroit . As the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in.

As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations. You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife!

Detroit may be one of our best examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike, and total separation from America .

Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan , paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June, according to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America . English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing.

Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city. In Time Magazine's October 4, 2009, "The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell, and how it can rise again," I choked on the writer's description of what happened. "If Detroit had been ravaged by a hurricane, and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it," said Daniel Okrent. "If drought, and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night."

Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it, if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice.

But Detroit , once our fourth largest city, now 11th, and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country.

Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been vic tim ized by their dreadful decision making."

As Coleman Young's corruption brought the city to its knees, no amount of federal dollars could save the incredible payoffs, kick backs, and illegality permeating his administration. I witnessed the city's death from the seat of my 18-wheeler tractor trailer because I moved people out of every sector of decaying Detroit .

"By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit 's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services," Okrent said. "The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans , unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit , the unemployment rate is 28.9%.

That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent." At the end of Okrent's report, and he will write a dozen more about Detroit, he said, "That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse, it's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ul tim ate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?"

As you read in my book review of Chris Steiner's book, "$20 Per Gallon", the auto industry won't come back. Immigration will keep pouring more, and more uneducated third world immigrants from the Middle East into Detroit , thus creating a beachhead for Islamic hegemony in America . If 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit . Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs.

You have already seen it in Madrid , Spain ; London , England and Paris , France with train bombings, subway bombings and riots. As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights, and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder. We will see more honor killings by upset husbands, fathers, and brothers that demand subjugation by their daughters, sisters and wives. Muslims prefer beheadings of women to scare the hell out of any other members of their sect from st ray ing. Multiculturalism: what a perfect method to kill our language, culture, country, and way of life.

I PRAY EVERYONE THAT READS THIS REALIZES THAT IF WE DON'T STAND UP, AND SCREAM AT WASHINGTON , AND OUR STATE, CITY, AND LOCAL LEADERS THIS IS WHAT AWAITS THE REST OF AMERICA . IF YOU FOLLOW THE NEWS AT ALL YOU KNOW THIS HAS HAPPENED IN ENGLAND , AND FRANCE AND SPAIN .

IF YOU THINK THIS IS JUST A BUNCH OF HOOEY AND YOU FEEL NO DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY, THEN I'M SORRY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO STAND AND FIGHT.


"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

[JBMcB]

This guy is a "journalist?" His writing is barely cogent. Check out the snake oil he's selling on his web site, it's a hoot.

[Meddle]

Sounds pretty accurate as I remember things back then.

[fryar]

Well. That must have been a pleasing and uplifting surprise to find in your inbox.

That said, I'll take a crack at it.

The article begins as a reasonably fair set of observations of Detroit's decline, given that it is just one man's observations, although it doesn't mince words and one could choose to be more polite. The beginning reminds me somewhat of that Yooper who trashed Detroit thread from some months back.

The article's descent into its own abyss begins quickly, in the second paragraph, however. The author, if he ever lurked on this board to begin with, surely abandoned it quickly and in much frustration. The focus on the many who supposedly "exist on federal welfare, free housing, and food stamps" is besides the point. Leaving aside the question of how representative these folks are of the Detroit population in general at any point in time, if we do grant that they are anything but an insignificant fringe, this is not in and of itself a root cause; it is a symptom of the root cause, abandonment.

This red herring is then interwoven with an at-best-unnecessary co-mingling with issues of race. This is done by describing the offending population as minorities without explicitly establishing that in Detroit a dominant proportion of the offending free-loaders may well necessarily be minorities, since the great majority of the residents is said to be composed of one or more racial minorities, at least if we assume that all things are equal. This is in and of itself a provocative assumption, of course, in light of some of the burdens of historical legacy.

Speaking only from personal experience, the author would have to be a rare individual indeed to be so insensitive to issues of racism as not to provide some kind of a qualifier for this irrelevant-but-inflammatory adjective in what may appear to have been a discussion about the presumed follies of wealth- and income-based welfare programs, to which race would not seem to bear any relevance. Generally, however, the required qualifier makes for terrible reading, and is so hard to pull off convincingly that many might opt to leave this irrelevant detail that begs qualification out entirely.

As the racial makeup of Detroit's population may be said to be implied, the author may appear to have cleverly provided himself with an "out" for accusations of racism. You, dear reader, must be the racist, for stumbling over an entirely innocuous reference to race that clearly is only derived from well-known and equally innocuous demographic facts. Or are you suggesting you live under a rock? Please, be serious, this is a serious subject.

The transparent purpose of all this is to allow the callous racism to go uncontested. And so we know he is a scoundrel. From this point forward, there are only so many ways this is likely to go.

UNRELATED CONSIDERATIONS NOTWITHSTANDING, THIS TURNS OUT TO BE A BUNCH OF HOOEY.

FWIW, the assertion made in this piece that the Great Society programs are not only a significant element here, but are in fact the key elements in Detroit's decline, has been espoused elsewhere; there are quite a few who share this conviction. Googling "Detroit Model Cities" [[model cities being one of the Great Society programs) led me to this video.

It all traces to LBJ. If only he had understood his folly.

IMO, the question of whether and how free toasters were handed out is quite irrelevant. The story here is sprawl to such a degree that abandonment set in. For various reasons, metro Detroit embraced suburban life and sprawl, which drove urban flight. Characteristic of urban flight is that those who can best afford to flee, flee first, with others following in their wake more or less according to their degree of economic empowerment. Eventually, a certain critical mass is indeed reached, and Detroit descended into the abyss in a self-reenforcing downward spiral.

More successful cities had race issues, more successful cities have had us-vs-them suburb-vs-city rivalries, more successful cities have ignored Jane Jacobs, more successful cities have seen local industries suffer, more successful cities had to wrestle with historical legacy burdens, and more successful cities have corruption and cronyism.

More successful cities were not so substantially abandoned with such reckless abandon for so long.

Now that I have managed somehow to say my piece, this thread may also be worthy of consideration.

[Meddle]

Eventually, a certain critical mass was reached,

aka, Coleman Young.

I believe he was almost single-handedly responsible for the death of Detroit as it was when it was prosperous.

[fryar]

So he didn't merely accelerate a process that was already in place, but you actually trace the reaching of critical mass to him?

[Meddle]

Sure he accelerated the hate and division, but during his dictatorship is when the mass exodus took place.

[Detroitej72]

thousands, and then hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing, and food stamps!

With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10, and in one case, one woman birthed 24 children as reported by the Detroit Free Press, all on American taxpayer dollars..

This sounds like the myth that Ronald Reagan started about welfare queens driving their Cadillacs to cash their welfare checks. What people fail to note is that there was a study done to find out who these welfare queens driving new Caddys were. None were ever found but that hasn't stopped the racists and cons from using that argument.

As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations. You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! ..

Funny, Mexicantown is one of the best commercial areas in the city, thriving with stores and restaurants. Sounds like another anti-Detroit myth.

Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan , paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June, according to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America . English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing...

Call to prayer all over the city? The two Mosques in Hamtramcks call can be heard that far and wide? Funny, I live a few streets from there and sometimes can barely hear it with the regular traffic and wind patterns. And as far as the high school flunk out rate, they are combining the rate of all DPS students and making it sound as if all those students are Muslim.

If 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit . Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs.

As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights, and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder.

Number one, what is the population of Muslim children in Detroit Public Schools, 5%? Hardly an overwhelming number.

Secondly, again we have the boogieman that cons have been using quite liberally lately, Sharia Law. There is no case anywhere in America on record where this is happening, yet these fools keep spreading this outright lie.

This sounds like one of those chain emails that cons send out to everybody on their friend list that is written by some paid blogger. The final proof is when they tell you to send it to everyone you know, and if you don't, then you must be a horrible person who hate America.

[Meddle]

Secondly, again we have the boogieman that cons have been using quite liberally lately, Sharia Law. There is no case anywhere in America on record where this is happening, yet these fools keep spreading this outright lie.

Instead we have the extreme right-wing 'Christians' trying to force everyone to live in the way they see fit.

[GOAT]

It certainly is racist to a degree and I would refute some of those numbers. But without going into detail and picking and choosing what is right and wrong about this article.

I would certainly agree that Detroit has decayed to the point of no return.

That is one reason I think everyone should be helping Mayor Bing to bring about the downsizing of the city. It is the only coherent response to the death of this once proud city.

[English]

That "article" is absolutely absurd, not to mention racist and offensive. I could refute it, but why? People who want to believe this stuff won't believe anything that I have to say. They would explain why my very married parents were somehow suspect, how my dad wasn't hardworking [[remember, only whitefolks can ever be "hardworking Americans"), and how all of our education, hard work, and achievements were due to affirmative action, because we know that no one black in Detroit achieved ANYTHING before the 1970s. In fact, my folks' contributions and existence in Detroit during the first 5-6 decades of the 20th century when it was supposedly a beautiful city is all lies and wishful thinking, because of course there were no black people in Detroit before 1967. [[We also know that all black people are pathological liars, and can't be believed.)

Black people just suddenly showed up in the mid-1960s to riot, be lazy welfare drug abusing criminals, and piss all the decent, clean living folks off. Detroiters in 1967 were so decent and clean living, unlike those who hung on to their ethnic enclaves in other major cities, they could not bear the presence of those darn blacks. So when Coleman Young told them to hit 8 Mile Road, they fled for their lives. After all, the women and children had to be protected!

All black people supported Coleman Young for no other reason but to stick it to the whitefolks, even those of us who were too young to vote. In fact, the only reason that black people do anything at all is to stick it to the Man. We are all drug dealers, video hos, welfare mamas, crackheads, and Black Panthers... each and every one of us. Clearly, absolutely none of us pay our fair share of taxes, serve in the military, volunteer in our communities, or believe in God. And clearly, all nonwhite people are the same and only exist to piss brilliant commentators like Frosty off -- all those Mexicans, all those Muslims!

It's laughable and sad. Django, what ails these folks can't be cured on the Internet, especially on a DYes thread. Give them our usual Detroit reading list, and see what they do with it. Tell them to start with Sugrue, and work their way through it. Of course, this won't be a problem, since all bigots are voracious readers and far more enlightened than any of us --fill in the blank epithet for people of color-- and our white "librul" allies.

[Melocoton]

It certainly is racist to a degree and I would refute some of those numbers. But without going into detail and picking and choosing what is right and wrong about this article.

Racist "to a degree"? I'm having a hard time imagining how one could write a more racist account of Detroit than this. Here's my articulate response to Frosty: ignorant, know-nothing garbage.

[Carey]

That's not journalism. It's one person's biased, simplistic and uninformed take on a vastly complex issue-- the decline of Detroit. He mentions London, Madrid and Paris in a negative light. Many people consider those places among the most successful cities in the world. This guy's a crackpot. Why even take him seriously?

[Gianni]

Mr. Frosty should sue that ignorant fascist racist for disparaging its good name. Certainly that crap is not worth reading let alone responding to.

[Zaiko]

I see other forum people already understand the right response....

Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue.

It explains all the hangups mentioned in the article.

Another fair parallel I make is Detroit with Mobutu's Zaire. Read King Leopold's Ghost.
Most African countries got independence in 1960, including the then Congo. Detroit got legal independence when Coleman Young was elected.

The white rulers trashed the place and taught the indigenous people how to kill, steal and oppress. Then when the black dictators got their chance they just did what they were taught to do. This theory is not tight as a drum. There are some holes in it. But if you read enough of the books about both places it's a fair conclusion.

The white action and black response are a lot alike in both places.

[jcole]

I see other forum people already understand the right response....

Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue.

It explains all the hangups mentioned in the article.

Another fair parallel I make is Detroit with Mobutu's Zaire. Read King Leopold's Ghost.
Most African countries got independence in 1960, including the then Congo. Detroit got legal independence when Coleman Young was elected.

The white rulers trashed the place and taught the indigenous people how to kill, steal and oppress. Then when the black dictators got their chance they just did what they were taught to do. This theory is not tight as a drum. There are some holes in it. But if you read enough of the books about both places it's a fair conclusion.

The white action and black response are a lot alike in both places.

The indigenous people of Detroit would be the Potawatomi.

[iheartthed]

You would have saved yourself a lot of wasted energy had you stopped here:

By Frosty Wooldridge

[EastsideQT]

1) What is the difference between Muslim call to prayer and Christian Church Bells playing hymns that can be heard all over the neighborhood? 2) All Muslims are not immigrants from the Middle East. It's a religion which many non-Muslim people practice in Detroit. 3) Many of the immigrants in this city are bi-lingual. How many non-immigrant people are bi-lingual?

[sumas]

Not trying to be erudite over this drivel. What hogwash.

[EastsideAl]

This article has been bouncing around the internet for a few years, and has been discussed on these boards at least once before within my memory here. Frosty Woodbridge is a self-promoting anti-immigrant [[and other scary dark people) crank whose nasty little articles have been passed around the internet for several years now. Sad to say, especially given his terrible writing and unconcealed racism, that he is one of my fellow MSU graduates.

What's most ridiculous to me about the article posted here though is that one of his major complaints about Detroit is our "multiculturalism" and the number of Muslims and Mexicans here. But, in fact, one of Detroit's biggest shortcomings in comparison with other American cities has been our relative lack of immigration. Detroit is far less "multicultural" than most of urban America, and that has been to our detriment. Some of the nicer and most economically active parts of this city and this area are populated by the very people he dismisses as part of the "problem," and I'm sure I'm hardly alone in wishing we had more of those folks rather than fewer.

[Mr. Houdini]

This article is dead on, until it starts in about the Arabs at the end. That part was hooey.

But as far as the rest of the country not giving a rip about what is happening to Detroit, that is true. I moved south from MI two years ago, and when people here would ask why I moved, I would say the economy in Detroit was sunk, and they'd look surprised. They have no idea here [[or care) as to what's going on in Detroit. I don't really either except I was born and raised there, so I hope the best for you all who remain. But I was shocked that outside of Detroit, few in America understand the dire third-world situation that is Detroit.

[citylover]

I see other forum people already understand the right response....

Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue.

It explains all the hangups mentioned in the article.

Another fair parallel I make is Detroit with Mobutu's Zaire. Read King Leopold's Ghost.
Most African countries got independence in 1960, including the then Congo. Detroit got legal independence when Coleman Young was elected.

The white rulers trashed the place and taught the indigenous people how to kill, steal and oppress. Then when the black dictators got their chance they just did what they were taught to do. This theory is not tight as a drum. There are some holes in it. But if you read enough of the books about both places it's a fair conclusion.

The white action and black response are a lot alike in both places.

Sad to see the Sugrue book has become the bible on this ; this is too complicated a topic for one take[[Sugrue) having the definitive and only explanation.....there are others.....his has validity but there are others

Your take is comparable to the absurd article that started this thread.

[iheartthed]

But I was shocked that outside of Detroit, few in America understand the dire third-world situation that is Detroit.

Oh man, you need a steak knife to cut through the irony in this sentence.

For those who don't quite get it, here are Cliff's Notes: the forum member is complaining about the lack of awareness about Detroit's current economic situation by the rest of America. Said forum member then refers to Detroit as a "third-world situation"... Which leads an enlightened audience to ask if the forum member has the slightest idea about what constitutes the "third-world"?

[Mr. Houdini]

Oh man, you need a steak knife to cut through the irony in this sentence.

For those who don't quite get it, here are Cliff's Notes: the forum member is complaining about the lack of awareness about Detroit's current economic situation by the rest of America. Said forum member then refers to Detroit as a "third-world situation"... Which leads an enlightened audience to ask if the forum member has the slightest idea about what constitutes the "third-world"?

Wut?

I wasn't complaining about the lack of awareness; just saying I was surprised that most people don't know or care what's going on there in your Detroit. Detroit's third-world condition is a Detroit problem. Detroit is going to have to fix it. The rest of the country doesn't care about you. Stop whining that no one outside of Detroit is helping. They aren't going to.

Yes, I know what a third-world country is. Third-world countries countries have an infrastructure that is at par with the city of Detroit, and perhaps even less violence.

PS: You don't know what irony is, you used the term incorrectly.

[iheartthed]

PS: You don't know what irony is, you used the term incorrectly.

Nope. My use of "irony" was entirely correct. The point just went over your head.