Abandon Detroit, Abandon Black America

[Retroit]

They aren't my problems.

They are if you live there. You may not have caused them, but neither did most of the people that live in the suburbs.

I didn't segregate the city, and later the metro, with deed restrictions and redlining.

And neither did most of the people in the suburbs. In fact, it was not the whites standing their ground that is cited as the cause of Detroit's decline, but white flight.

I didn't make Detroit a dumping ground...

And who are suggesting did? Are you saying that the suburbanites round up all these people in the suburbs and dump them in Detroit?

... for the impoverished, the homeless,...

How many of these people are poor because they can not attain or hold a job, and how many are poor because they've been denied access to a job?

... the drug-addicted,...

Which is a personal choice.

...and the mentally ill.

Is the rate of mental illness any higher in Detroit than in the suburbs, or is the difference between how each group takes care of their own?

I didn't set up the transit system for failure by making it rely on inadequate and unreliable revenue streams, thus cutting off a third of city residents from reliable access to productive employment.

If the system can not be funded by its riders or by the citizens of the city it is located in, how would you suggest it be funded?

I didn't turn my back on all these issues for decade after decade and let them fester,...

Nor did most of the people in the suburbs.

... while playing petty us-against-them politics back and forth across 8 Mile because it played well with my base.

That sounds exactly like what you are doing.

I think it's important to recognize cause and effect, and I don't think that in any way discourages people from working to improve their community. If anything, it encourages them not to give up, because if you accept that Detroit is only messed up because Detroiters want it that way, then the only rational solution is to run far away and not look back, and we certainly will never "prevail" as long as that's what people keep doing. "Take responsibility" is never bad advice, but lack of responsibility is not what got us here, and it will take more than responsibility to get us out of it.

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.

[Bearinabox]

Retroit, your persistent ignorance is exhausting. I have better things to do with my time than summarize Origins of the Urban Crisis every day and twice on Sunday for someone apparently too lazy to do his own reading and too damn hardheaded to absorb it if he did. Come up with some new talking points and get back to me, ok?

[ghettopalmetto]

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.

Yet every time Detroiters stand up and DO give a shit, like Bearinabox here, you come up with a litany of excuses for turning your nose up and sitting on your ass.

[English]

Well, the SE Michigan suburbs are growing less insulated from the issues in Detroit. I predict there'll be a lot more diversity out there within the next 10 years, which can only be a good thing for the region.

[bailey]

So this thread and the Black flight thread have me confused. Is the author...who only hung out in Detroit in his youth....going to come back here and do something or is he going to blame people like the woman from the WSJ article for Detroit's further demise?

[Retroit]

Retroit, your persistent ignorance is exhausting. I have better things to do with my time than summarize Origins of the Urban Crisis every day and twice on Sunday for someone apparently too lazy to do his own reading and too damn hardheaded to absorb it if he did. Come up with some new talking points and get back to me, ok?

Origins covered the time period from WWII to the Riot of '67. Two generations have been born since then. We need to start thinking about the Origins of an Urban Renewal.

[Retroit]

Yet every time Detroiters stand up and DO give a shit, like Bearinabox here, you come up with a litany of excuses for turning your nose up and sitting on your ass.

If suburbia is as bad as you think it is, why don't all you Detroiters get off your asses and come out here to help us and give us your money instead of turning up your noses?

[Retroit]

Well, the SE Michigan suburbs are growing less insulated from the issues in Detroit. I predict there'll be a lot more diversity out there within the next 10 years, which can only be a good thing for the region.

True. And wouldn't more diversity in Detroit also be a good thing?

Maybe I could open a "black" restaurant.

[Michigan]

Yet every time Detroiters stand up and DO give a shit, like Bearinabox here, you come up with a litany of excuses for turning your nose up and sitting on your ass.

Wait, do you think writing a post on an internet forum denying responsibility for Detroit's problems is an example of a Detroiter, allow me to paraphrase here, standing up and giving a shit? If that is so then no wonder Detroit just wallows in a helpless, hapless state.

[English]

True. And wouldn't more diversity in Detroit also be a good thing?

Maybe I could open a "black" restaurant.

Why not? Background doesn't matter. If you know your way around the kitchen AND cater to your clientele's palate, you'll do well.

[Michigan]

Why not? Background doesn't matter. If you know your way around the kitchen AND cater to your clientele's palate, you'll do well.

Did you mean Blackground? Get it? A pun?

[laurin]

So this thread and the Black flight thread have me confused. Is the author...who only hung out in Detroit in his youth....going to come back here and do something or is he going to blame people like the woman from the WSJ article for Detroit's further demise?

I'll defend the author a bit. His time in Detroit was when he was working on his grad work. He had a bit of a different view of it then just 'hanging around in his youth.'

[fryar]

Hernod, thanks for posting your insightful comments in this thread. I especially liked them because I think they provided valuable first-hand accounts of what Detroit was like in the past, and you seem to be a keen observer. I was particularly interested in your description of a strife-filled soot-covered Detroit as some 30-odd self-contained neighborhoods of free-standing houses, for two reasons: it dispells the notion, apparently an illusion, that Detroit was in former times this peaceful gem of a city, and it dovetails nicely with Jane Jacobs' description of Detroit as series of suburbs that do not cohere into a greater whole. You also got right to the heart of what you seem to think is important without getting sidetracked.

There is a box, contents unknown, of stuff that didn't happen here that "defines" Detroit [[vis-a-vis successful great cities of America) to a greater degree than the riots.

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?

[fryar]

Origins covered the time period from WWII to the Riot of '67. Two generations have been born since then. We need to start thinking about the Origins of an Urban Renewal.

+1.

I read Origins. If you've read it and it has touched you personally, I can completely understand that and sympathize, and don't want to take that away from you in any way. It's a very powerful and important book.

If you have not read it, it basically chronicles how there's all these black people who move to the boom town of Detroit from the South, and society, which was basically run by all these white people, is caught unprepared and irked and basically gives them the boot for 50 years, time and time again. It's definitely worth checking out; you may think you know more about this stuff than you actually do, and we still do not do enough to acknowledge these things that happened. Certainly, the effects of that are still with us today.

That being said, I had been looking for a book to help me make sense out of this strange city I was now living in, where they build lofts but don't have zip car, where they tear down buildings to put in a surface lot, where people are scared - scared! - to get on a bus, and so on. I mean, it was just unreal - you want a pack of cigarettes at 11PM, you go to ... a casino? Here, in the middle of town? That, or you hit the Interstate?

In order to move forward, we need to have conversations of the type that lead to the M-1, or maybe they should have gone with those weird bus-like things that get dedicated lanes and priority stop light handling, we need to engage DetroitDad in his idea about taxing surface parking lots out of existence in order to make the city more attractive as a walkable environment, we need someone to come up with an insightful comment on how to bring fresh fruits and vegetables into the hands of our less well financed neighbors who maybe are no longer served by the city bus, we need to know what businesses are opening in Detroit so that we can choose to patronize them, and so on.

[English]

Two great posts, fryar... the second one was very forward thinking. There are lots of people around who are like-minded, and many individual efforts to change things, but no systemic and coherent effort yet. Those in power don't have the vision, and those with the vision have little power or money.

As for revisiting Origins and the other oft-cited Detroit books, I am waiting for the next great journalist, sociologist or urban studies guru to write the book about Kilpatrick and the first decade of the 21st century in Detroit. It could be a masterpiece in the right hands.

[fryar]

Thanks. Yeah, that could be a great book! I am not familiar with the other oft-cited Detroit books, just Origins, for whatever reason.

A big reason for my hanging around these boards so much is that I do feel like I'm seeing some of those like-minded people here.

[Pam]

we need someone to come up with an insightful comment on how to bring fresh fruits and vegetables into the hands of our less well financed neighbors who maybe are no longer served by the city bus,

http://www.centraldetroitchristian.o...eens_Truck.htm

[bailey]

I'll defend the author a bit. His time in Detroit was when he was working on his grad work. He had a bit of a different view of it then just 'hanging around in his youth.'

regardless...he's still just a voice from afar wringing his hands over a problem he has no intention of ever getting involved in.

[fryar]

http://www.centraldetroitchristian.o...eens_Truck.htm

Glad to see that. Thanks, Pam. I'll start a new thread, if I can figure out how to do that, so I don't become known as a hijacker of threads I didn't start, but that's awesome.

[Pam]

Glad to see that. Thanks, Pam. I'll start a new thread, if I can figure out how to do that, so I don't become known as a hijacker of threads I don't like, but that's awesome.

I think there was an old thread on it last year, which is where I heard about it.
There have also been a lot of threads on community gardens/urban farming.

[fryar]

Yeah, I found that thread.

[Detroit Stylin]

Thisis SE Michigan.....did you expect anything less?

[fryar]

Thisis SE Michigan.....did you expect anything less?

What do you mean?

[Detroit Stylin]

I mean for real...did you really have to ask that?

[fryar]

I guess not? Maybe I'm just lost about what you were referring to in between all the things we've touched on in this thread.

Hey English, I like this thread fine, by the way. I mean, I'm obviously in here all the time, and I'm not always keeping it brief.