Blacks in Livonia (Detroit, Burt: cost of, to move, office)

[and the]

Under the guise of racism the true and unrelenting cause of decline remains the effort to maintain economic desparity between a select few priveledged Jews of a serious bourgeois mentality which seeks to remain seperated from both whites of "lower ranking" classes, including Italian, Polish certain Jews and even Russian as well as non-whites.

Did your "Black Power" experience include the Nation of Islam in some way? Seems like in your self-righteousness I sense some "Jews control world banking" stereotyping.

[Wingnatic]

My apologies ,maybe I presented my opinion in the wrong way and may have offended some . I only meant to present this subject in a historical way that wasn't intended to offend anyone . My story is this : Like I said earlier I lived in Detroit 30 years of my 59 years . My kids were educated in Detroit . 2 of them are Cass Tech grads , and if anyone doesn't know about Cass Tech I will tell you . In order to get into Cass Tech #1 you have to have at least a 3.0 GPA and have your middle school counselor nominate you . If accepted you have to go to Cass Tech for testing , if you pass that you will be accepted . You must keep at least a 3.0 GPA throughtout your 4 years , 2 card markings in a row under the 3.0 and your out and back to your local H.S. (Pershing in my case) And if you don't come to school dressed in a professional manner , you will be sent home . My point is up until the point of entering H.S. in Detroit , the opportunity to get a good education is there for all that want to learn , nobody is holding anyone back . All it took for me in my case with my kids were to make sure I knew where they were , who they hung out with , helped with homework , made sure they got a goods nights sleep , had breakfast , kept the lines of communication open with the schools and teachers , kept a close eye on report cards , all the things that are a parents responsibilty . And believe me it makes our educators jobs so much easier . Its that simple . The opportunity is and has been there . One of my kids best friends (black - we are native American) went on to attend college and get a degree at a mid Michigan college where he was a star football player and was signed at the beginning of the 2008 season by the Baltimore Ravens , then released early in the season . The reason he did so well is because he had parents cared enough to make sure he was brought up right . My other 2 kids went on to get a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree , because they wanted to learn , had supporting parents at home , and because the Detroit school district isn't as bad as some people would think it is . My youngest son finished his High School education in the suburbs because quite frankly , mom and dad moved out of Detroit because they got tired of the gunshots all of the time , got tired of their car being stolen or vandalized , and especially got tired of the insurance company's redlining my auto insurance rates because of my zip code , and the last straw was I got tired of black kids harrassing my native American son . So when I see someone using the race card , you know I just think thats a crutch .

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by smalltowngirlMA

Ahh the age old tools of propaganda, racism and good old bull****! Let me first say that I was a resident of Detroit in the 1960's, prior to and after the Great Riots. My family first lived on Owen street in an apartment off Woodward Ave. followed by 28th Street near Michigan Ave. Holmur Street during the time of the riots and several other addresses including the Boston Edison Historical district. My parents were homeowners my late mother was a teacher in the Detroit public Schools my father worked at Chrysler before becoming a truck owner/operator for a large international company. My late father was a native of Detroit whose family dated back decades there. My parents had owned several homes prior to leaving Detroit. I am a graduate of Cody High school which was less than 5% black when I enrolled. I witnessed the "white flight" from the city to the suburbs before and after the riots and watched the decline and decay of the City due to changing economic times, and strides to eliminate segregation and improve the quality of education and employment for blacks and other minorities. I engaged in Civil Rights activities such as marching with MLK in downtown Detroit, and attending Black Power meetings with my mother while still a babe in a stroller. I attended a middle school (Region 5 middle school) that participated in the school busing trials of the 1970's. Most if not all of these changes had to do with desegregation efforts which were designed to offer equal work, education and housing opportunities to blacks and other minorities in the City. It always had to do with the sharing of economic wealth which the City rather enjoyed from the 1940's to early 1980's. Whites in Michigan have always wanted to maintain exclusivity from nonwhite ethnic groups and also to control the wealth and it's distribution in the State. This has also been the crux of the decline of the economic success of the State. To this day, Michigan remains one of the most segregated states in the country. Under the guise of racism the true and unrelenting cause of decline remains the effort to maintain economic desparity between a select few priveledged Jews of a serious bourgeois mentality which seeks to remain seperated from both whites of "lower ranking" classes, including Italian, Polish certain Jews and even Russian as well as non-whites. Racism is the tool utilised to promote this end. The decline of the city has littlle to do with blacks and more to do with poverty which is the result of decades of discrimination, disenfranchisement and other "divide and conquer" techniques. Anything that is said to the contrary is ficticious and defamatory and certainly not of any scholarly or intellectual significance.

I actually agree. It's not just a matter of Blacks messing everything up, but the aspect of economic wealth leaving the city as well. I also think that the real estate business had a lot to do with it too. Using scare tactics, redlining and steering, among other things, helped to contribute to this.

Also, keep in mind that Detroit has riots in 1863 and 1943, that were anti-Black. Then, you have the Ossian Sweet incident as well, which is a great example of how Detroit tried to keep certain people out. Sweet was a physician by the way. Here's some information on this:Ossian H. Sweet House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ossian Sweet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1863)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1943)

1967 Detroit riot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

detnews.com | Michigan History

Broken Detroit: Death of a city block

1967 riot chronology

[and the]

Black folks have been in charge of Detroit since 1974. That's enough time to stop blaming "The Ossian Sweet" incident, or the draft riots of the Civl War era or the race riot of the 40's or the "I Want A New TV" riot of '67.

Sorry, there's been a "gimme gimme gimme" "You owe me no-strings-attached money" "Whitey Keep Out" DOUBLE STANDARD attitude in Detroit for years. With so many white folks willing to keep their mouths shut for fear of being called racists, you don't get both sides of the story (unless you watch Detroit council meetings). HERE is who and what to blame. This is not just one nutty Detroiter. She speaks for a lot of Detroiters. Nobody wants to admit it, but it's a fact. And by the way, as much as this fact is downplayed, this is who one of the most powerful men in Washington chose for his wife. Think she doesn't have any influence on him? If she was a trophy wife, I'd hate to see what the guy who came in second got. You remember all the accusations of racism Livonia residents got when they didn't want a Walmart close enough to attract Detroit crime to Livonia? What do you think Detroiters would be saying if the Livonia council acted like this?

The saddest and most pathetic part? Detroiters don't elect people like Monica Conyers in SPITE of her racist BS, they vote for her and people like her BECAUSE of it! It would be like Livonia electing George Wallace as Mayor with Orval Faubus and Orville Hubbard as Deputy Mayor and President of City Council AND asking Detroiters to bail out a broke Livonia as if it were a debt that needed to be paid instead of outright extortion. If Ossian Sweet were alive today, he'd live in West Bloomfield and probably wouldn't take patients with a Detroit zip code.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...ON03/903010308

Commentary: Elect a crazy council, get crazy results

Nowhere is Michigan's brain drain on greater display than in the Detroit City Council chambers.

My hopes for Detroit's future faded as I watched the tape of last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that considered the Cobo Center expansion deal.

It was a tragic circus, a festival of ignorance that confirmed the No. 1 obstacle to Detroit's progress is the bargain basement leaders that city voters elect. The black nationalism that is now the dominant ideology of the council was on proud display, both at the table and in the audience.

Speakers advocating for the deal were taunted by the crowd and cut short by Council President Monica Conyers, who presided over the hearing like an angry bulldog; whites were advised by the citizens to, "Go home."

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Opponents were allowed to rant and ramble on uninterrupted about "those people" who want to steal Detroit's assets and profit from the city's labors.

A pitiful Teamster official who practically crawled to the table on his knees expressing profuse respect for this disrespectful body was battered by both the crowd and the council.

When he dared suggest that an improved Cobo Center would create more good-paying jobs for union workers, Conyers reminded him, "Those workers look like you; they don't look like me."

Desperate, he invoked President Barack Obama's message of unity and was angrily warned, "Don't you say his name here."

Juxtapose the place and the faces and imagine a white Livonia City Council treating a black union representative with such overt racial hostility. The Justice Department would swoop down like a hawk, and the Rev. Al Sharpton would clog Five Mile Road with protesters.

But in Detroit, dealing with the council's bigotry is part of the cost of doing business. As is dealing with its incompetence. (I'll pause here and excuse from that indictment Sheila Cockrel and Brenda Jones, who supported the Cobo deal, as did Kwame Kenyatta, who although he's an avowed nationalist, most often votes in the city's best interests.)

Emmet Moten, the developer who just opened the Fort Shelby Hotel downtown, was at the meeting and found it appalling. Moten went to Lansing in 1983 on behalf of Mayor Coleman Young to successfully lobby for a regional tax to support Cobo.

"And now we're saying, 'We don't want your money,'" Moten says. "If Coleman were alive today, he'd be outraged. It hurts, it really hurts."

Now, Moten says, "we Detroiters gotta be outraged."

Outraged enough to go to the polls in November and elect a brighter, more responsible council. Moten and others I talked with this week are encouraged that mayoral primary voters picked Dave Bing and Ken Cockrel Jr., the two most rational candidates on the ballot.

The test now will be whether it's those primary voters or the angry council crowd who represent the real Detroit.

As Moten notes, "You can't fix this for us. We have to fix it ourselves."

Nobody can help Detroit if voters again elect a City Council composed of separatists, clueless dowagers and the apparently insane.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com or (313) 222-2064. Watch him at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on "Am I Right?" on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.

2 of them are Cass Tech grads , and if anyone doesn't know about Cass Tech I will tell you . In order to get into Cass Tech #1 you have to have at least a 3.0 GPA and have your middle school counselor nominate you . If accepted you have to go to Cass Tech for testing , if you pass that you will be accepted . You must keep at least a 3.0 GPA throughtout your 4 years , 2 card markings in a row under the 3.0 and your out and back to your local H.S. (Pershing in my case) And if you don't come to school dressed in a professional manner , you will be sent home .

A friend of mine went to Renaissance, which was a good school. His brother, who was pretty much a thug, went to Cass for 3 years. There's no way he had a 3.0 average either going in or while he was there. He went to school looking like a thug and came home the same way. I'm not sure which Cass Tech you were talking about but the Cass Tech of the mid 80's wasn't like you describe. I believe he went to Cass because he would have been killed at Cody.

got tired of their car being stolen or vandalized , and especially got tired of the insurance company's redlining my auto insurance rates because of my zip code

Huh?? When you live in a neighborhood where you're tired of your car being stolen or vandalized, that't NOT "redlining", that's life. When I pay to live in a neighborhood where my car isn't regularly being stolen or vandalized, I shouldn't have to subsidize neighborhoods where larceny is a fact of life. Your insurance SHOULD be considerably higher than mine. That's not redlining, that's just good business.

Your words, not mine:

and because the Detroit school district isn't as bad as some people would think it is .

and the last straw was I got tired of black kids harrassing my native American son .

So Detroit schools raen't as bad as some people would think, but your kid couldn't go there because he wasn't black? Do you see the contradiction here??

Name one school in Livonia where a black kid can't attend without fearing for his life. Just one. And if you do, I'll show you a school where the Justice Department is camped outside.

Detroit is so far on the other side of the looking glass it's hopeless. Up is down and down is up. What is insanity anywhere else is perfectly normal there. Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall......Detroit is saying to the rest of the state: "Gimme gimme gimme or we'll pull you down into the abyss". Race-based extortion plain and simple by a bunch of delusional nutjobs backed by a cast of brainwashed idiots who use most of their brains' capacity to breathe and blink every few minutes. Looks like Babs Collins is trying to out-Monica Monica. ONWARD, Christian Soldiers!!!

Last week, Conyers, who is black, told a white Teamsters' union official during a contentious meeting on whether to accept the deal that most of the people who work at Cobo during the annual North American International Auto Show "don't look like me. They look like you."

Pro Tem President Collins, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, was irate during the meeting and talked about how Europeans came into her village "raping her and taking what they want."

At one point, she broke out into the 19th Century hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers."

Collins said no matter what "the battle now is to uphold the integrity of Detroit."

[and the]

Only four council members attended the special session -- Conyers, Council President Pro Tem JoAnn Watson, Barbara-Rose Collins and Martha Reeves. Without a quorum, council members held an open meeting dialogue, with themselves and the public.

Collins began by railing against council critics, Lansing legislators, Cockrel and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, charging a conspiracy to take Detroit land.

"When he resurrected his great honorable warrior father's name, it was a disgrace," Collins said, in reference to the mayor invoking the name of his father, the late former Councilman Ken Cockrel, during his announcement Wednesday of the veto.

"European rulers have traditionally taken what they wanted from other people, be they white, be they black or be they brown.

"No one is taking anything," Collins said of a transfer of Cobo Center to a regional authority, as she and some in the audience began singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."

Sigh.................Larry, Curley, Moe and Shemp.............without the redeeming qualities....

"Racism" charges have turned into a crutch for those "leaders" without a plan, without insight, without intelligence, without empathy for their supporters and without vision. The ironic thing is that it's guaranteed to keep their constituents down while ensuring a place at the trough for the "leader" making the charges of racism against the suburbs. It's sort of like the the famous Samuel Johnson quote: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". Johnson, of course, meant false patriotism, not patriotism in general.

I guess we could just as easily say, "A claim of racism is the last refuge of a moron."

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by and the

Black folks have been in charge of Detroit since 1974. That's enough time to stop blaming "The Ossian Sweet" incident, or the draft riots of the Civl War era or the race riot of the 40's or the "I Want A New TV" riot of '67.

Sorry, there's been a "gimme gimme gimme" "You owe me no-strings-attached money" "Whitey Keep Out" DOUBLE STANDARD attitude in Detroit for years. With so many white folks willing to keep their mouths shut for fear of being called racists, you don't get both sides of the story (unless you watch Detroit council meetings). HERE is who and what to blame. This is not just one nutty Detroiter. She speaks for a lot of Detroiters. Nobody wants to admit it, but it's a fact. And by the way, as much as this fact is downplayed, this is who one of the most powerful men in Washington chose for his wife. Think she doesn't have any influence on him? If she was a trophy wife, I'd hate to see what the guy who came in second got. You remember all the accusations of racism Livonia residents got when they didn't want a Walmart close enough to attract Detroit crime to Livonia? What do you think Detroiters would be saying if the Livonia council acted like this?

The saddest and most pathetic part? Detroiters don't elect people like Monica Conyers in SPITE of her racist BS, they vote for her and people like her BECAUSE of it! It would be like Livonia electing George Wallace as Mayor with Orval Faubus and Orville Hubbard as Deputy Mayor and President of City Council AND asking Detroiters to bail out a broke Livonia as if it were a debt that needed to be paid instead of outright extortion. If Ossian Sweet were alive today, he'd live in West Bloomfield and probably wouldn't take patients with a Detroit zip code.
Commentary: Elect a crazy council, get crazy results | detnews.com | The Detroit News





A friend of mine went to Renaissance, which was a good school. His brother, who was pretty much a thug, went to Cass for 3 years. There's no way he had a 3.0 average either going in or while he was there. He went to school looking like a thug and came home the same way. I'm not sure which Cass Tech you were talking about but the Cass Tech of the mid 80's wasn't like you describe. I believe he went to Cass because he would have been killed at Cody.



Huh?? When you live in a neighborhood where you're tired of your car being stolen or vandalized, that't NOT "redlining", that's life. When I pay to live in a neighborhood where my car isn't regularly being stolen or vandalized, I shouldn't have to subsidize neighborhoods where larceny is a fact of life. Your insurance SHOULD be considerably higher than mine. That's not redlining, that's just good business.

Your words, not mine:






So Detroit schools raen't as bad as some people would think, but your kid couldn't go there because he wasn't black? Do you see the contradiction here??

Name one school in Livonia where a black kid can't attend without fearing for his life. Just one. And if you do, I'll show you a school where the Justice Department is camped outside.

Detroit is so far on the other side of the looking glass it's hopeless. Up is down and down is up. What is insanity anywhere else is perfectly normal there. Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall......Detroit is saying to the rest of the state: "Gimme gimme gimme or we'll pull you down into the abyss". Race-based extortion plain and simple by a bunch of delusional nutjobs backed by a cast of brainwashed idiots who use most of their brains' capacity to breathe and blink every few minutes. Looks like Babs Collins is trying to out-Monica Monica. ONWARD, Christian Soldiers!!!

I don't about Sweet living in West Bloomfield. He might live in Indian Village and why wouldn't he take patients from Detroit?

My point is that the legacy of the racial issues in the area run deep and have a long history, unfortunately.

[zthatzmanz28]

OMG...there are still blacks in Livonia? gotta talk to the mayor about this...Kirksey will surely FIX this ad fix it fast...Damn that Walmart...Damn that SMART bus...Damn Redford for letting them in...

What is WRONG with you people that blacks living in Livonia is a basis for this idiotic thread...

When I win the mega millions, I will buy 15 houses in Rosedale and the State Streets and GIVE them to black families..

Geeez Wheezie, I don't think George Jefferson is gonna make it here...

[zthatzmanz28]

Originally Posted by Nearborn

So why wasn't your brother the doctor looking for a house in Palmer Woods instead of Livonia? What is it about Livonia that is drawing him? It's not all that, he can probably afford to live wherever he wants, he can get a lot more house for his money than in Detroit, but he picked Livonia. Why is that?

Because he is FREE to choose where he wants to LIVE...

[and the]

Because he is FREE to choose where he wants to LIVE...

He didn't pick Livonia because he is "free to choose". He picked Livonia because of some appealing qualities. What were they?

OMG...there are still blacks in Livonia? gotta talk to the mayor about this...Kirksey will surely FIX this ad fix it fast...Damn that Walmart...Damn that SMART bus...Damn Redford for letting them in...

What is WRONG with you people that blacks living in Livonia is a basis for this idiotic thread...

When I win the mega millions, I will buy 15 houses in Rosedale and the State Streets and GIVE them to black families..

Geeez Wheezie, I don't think George Jefferson is gonna make it here...

Did you bother reading the first post? This "idiotic thread" was started by a presumably black person implying that Livonia, as a community, was racist. Most of the rest of the thread was spent pointing out various hypocricies and debatating various positions on racism, white flight, prejudice, etc. Nice of you to try to sum all that up for us though.

[MSUMands]

The local news here did an unofficial study and called Livonia the "Most Racist City in the Country". When I brought this up to people I work with in Livonia, they took it as a compliment and smiled.

'Nuff said!