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When I said that education was the way out of the mess that Detroit has dug itself into, I forgot to mention that there was another elephant in the room ...
Is Detroit really ready for a white mayor?
(Headline from a Detroit paper)
(snippets of responses)
Quote:
Detroit has been ready for a white mayor for years... its the people of Detroit that are not ready for it and will not allow it to happen.
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America has a Bi Racial President, White and Black. Why is he only referred too as Black?
I understand he has more Black features but he is Bi Racial.
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He's mostly referred to as "Black" because of the way his agenda's being held up by Congress. Were he "White" and not Bi-racial, they'd have likely passed his Jobs Act without hesitation and the economy would be in much better shape.
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Mike Duggan would be great at bringing back the racial hatred and violence that typified life for black people back in the 1960s/early 1970s.
The last time Detroit had a Mayor that wasn't black, there was STRESS, the Big 4, and the sky-high murders committed by the Detroit Police against black people. It was the highest in the nation, by a long shot.
So, you bring back that racial hatred so the racist scum in the suburbs feel comfortable bringing that filth and misery back to black neighborhoods and communities.
No way I see anyone but a black man (or woman) being elected Mayor of Detroit.
Why in the world would any black person want a return to the APARTHEID system that the racist trash imposed on black people back then (and impose on them today outside of Detroit)?
I don't think Detroit is ready for a white mayor.
There is racism on both sides, and the truth is, white people cannot truly understand how life is different because your skin is a different color. And in the same vein, the people who have resources, don't understand how life is different when you are surrounded by poverty.
Well?
So for the last 50 years or thereabouts .. as long as you looked like this guy (mac daddy) .. You were doing alright?
He understands your poverty .. because he's black?
He will look out for you .. because he's black?
He will spend every waking moment doing what's best for you and for the city .. because he's black!
That kind of thinking has worked out rather well over the years ... don't you think?
Wahhhh, the unions have bled the city dry, the politicians still want the pet crony projects funded, and the population that is staying is too stupid to understand what going on. How can they? the illiteracy rate in Detroit is 47% of the population can't read or write.
~ Where are the local community leaders?
~ Where are the national community leaders?
~ Where is the black coalition?
~ When is Jessy Jackson going to do something constructive rather than point the finger at Whitey?
~ When is Al Sharpton actually going to help the situation rather than blame Whitey?
~ When is obama going to realize the elections are over, stop the campaign speeches and do something about the hood mentality and black women have 8 - 12 babies with 6 or 8 different men?
~ How many Trillions of dollars have been given to the city over the decades? Where did it go?
OK, lets drop back to the black mantra:
Whitey is holding us down in poverty, they hate us....
It's all Whitey's fault, blacks are all slaves from Africa..... LMAO prove it.....
You're being set up for Obama and his group (Building One America) to redefine cities to areas so they can steal (tax) some of that suburban wealth for inner city problems.
Every single Black that I know .. that has a 'legitimate' education above 12th grade (affirmative action and quota's do not count) are successful.
Not only are they successful .. They were (and are) part of that group often called White Flight!
Neither Black's or White's want to stay in neighborhoods, towns or cities .. filled with a majority of voluntarily uneducated, drug dealing, drug abusing thugs!
E-D-U-C-A-T-I-O-N is what would/will elevate the Black populace.
Unfortunately, an educated Black is a prime source of derision among the Black's themselves!
So is that anecdotal evidence supposed to prove that racism is benign in its impact on blacks and racism had little to do with whites leaving places like Detroit? Again, this is the theory that defies the law of nature that actions produce reactions. Racism produces no negative after effects.
Nothing is more inflaming, divisive and animus inspiring than a truth that is being hidden. Hence, by simply speaking the truth, one is an agitator and provocateur, to those who are part of the conspiracy of like minds to keep a certain truth hidden. If a messenger is to be attacked, let him be attacked and discredited for speaking falsehoods, and not the truth. If someone is tired of hearing a truth, it erodes no validity from that truth. If some is angered by the truth, it erodes no validity from the truth. If someone is made uncomfortable by the truth, it erodes no validity from the truth. However, there is a spectrum that exists between a complete falsehood and a complete truth and hence assertions generally fall somewhere between the polar extremes. Hence, falsify and truth comes in various degrees thereof.
The truth is this. At no time in this nation’s history has African Americans had income and wealth on par with European Americans. For the vast majority of the history of this nation, racial laws were written that created and preserved this inequality. Since every action creates a reaction and since everything that exists is the way it is currently as a result of actions begetting reactions over the continuum of time, the current inequality has its roots in the past, with present assistance of many of the same past attitudes, even without the laws to help back them. The fact that crime is illegal does not mean that laws eliminated crime and by the same token laws against discrimination and bias do not eliminate them either. That is to say that at no point in time has a microcosm of African America been on par economically with the white microcosm.
In light of that claim, or shall I say fact, a city that is a microcosm of black America will be a city with a poverty rate, today, that is 3 times higher, real unemployment over twice as high, and wealth 10 times less than a city that is a microcosm of white America. Thus, a city that morphs from being a microcosm of white America to a microcosm of black America, population remaining the same, will create a much poorer city with far less revenues from incomes and property values, which will result in a tremendous reduction in the ability to maintain services at the level of the historically much wealthier white microcosm. It would be akin to a person who earned 100 k incomes a year accumulating a lifestyle and expenses in line with that income, then losing the job and then finding a job for 66K a year. They cannot maintain the same lifestyle and standard of living.
What manifested in Detroit was not that scenario, however. Black population growth did not offset white population decline in the city, which is why, in 2000 (The year that the black population peaked in Detroit) the city was half its peak population of 1950, and roughly 85% black and maybe 10% white. By 2000 Detroit had lost about 90% of its white population from its peak. The city had 900,000 people from the 2000 census count, which was adjusted to 954,000 after several cities won a suit claiming minority undercounts. Side note: There was no adjustment to the 2010 official count, which makes the comparison of population loss between the decades suspect. Anyway, the resultant is that the much poorer black population inherited a city with expenses and liabilities (such as pensions) accrued for a city of nearly 2 million people that reflected the wealth of the white microcosm.
White Americans made Detroit what it was in 1950, by their CHOICE to move and live in that city, as it was an 85% white city at that time, or somewhere close to that. Had whites never moved to Detroit in such large numbers, it would have never become the 4th largest city in America at that time. That was a double edge sword, however, because the corollary of that is that Detroit’s decline also rest with that same demographic, by their CHOICE to abandon the city. The loss of residents, taxable income and home values (hence property tax revenues) is most profoundly the result of the loss of the white population from the city of Detroit, with their greater incomes and wealth. Black people and leadership were not responsible for creating a thriving city of 2 million people and black people and leadership are not responsible for a city falling from its former glory, although white reaction to the growing presence of black people and their subsequent CHOICE to flee from black people is indeed at the root of Detroit’s Decline.
Conclusion: White ARRIVAL caused Detroit's RISE and white DEPARTURE created its decline and the racist history of America is the CONTEXT of how and why this happened.
Nearly every majority black city in Michigan is in financial crisis. Why should anyone be surprised by this when the national statistics for rates of black unemployment and poverty are so much greater than they are for America’s white population? Why is it surprising that the traditional poorer demographic would fare even worse in a state that suffered, arguably, the worst from the Great Recession, in a nation, that is essentially insolvent at the Federal level, if not for the ability to run deficits and finance it via the ability of the Federal Reserve to buy the bonds it issues and the ability to print more currency?
The amazing thing to me, however, is that Americans are hell bent on not linking any present problems or issues to past problems and issues, particularly when it comes to race. Despite the fact that all things in nature have an evolution that explains how it came to be what it is currently, various means are used to discredit that line of reasoning when it comes to issues of race. Issues involving African Americans are forced into vacuums of time that are insulated and hence unrelated to times past….so the argument goes. That is supposed to be the “credible” argument while the inclusive (of times past) argument is caste aspersion upon as being “excuses” and playing the blame game or the ubiquitous "race card".
Detroit, being today a majority black city, is victim to this “blacks exist in a vacuum” school of thought. That means that all Detroit’s problems must be looked at in the vacuum of what exists in the present, and ignore the context of America’s racist past and the fact that Detroit existed in that context and its reality shaped by it. It does not matter that a large percentage of whites were openly racist during the era that Detroit was experiencing its greatest numerical white population decline, we are to believe that racism had little or nothing to do with that decline.
White racism is something that has existed, but was not impactful or part of how or why things evolved into its current situation, at least not the black situation. Even though, when pressed, many will reluctantly admit that white racism still exists, they remain incredulous if blacks claim to be a victim of it. Their propensity to believe that a white person has been the victim of a black criminal, far exceed their propensity to believe that a black person has been the victim of white racism, despite nearly 6 whites for every one black person in this nation, given the one-to-many relationship between perpetrators and victims, mathematically its clear who has the greater probability of being victimized.
And assigning blame accomplishes what WRT the state of Detroit? So let's say that blacks are helpless victims and it's all whitey's fault. Blacks are just incapable of helping themselves. How does this fix a thing? I don't blame whites or anyone else who has for moving out of the city. I lived there for 17 years. If I knew then what I know now, I would not have done that.
And I disagree with you as to why the city is in the state it's in. I blame blacks like Coleman Young and Kwame Kilpatrick. They killed the city.
And if you really want to blame people who move out of the city, blame successful blacks who flee to the suburbs. They could be role models for black kids in the city....if they actually lived there.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 07-26-2013 at 05:13 AM..
The truth about detroit is that everything started going down hill with the race riots. Not my words, but the words of every native detroiter I ever spoke with. The money in detroit left, went north. Now you have beautiful old homes either burned or crack houses.
Detroit could be something special again, but its going to take cleaning the city, one block at a time.
The truth about detroit is that everything started going down hill with the race riots. Not my words, but the words of every native detroiter I ever spoke with. The money in detroit left, went north. Now you have beautiful old homes either burned or crack houses.
Detroit could be something special again, but its going to take cleaning the city, one block at a time.
It won't work. People with money aren't going to move to a city with a 3% income tax. The tax is why I moved out of Detroit. As our income went up, we were throwing more and more money away living in Detroit. When we moved to the suburbs, our housing cost went down because we lost the 3% city tax in spite of the fact our house cost 3 times what we paid for our house in Detroit. AND we gained city services like having our streets plowed in the winter time.
If Detroit wants to survive, they need to get rid of the 3% city tax. That might get people moving into the border neighborhoods where they can school of choice their children into schools in nearby suburbs. That might get young couples moving into apartments downtown. I don't know what to do with the neighborhoods between the two. Bulldoze them and make them green space???
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