We All Have a Stake in Detroit’s Future (Flint: appointed, home)

[one is lonely]

“This is white supremacy. We will fight you. And before we let you take over our city, we will burn it down.”

That's what Malik Shabazz said March 26, 2012, at a public Detroit Financial Review meeting. He was addressing officials from Michigan’s capitol, Lansing, who were in town to discuss solutions to Detroit’s dire financial straits.

Detroit's on the verge of bankruptcy. Right now, there's barely enough tax money left in Detroit to fund basic services others take for granted in major cities, like garbage collection or public transportation. But Detroiters like Shabazz don't want the state government's help, not if it means having an unelected emergency manager appointed in Detroit.

Emergency managers have been put in charge of other troubled, black majority Michigan cities like Pontiac and Flint under the state's controversial Public Act 4, with mixed results. Generally, the solutions Michigan's they’ve come up with for those cities have shared three common themes: cut spending, kill unions and privatize everything.

But it’s unclear how effective that approach has been. Pontiac and Flint remain in poor financial shape and directionless. It should come as no surprise, then, that some Detroiters are reluctant to see the keys to the city handed to an emergency manager, or even a financial advisory board, as a proposed consent agreement would have it.

Of course, threatening violence or destruction isn't the answer to Detroit's problems, either. But Shabazz’s race-based resentments should be taken seriously. It's an all too often underrepresented issue that has plagued Metro Detroit for far too long. Rick Snyder conceded that point when discussing Detroit's fiscal crisis:

"In Michigan we’ve had challenges on race. I don’t want to minimize the fact that race is an issue out there that we that always need to be sensitive to. And we should be.”

Metro Detroit is one of the most segregated major metropolitan areas in the country. Detroit, home to a shrinking population of about 700,000 people, is 80% black and largely impoverished. Meanwhile, Oakland County, which has over 1.2 million people, is 80% white and consists mainly of sprawling, upper and middle class suburbs.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1960, Detroit was 70% white and prosperous, and the suburbs were primarily undeveloped. By 1980, there was less than half the number of whites, with the city's white population dropping from 1,182,970 to 402,077. And unfortunately, they took more than census numbers with them. Detroit's whites, the traditional power base in the city, took Detroit’s businesses with them.

Iconic skyscrapers and historic factories were abandoned in the city, while new ones went up in predominately white suburbs like Dearborn and Troy, where the populations exploded. Consequently, Detroit's proud black middle class was systematically destroyed nearly as soon as it had gotten off the ground. Coleman Young, the city's first black mayor, would later say that the city was essentially "mugged."

John Sutton, a DEA agent assigned to Detroit in the early 1970s, noted in the Al Profit documentary Rollin something remarkable about the legendary Motor City: "I saw a kind of a black affluence [in Detroit] that I had never seen in other cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and places. Everyone was driving a new car – and naturally, an American-made car."

The good times were not to last, as jobs opportunities in the city slowly disappeared over time. In 2009, Detroit officials estimated that Detroit's real unemployment rate was at a staggering 50%, illustrating just how far the city was to fall.

It’s become routine to blame the decline of manufacturing in America for Detroit's woes. The city was, after all, built on the back of the big three automakers, and crumbling factories make for a dramatic metaphor. However, that viewpoint ignores the successes of the city’s suburbs, which have fared much better.

Since the 1960s, Metro Detroit as a whole has managed to maintain a relatively stable population, and the regional economy has diversified, with noteworthy job growth in the financial, health care, and technology sectors. Sure, the automotive industry is still the top employer, but the economy isn’t as monolithic as it used to be.

Though the recession in the late-2000s put a serious dent in Michigan’s economy, Metro Detroit is far from dying. But Detroit proper, cut off as it currently is from the rest of the region economically and socially, is in an extremely precarious position.

Yes, there are the believers like Dan Gilbert or Mike Ilitch that reinvest into Detroit, but they are too far and few in between. Too many suburbanites seem to think that if Detroit stopped existing tomorrow, it would be a burden lifted from their shoulders.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Never in America has there been a major metropolitan area without an urban core. Metro Detroit needs a dynamic, vibrant urban environment at its center if it’s going to attract and retain top talent or truly reinvent itself.

The last five years have shown that Metro Detroit’s future is far from secure. There’s no guarantee the economy will get better instead of worse. The region has challenges in front of it that complacency won’t solve.

That’s why Metro Detroiters need to work together now, before it’s too late. Any racial divides, whether political or social, must be bridged. Everyone has to recognize that an emergency manager or a financial advisory board in Detroit will not be a magic bullet, and prepare to make some concessions.

Detroit put Michigan on the map. We can’t just let it die.

[zthatzmanz28]

Detroit put Michigan on the map. We can’t just let it die.

Detroit has had multiple offers, opportunities and resouces to extended to it. They have either rejected every offer as racist and / or controlling and then continued to elect people who drove the proverbial wedge even deeper between the city and the burbs.



As for Malik Shabazz threat of ---“This is white supremacy. We will fight you. And before we let you take over our city, we will burn it down.” I say --- THE ROOF, THE ROOF, THE ROOF IS ON FIRE...

Who really cares, let the muther%$#@ BURN....Give Malik Shabazz what he wants...after all it is HIS CITY...

Sorry, but I for one am just TIRED of the US vs THEM, get the hell out but leave your money mentality of the city.

[kooks35]

I really wonder if the leadership and unions in Detroit realize that if the State doesn't do anything and the city goes into bankruptcy their contracts are torn up and they lose everything.

[Arthur Digby Sellers]

Originally Posted by zthatzmanz28

Detroit put Michigan on the map. We can’t just let it die.

Detroit has had multiple offers, opportunities and resouces to extended to it. They have either rejected every offer as racist and / or controlling and then continued to elect people who drove the proverbial wedge even deeper between the city and the burbs.



As for Malik Shabazz threat of ---“This is white supremacy. We will fight you. And before we let you take over our city, we will burn it down.” I say --- THE ROOF, THE ROOF, THE ROOF IS ON FIRE...

Who really cares, let the muther%$#@ BURN....Give Malik Shabazz what he wants...after all it is HIS CITY...

Sorry, but I for one am just TIRED of the US vs THEM, get the hell out but leave your money mentality of the city.

WE didn't let Detroit die. It started down that spiral when Coleman Young told whitey that you aren't welcome here.

It's time to cut the cord. I think for most people in SE Michigan in 2012, Detroit is nothing more than a bygone era. No matter how many different ways a lifeline is extended, it's always turned into "Whitey gonna take us over." And it's not a "loud minority" of Detroiters as many desperately want us to believe. Were that the case, normally rational people like Dave Bing wouldn't turn to the politics of race baiting.

Nope. We're all done and have washed our hands of it.

[ForStarters]

I disagree with Arthur. The Detroiters who are race-baiting are a vocal minority. Malik Shabazz is a disturbed man and an attention *****. Most of the people I talk to do not harbor that type of resentment toward the 'burbs or whites. There may be some level of distrust among Detroiters, but the majority of taxpaying Detroiters are just as sick of the problems and graft as white suburbanites seem to be. Remember who is actually suffering the most on a day-to-day basis from the city's financial woes: Detroiters.

I hear lots of generalizations about Detroit by suburbanites. Keep in mind that there isn't one type of person who lives in the city. There are many people. Too often, Detroiters with common sense and rationality get drowned out by the vocal minority of lunatics, like Shabazz, especially because these nuts get all of the media attention. Walk down any upper-middle class street in Detroit and ask citizens what they think. Most Detroiters I've met harbor no animosity toward the 'burbs or whites, they refer to the city council as the "Clowncil," they despise Kwame Kilpatrick, and overall, they wish things like the schools and city services were better.

The point I am trying to make is that you cannot generalize the entire city's population as a bunch of Malik Shabazzes. You also shouldn't let that fringe lunatic's rhetoric drive the discussion. That guy and his cohorts are not the Detroiters who are going to work with an emergency manager to turn Detroit around. Every city has nutcases, that doesn't mean we should listen to them or let them polarize the entire discussion. And, any city leaders who give credence to race-bating, etc should be cast aside as well. They all know better and are only doing it to get attention and promote themselves. Those of us with any sense in the city realize that this is not a war with the 'burbs or with any other race, it's a war with math.

Let's go on with solving the problems and try to ignore the loonies, okay?

[detwahDJ]

The media will always pursue the loudest, most outrageous voices in order to tweak people's emotions because this, apparently, has a larger market than real news. Trolls and bashers (most of whom are not sincere) use these soundbites for their own ends, and waste a lot of space. Best to weigh this fact when tempted to respond imo.

[zthatzmanz28]

Originally Posted by ForStarters

I disagree with Arthur. The Detroiters who are race-baiting are a vocal minority. Malik Shabazz is a disturbed man and an attention *****. Most of the people I talk to do not harbor that type of resentment toward the 'burbs or whites.

Let's go on with solving the problems and try to ignore the loonies, okay?

Strange, cause when I was at Wayne State, all I heard was similar comments from others in my classes. All they said they wanted from the burbs was for them to spend their money and get out the FRONT DOOR. And these were educated folks.

[Arthur Digby Sellers]

Indeed, zhatz. I've spent plenty of time in Detroit (most of it at WSU as well) and have yet to run into this "silent majority" of Detroiters.

[313Weather]

Originally Posted by Arthur Digby Sellers

It started down that spiral when Coleman Young told whitey that you aren't welcome here.

If you're going to post bull crap like this, at least back it up with facts and proof.

When did Coleman Young ever tell "whitey" (or white people) that they aren't welcome in the city?

[313Weather]

Slightly off topic, but there was this commenter in one of the free press articles, first name Scott, who read everyone in Michigan their god-given rights. He was dropping bombs everywhere and taking names (he was 100% spot on too).