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Moderator cut: personal - off topic i rarely post on here. i just tend to read about what people think of certain places. well, i was born and raised in Pontiac, MI and lived in Detroit for 2yrs. Moved back to Pontiac a year ago and would love to go back to Detroit. I love it there, so much to do. Now, I find it funny that you all are talking about how blacks have a chip on their shoulder and dont like you cause your white. Well, how do you think it feels when my boyfriend and I are walking down the street and a white person grabs there purse. We dont care about what they have. once, We were taking a walk in Madison Hgts. and two white guys talking so we can hear them, "I didnt know they let n***as in Madison Hgts." What kinda mess is that to say? Now, if i was not there, those two guys would have been scared of blacks too cause my boyfriend wanted to mangle them. And blacks shouldnt be mad but if they are so what. Just cause I didnt go thru the pain of slavery I am extremely close to my grandmother and she seen it all coming from the south, even happen to her mother. So, I'm gonna feel like that especially since I have white people, especially men throwing gasoline on my slightly lit flame. You keep it going and its gonna keep coming! All those stats you are thowing out there, garbage. More than likely if you mind your own business nothing is going to happen to you in Detroit. I am a 26yrs old black woman who stayed in Detroit alone and didnt have a problem. Regardless of what the media wants you to know, majority of the killings from those stats where not commited towards strangers. these guys know one another and had a beef. thats how they decided to take care of it. its sad but it happened. and yes just as much crime are in Detroit as they are in other cities. Pontiac has to be up there some how. I speak of all this thru experience, I know people in prison, released from prison, black, mixed, white, indian, caldians, from single a parent home, both parents, on drugs, sale drugs, lawyers, business owners, nfl, nba players, in the service, etc. it doesnt depend on your color. its about who you are. and as long as blacks are attacked rather by you personally or by whom ever they will keep a chip on their shoulder. i am not racist at all. I love everyone. Cause I mind my own business. I have always been around all different races and i have never been in a fight a day of my life. my point is everyone is different and if you dont feel safe in detroit dont come.
do you know on several occassions a white man has tried to pick me up in the city of detroit, in a neighbor, which means they went out of their way to get there, when i would walk to the store or something. so, those whites from the suburbs arent that scared, lol!
hi all. i am very new to this board. i got on here looking up stuff about pittsburgh and thought i would check out whats going on in my part of town. where should i start?
first i am black and i live in the subs. i am from auburn hills. i wouldn't live in the city. there is too much crime and we have a daughter. if we didn't have her MAYBE we would live downtown. my husband loves sports and i work downtown.
Moderator cut: personal - off topic i think people have to look at things behind statistics. Moderator cut: ... for example, why do students in suburbs tend to do better in school than students in inner city schools? you would say because inner city schools are full of black ignorant kids. i say that many of the inner city schools lack funding, resources and highly qualified teachers. also, i am a huge believer of The Secrete. the law of attraction. inner city kids are always put down, made to think they are worthless and that they are not going to amount to anything. they don't hear good things about themselves in the media, they don't feel it from there instructors. i once went into plymouth canton high school and felt my spirits lift! there were signs of affirmations all around me! those students are constantly being told on a daily basis how great they are, how they are someone and how they are #1. this makes a difference. Moderator cut: off topic
another thing i have to get off my chest. i pray this doesn't come across too bad... when i think of ignorant, uneducated people the cause harm to society, i do not think of minorities. i think of low income white people. this is a group of people that i have seen do numerous harmful things. i think alot of them are hugely racist. in my experience, this world is more classist than racist now. so the upper class has the lower class to look down on. who do low class white people have to look down on? blacks. this is where you see alot of racisms. also, most of the time when we see huge crimes against people being committed that gets national attention, it is some working class white man that has bombed, shot or raped a bunch of people. you will hear about some white woman that has killed all of her children. and driving around the hazel park area, if i see one more lower income white person driving with the windows up and smoking with their kids in the car i am going to scream!
i say all of this knowing full well that crimes are committed in every race and class. but i say this to show all of you who think that black people are the ruin of all cities that you are close minded and racist.
Tired of people talking **** about Detroit. This is history of why the city is f'ed up.
Ok, well, Detroit finished last in the % of High School Seniors graduating in the Nation this year, 25%. This is pathetic. The Metro region is not going to recover in our lifetime if we do not COSOLIDATE. There are over 140 municipalities self-governing themselves, and 139 of them all laughing and pointing fingers at their core, DETROIT. Metro Detroit cannot be strong without a strong Detroit. Detroit faces an even worse future than we have seen in our lives, due to the proportion of disadvantaged, marginialized, and institutionally discriminated citizens, who are the direct product of RACISM.
Wake up suburbanites, all of your jokes about Kentucky, South Carolina, and the South in general ,as being RACIST and INTEROLANT, take a look in the ****ING mirror! The blacks of Detroit were blacks of the South. They migrated to Detroit in the 20's, 30's, and 50's for a better life. They uprooted their families and past home in search of greener pastures. And look what they ****in got. It is unbelievable. Blacks are no longer migrating to Detroit, instead they are returning to the South. (Yes, look at the last 2 censuses, the City of Detroit has lost alot of black residents too.)
They were denied good paying jobs at Auto Factories, were forced to live in Slums, and had their successful Black commerical district, Black Bottom (2nd wealthiest black retail sector next to Harlem), completed destroyed in the 1950's for I-75 between the Lodge and 375. ****in shame. You say that your white relatives worked hard? They were handed a brand new house in suburbs, on a federal subsidized loan. Blacks could not GET THESE LOANS. They were not allowed to move to Garden City, or Grosse Pointe, or Dearborn, racial housing convenants made it illegal! Blacks could not even get loans to improve there aging turn of the century housing, because of redlining. Poor Whites were practically given housing in Garden City, Westland, Redford, Oak Park, Hazel Park, Southern Southfield, Taylor, Allen Park, Ecorse...if you dont believe me, remember I majored in Sociology with a focus on Racial Housing Policies. I have read the literature.
My grandfather on my mom's side, who was poor as ****, had one lung, and rented a ****hole off of Livernois Rd., among living in the Herman Gardens Projects on Joy, was able to qualify for a no down payment loan on a house in Garden City off Cherry Hill in 1954. Why, because he was white (Polish at that, not even an Anglo-Saxon). Not bad for a family on welfare.
The Real Estate market did not yet have Equal Housing guidelines or laws. The blacks missed out on what could have been the countries greatest equalizer, the Suburbanization of America after WWII. From the 1950's to 1960's we saw White people flock to the Detroit suburbs on these low interest loans into the tract houses which make up our now inner-ring suburbs. Do you know what the Blacks got in Detroit, and across Urban Centers throught the nation? HOUSING PROJECTS. HOUSING TOWERS. TONS OF POOR PEOPLE CONCENTRATED IN ONE AREA...out of sight, and out of mind.
Totally disconnected from the outer "prosperous" world, where the American Dream become an illusion. These housing towers created another problem for blacks of Detroit. NO EQUITY. The poor whites were now building wealth for the first time since their families migrated to Detroit from Europe. They OWNED their houses. The house is the single largest piece of equity within a family, and is heritable - can be transferred through the generations. The equity can also be borrowed upon for repairs, doctors bill, private school payments, and college education. The equity can be used as leverage for an extension of credit, which gives whites the oppurtunity to start businesses and make investments. BLACKS DID NOT HAVE THIS OPPURTUNITY. They were given ****ing housing projects, which they RENTED from the CITY and DID NOT OWN. No equity, no wealth = generational poverty. Any finally, after living in these projects for 10-30 years, these families lost their HOMES AGAIN! The tall Housing Projects have become a thing of the past, being tore down through URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS. Now that blacks have to live in the aging houses of inner city Detroit that would have been maintained and in BETTER condition had the cyclone of RACISM never happened. Alot of the dilapadated **** you see in Detroit is owned by white slumlords who do not maintain their property. I can't tell you how many times I have heard white people from Canton say "they let their city go to ****" or "they can't even take care of their homes or pick up the trash". When was the last time you, as a renter, felt it was your responsibility to repair your house, or paint it, or pick up all of the trash from the fringes of the property? You would expect your landlord to do it. CONTRADICTION.
Now this whole rant has little and everything to do with why Detroit has a 25% High School graduation rate. The 11th largest city in the US, formely the 4th, but still the 5th largest Metro Area. Detroit is no longer falling alone. Oakland County, which in 1990 was the 2nd Richest County in the COUNTRY, is now 6th. Detroit and at least the Wayne County Suburbs must combine, and become one locality, one government. The City will annex all of Wayne County. Lots of Money can be saved when there is not 50 different school districts, mayors, every known civic position....etc. The population would encompass a strong tax base and a strong tax liablity to balance it. Louisville has done it. Athens, GA has done it. Louisville was not too proud to ditch all of their suburbs in favor of becoming one unified city. Remember, Detroit is 306 years old. The City of Livonia, which is an inner-ring suburb, is only 55. The City of Westland is a mere 40. Invisible political boundaries need to disappear. They are all fake divisions. Wake up everyone, you live in Detroit.
Ok, well, Detroit finished last in the % of High School Seniors graduating in the Nation this year, 25%. This is pathetic. The Metro region is not going to recover in our lifetime if we do not COSOLIDATE. There are over 140 municipalities self-governing themselves, and 139 of them all laughing and pointing fingers at their core, DETROIT. Metro Detroit cannot be strong without a strong Detroit. Detroit faces an even worse future than we have seen in our lives, due to the proportion of disadvantaged, marginialized, and institutionally discriminated citizens, who are the direct product of RACISM.
Wake up suburbanites, all of your jokes about Kentucky, South Carolina, and the South in general ,as being RACIST and INTEROLANT, take a look in the ****ING mirror! The blacks of Detroit were blacks of the South. They migrated to Detroit in the 20's, 30's, and 50's for a better life. They uprooted their families and past home in search of greener pastures. And look what they ****in got. It is unbelievable. Blacks are no longer migrating to Detroit, instead they are returning to the South. (Yes, look at the last 2 censuses, the City of Detroit has lost alot of black residents too.)
They were denied good paying jobs at Auto Factories, were forced to live in Slums, and had their successful Black commerical district, Black Bottom (2nd wealthiest black retail sector next to Harlem), completed destroyed in the 1950's for I-75 between the Lodge and 375. ****in shame. You say that your white relatives worked hard? They were handed a brand new house in suburbs, on a federal subsidized loan. Blacks could not GET THESE LOANS. They were not allowed to move to Garden City, or Grosse Pointe, or Dearborn, racial housing convenants made it illegal! Blacks could not even get loans to improve there aging turn of the century housing, because of redlining. Poor Whites were practically given housing in Garden City, Westland, Redford, Oak Park, Hazel Park, Southern Southfield, Taylor, Allen Park, Ecorse...if you dont believe me, remember I majored in Sociology with a focus on Racial Housing Policies. I have read the literature.
My grandfather on my mom's side, who was poor as ****, had one lung, and rented a ****hole off of Livernois Rd., among living in the Herman Gardens Projects on Joy, was able to qualify for a no down payment loan on a house in Garden City off Cherry Hill in 1954. Why, because he was white (Polish at that, not even an Anglo-Saxon). Not bad for a family on welfare.
The Real Estate market did not yet have Equal Housing guidelines or laws. The blacks missed out on what could have been the countries greatest equalizer, the Suburbanization of America after WWII. From the 1950's to 1960's we saw White people flock to the Detroit suburbs on these low interest loans into the tract houses which make up our now inner-ring suburbs. Do you know what the Blacks got in Detroit, and across Urban Centers throught the nation? HOUSING PROJECTS. HOUSING TOWERS. TONS OF POOR PEOPLE CONCENTRATED IN ONE AREA...out of sight, and out of mind.
Totally disconnected from the outer "prosperous" world, where the American Dream become an illusion. These housing towers created another problem for blacks of Detroit. NO EQUITY. The poor whites were now building wealth for the first time since their families migrated to Detroit from Europe. They OWNED their houses. The house is the single largest piece of equity within a family, and is heritable - can be transferred through the generations. The equity can also be borrowed upon for repairs, doctors bill, private school payments, and college education. The equity can be used as leverage for an extension of credit, which gives whites the oppurtunity to start businesses and make investments. BLACKS DID NOT HAVE THIS OPPURTUNITY. They were given ****ing housing projects, which they RENTED from the CITY and DID NOT OWN. No equity, no wealth = generational poverty. Any finally, after living in these projects for 10-30 years, these families lost their HOMES AGAIN! The tall Housing Projects have become a thing of the past, being tore down through URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS. Now that blacks have to live in the aging houses of inner city Detroit that would have been maintained and in BETTER condition had the cyclone of RACISM never happened. Alot of the dilapadated **** you see in Detroit is owned by white slumlords who do not maintain their property. I can't tell you how many times I have heard white people from Canton say "they let their city go to ****" or "they can't even take care of their homes or pick up the trash". When was the last time you, as a renter, felt it was your responsibility to repair your house, or paint it, or pick up all of the trash from the fringes of the property? You would expect your landlord to do it. CONTRADICTION.
Now this whole rant has little and everything to do with why Detroit has a 25% High School graduation rate. The 11th largest city in the US, formely the 4th, but still the 5th largest Metro Area. Detroit is no longer falling alone. Oakland County, which in 1990 was the 2nd Richest County in the COUNTRY, is now 6th. Detroit and at least the Wayne County Suburbs must combine, and become one locality, one government. The City will annex all of Wayne County. Lots of Money can be saved when there is not 50 different school districts, mayors, every known civic position....etc. The population would encompass a strong tax base and a strong tax liablity to balance it. Louisville has done it. Athens, GA has done it. Louisville was not too proud to ditch all of their suburbs in favor of becoming one unified city. Remember, Detroit is 306 years old. The City of Livonia, which is an inner-ring suburb, is only 55. The City of Westland is a mere 40. Invisible political boundaries need to disappear. They are all fake divisions. Wake up everyone, you live in Detroit.
This is a brilliant post that makes alot of very valid points! I agree that part of Detroit's problem has been the inability to annex it's suburbs. This is indeed how many other large cities with decaying infrastructures have survived and vastly improved themselves.
Yet, the divide here is greater than most, if not all, parts of America. Will the burbs allow it to happen?
This is a brilliant post that makes alot of very valid points! I agree that part of Detroit's problem has been the inability to annex it's suburbs. This is indeed how many other large cities with decaying infrastructures have survived and vastly improved themselves.
Yet, the divide here is greater than most, if not all, parts of America. Will the burbs allow it to happen?
I don't know all the ins-and-outs of city government, but I think a strong county system (e.g Cook County - Chicago) or metropolitan government (e.g. London) is better in many ways than a city annexing the area in its county (e.g. Philadelphia County).
Philadelphia annexed the land in its county assuming that they would eventually reach 5 million people. It's hard to say whether it's "saved" the city, but many people just ended up moving farther away to Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties and southern NJ. It also resulted in the city having much more area than it could maintain with services, especially as people and their tax base fled further away. To compensate, they installed a crippling 5% wage tax for those living and/or working in the city. The Northeast has been trying to get un-annexed for years now.
On the flipside, Cook county taxes from all the suburbs have largely gone into the city. I think this is a fair system where suburbs help maintain the city that makes their existence possible without crippling its citizens to the point that they move further away.
I don't know all the ins-and-outs of city government, but I think a strong county system (e.g Cook County - Chicago) or metropolitan government (e.g. London) is better in many ways than a city annexing the area in its county (e.g. Philadelphia County).
Philadelphia annexed the land in its county assuming that they would eventually reach 5 million people. It's hard to say whether it's "saved" the city, but many people just ended up moving farther away to Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties and southern NJ. It also resulted in the city having much more area than it could maintain with services, especially as people and their tax base fled further away. To compensate, they installed a crippling 5% wage tax for those living and/or working in the city. The Northeast has been trying to get un-annexed for years now.
On the flipside, Cook county taxes from all the suburbs have largely gone into the city. I think this is a fair system where suburbs help maintain the city that makes their existence possible without crippling its citizens to the point that they move further away.
Does Cook county encompass both Chicago and it's suburbs? If that is the requirement then Wayne county doesn't get Oakland, Livingston, or Macomb money. Although it does get Livonia, Northville, ect...
Some people rationalize failure, others do something about it. After 30 years of affirmative action in Detroit, guaranteed home and business loans, guaranteed jobs, rehab, college tuition etc. I really don't think a black person has a leg to stand on when rationalizing their inability to succeed in today's Detroit, Wayne County or Michigan by blaming their failure on racism.
One can't blame racism for the inability to use birth control when one can't afford to have kids, or is unmarried.
One can't blame racism for the crack pipe or bottle in one's mouth .
One can't blame racism for the lack of a high school education.
One can't blame racism for the inability to discipline one's kids.
Just about all of the black people I know who DID hold off on having kids until they could afford them, and who DID stay away from drugs and alcohol, and who DID go to school instead of hanging out all day, and who DID make sure their kids did the same, were able to succeed in at least the same proportion as their white counterparts. The ones who followed this incredibly BASIC formula to success and still failed, did not fail in any greater numbers than white people.
There's a big difference between RACISM and LOSERISM.
As far as Detroit failing because it is unable to expand: Detroit expanded all the way to 8 mile and out to Telegraph. The point of expanding is to get more undeveloped land. NOT to swallow up the surrounding, already developed vibrant areas like a cancer because the core city is dying and crashing in upon itself. Detroit does not NEED more land. Detroit has an EXCESS of land, and EXCESS of housing stock and an EXCESS of industrial land. What they don't have an excess of is responsible leadership or an informed electorate. They proved that when they voted for their Hip-Hop mayor not once, but TWICE!! As far as leadership, the majority of Detroiters get what the majority of Detroiters want and deserve.
What kind of idiot would give the Detroit electorate any more say in how the suburbs are run than they already have? I didn't work my a$$ off to be able move OUT of Detroit and to raise my family in a Canton, or a Livonia or a Farmington Hills only to have the City of Detroit "expand" out to meet me and have the morons in the City of Detroit who elected Kwami Kilpatrick suddenly have any influence over the selection of my local leadership, bond issues, school issues, tax issues, zoning issues, etc. You can call that a racist position if you want, but a whole lot of black suburbanites feel the same way, and if you've ever seen a Detroit City Council meeting, a Detroit School Board Meeting, a Detroit Board of Police Commissioners meeting or a Kwami Kilpatrick fundraiser, and compared what is "normal" in Detroit to what is "normal" in the suburbs, you'd call it a common-freaking-sense position!!
Quote:
Totally disconnected from the outer "prosperous" world, where the American Dream become an illusion. These housing towers created another problem for blacks of Detroit. NO EQUITY.
Back in the days of Black Bottom and housing covenants, blacks working for Henry Ford and the "Five Dollar Day" would often express their wealth with expensive cars and clothing because they were restricted in where they could live due to racially based housing covenants.
That was a good excuse for not building equity then. How do you explain seeing a $50,000.00 car in the driveway of a $30,000.00 house now? The white loan officer will finance a car but not a house? White car salesman forces the black guy to live in a $30,000.00 house so he can afford the lease on the Benz? What?
I didn't inherit any money from my parents and I was out off the house long before they paid off the 30-year mortgage. My Black counterparts can't attain the same level of success as me after 30 years of affirmative action because their parents or grandparents were held back by racism?
Some day Detroiters will stop running out of excuses for the aspects of Detroit's failure that are directly attributable to decisions made by Detroiters over the last 30 or even 20 years. I don't think that day will come in my lifetime though. It's a lot easier to point the blame at the suburbs.
Thank you for the opinions of "Red Wings Fan" and "and the," which were exactly RIGHT on the money, not at all racist or discriminatory. The problem, whether you like it or not, is mostly classism, but if you say things like that then you are automatically classified as a "racist" which is not at all true. We have the same problem in Cleveland, OH, and it's so aggravating and exhausting already because some people will NEVER wake up and begin taking responsibility for improving themselves and their own lives. They'll just continue to wait for the government to "try" to "solve" the problem by throwing money at them. People seem to think that this will "quickly solve" the problem of welfare, education, etc, but it NEVER does until actual individuals finally begin to take responsibility for themselves and their own actions.
I just graduated with my Masters in Early Childhood (pk-3) last year, and I'm a substitute teacher for the time being until I find a permanent teaching job in NE Ohio which are far & few between. One example of the problem that we have with education in Cleveland is that the more money we give to Cleveland (inner-city) Public Schools, the more the money is wasted and mispent on the CEO and administrator's raises & salaries, "professional development retreats," building new schools when there's a extreme decline in enrollment, etc etc etc. It's so unethical that it's beyond disgusting already, but they always seem to come up with some "creative rationalization" for the reasons that the money was spent on whatever they spent it on. At the end of the day, is the graduation rate showing any kind of improvement after all these years and all the extra money? Absolutely not-not even close, so obviously a lack of money is NOT the problem as many people think and say. The REAL reason is that there is not enough parental respect and support at home for education, so many kids grow up with that "skewed mentality." Then, they come to school, and expect things to be easy and to have grades practically "given" to them for hardly any work, if any, as a result. Where are the days that you had to actually work hard and EARN your grades for FREE? Now, many people don't realize this but the inner city kids in Cleveland get paid for their grades, and it's disgusting because I never got paid for any of grades in school or from my parents at home. I worked hard for my grades for free, and I was lucky if I got to go to Dairy Queen for ice cream or out to dinner after I got my report card each academic quarter. My girlfriend teaches in Cleveland, so I know this is actually true and frowned upon by many people in the school system. I also know that when she turns in her grades each academic quarter that some of her grades are changed by administrators from F's to D's, so that the kids can be "pushed" through the system until they graduate whether they're "academically ready" or not. This is not helping the child at all, and it's only contributing further to the already decaying school system, society, etc.
Detroit is like any other urban United States city, but my advice is don't come if you don't want to live next to a minority person, and stay where you are if you're a racist or like to discriminate. Outside of the things I just mentioned Detroit is just another US city. Metro Detroit has the most heavy mixed race population then any other United States city. The bad media publicity is always told to make race a issue. One can get robbed,beatup, and shot in New York,Beverly Hills,West Bloomfield, just as quicker then one can in Detroit. If coming or returning to Southeastern Michigan remember that life is how you make it, and in order to get respect one must also give respect.
Are you out of your damn mind?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Detroit is the second most dangerous city in the entire nation, while Troy is the sixth safest in the nation. So obviously I have equal chances of being mugged in either city, right? And sadly, Metro Detroit does not have a large mixed race population . Most of the suburbs are 90% or more white, especially in Macomb and Livingston County. I do wish that this would change, but it's unfortunately part of all American cities. I respect your hope and enthusiasm for Detroit, and I too hope that it will once again be a thriving city. I even occasionally volunteer my time at Motor City Blight Busters. But for now, it's a crime-ridden, gritty, decrepit and disgusting place to live, and since I'm a college graduate and financially able, I'm staying in Oakland County.
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dont know where to start
And sadly, Metro Detroit does not have a large mixed race population 
. Most of the suburbs are 90% or more white, especially in Macomb and Livingston County. I do wish that this would change, but it's unfortunately part of all American cities. I respect your hope and enthusiasm for Detroit, and I too hope that it will once again be a thriving city. I even occasionally volunteer my time at Motor City Blight Busters. But for now, it's a crime-ridden, gritty, decrepit and disgusting place to live, and since I'm a college graduate and financially able, I'm staying in Oakland County.
