Do You All Agree Detroit The Least Racially Diverse Big City In The Country With A Population Of Over 500,000 People ? (Coleman: apartment, car insurance)
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It is common knowledge that Detroit's population is overwhelmingly african-american, but keep in mind, it was not by our choice. It seems the question should be what can we do as a region to better relate and understand each other rather than pointing out the obvious. A different way of asking this same question would be why are our suburbs so overwhelmingly white. For example, Livonia has a population that is currently 95.5% white (this is according to the 2000 census.)
Wasn't it "(y-)our choice"? Certainly not entirely, but there were also Black actors who played their "parts", however small, in the White exodus. Without wishing to pile on, two come to mind for me. (More about them later.) The initial exodus was inevitable. As difficult as it may be for anyone not then alive to believe, 1950's Detroit was crammed to the gills. Population density then was even higher than modern-day San Francisco, well above Chicago or Boston or Philly (then or now.) What's more, with the Baby Boom just getting under way, the choice was grow upward like Manhattan or outward like L.A. Upward is EXPENSIVE; that's why the former is mostly solidly upper-middle income or subsidized poor.
My own parent's situation was typical. In 1966, they needed space for five kids. Their choices boiled down to (a) less than 1,200 sq. ft. in Detroit for $25,000 or (b) more than 1,800 sq. ft. in Oakland County for $19,000. Call them "bigots," as many, by implication, have done, but I think their choice was a no-brainer. Likewise for most of those then starting families with the means with which to make a meaningful choice.
Then came the 1967 Riot, the impact of which on the White psyche cannot possibly be underestimated. The pent-up White demand for Detroit homes COLLAPSED, almost overnight, particularly among those with young children. (As it would've done among Blacks following the White Riot during WWII, if those newly arrived from the South had had any real choices. Black people's concern for their children wasn't any less real; their choices, especially in the wake of the Depression, were just much starker. Stay or starve.) The use of scare tactics by ambush real estate agents accelerated the exodus by crashing home values in entire (targeted) neighborhoods. Once a minimal percentage of homes go rental in an owner-occupied area, the process is largely self-sustaining. (Not just because some Blacks moved in, but because neither renters nor landlords, as a group, EVER keep up single-family dwellings as well as do those with their entire lives wrapped up in where they live.)
Then, Coleman Young was elected the first Black mayor of Detroit and uttered his now infamous, but then SHATTERING line: " I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit; hit [URL="//www.city-data.com/wiki/Eight_Mile_Road"]Eight Mile Road[/URL]! And I don’t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear [URL="//www.city-data.com/wiki/Superfly"]Superfly[/URL] suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road. "[URL="//www.city-data.com/forum/#cite_note-15"][SIZE=1][16][/SIZE][/URL]
The context applied to this statement was largely worlds apart when viewed by Blacks and Whites. The former saw it as even-handed and intended to be heard exactly as it was spoken. The latter heard other things loud and clear: Police misconduct and criminality were equally important problems in the real world. The criminals, Black and White alike, should all invade the suburbs--and we'll give them a push. The newly Black City's problems would be solved when it got rid of all the Night Riders and other White folk who were messing things up for "us." So, we basically said FU and turned our backs on Detroit. Little that followed during Young's tenure seemed designed to alter such attitudes. Detroit had had a long-standing tradition of featherbedding among its public employees, both those of the City and its then-independent School Board, as well as contractual corruption. This, combined with the failure to adjust to an imploding revenue base, plus the need to continue servicing, in some sense, however much reduced, vast sparsely populated areas within the City, led to what has come to be called "the Ruins of Detroit."
I promised two examples of Black contributions to the Detroit area's racial polarity, the first of which was Coleman Young's POLARIZING statement and subsequent behavior while in office. (The subtext of what amounted to his perpetual, and completely gratuitous, campaign to keep 'them' from taking Detroit 'back', as if we anymore wanted it.)
The second is a personal anecdote. My father grew up with four siblings back of the old Mound Road Chrysler plant. The BEST job his father ever had was as custodian of a Catholic parish school. (As a youth, my father's first daily task was to awaken in advance of his mother in winter, so that he might go BENEATH the poorly insulated house and THAW OUT the water pipes so that she might prepare breakfast for the family's rise. I seriously doubt that there are very many Detroit children today who have it so hard, except those unfortunate to have drug addicts for parents.) They were POOR. So, when a relation died leaving my grandparents enough to spend $35,000 on a house in the late 60's, they ignored their children's entreaties to head to the suburbs. Instead, they rebuilt their house from the studs up.
About that time, the first Black family moved into the neighborhood on their block. They seemed quiet enough, decent folks. (The only thing that stood out to my young senses was their playing of Motown music in their backyard that was audible down and across the street. Their neighbors, perhaps befitting their greater age, set their porches listening to Tigers games that couldn't be heard at the their own sidewalks, much less elsewhere, so that stuck out to me, although I never mentioned it to anyone at the time. After all, my own neighborhood was similarly 'noisy'.)
So far, so good, from my perspective. Then, in the span of little more than a year in 1971-2, my grandparents were robbed (NOT burgled) IN THEIR OWN HOME five times, each time by DIFFERENT robbers, each of whom was Black. At the last, confounded by the newly installed deadbolts and window bars, the miscreant young man ripped an entrance in an EXTERNAL WALL. Finally, their kids' importunings were heeded. They retired to the luxury of an old trailer in the Standish countryside. In the process, they ABANDONED that home that had cost them $35,000 to re-build only a few years previously. (They MAY have gotten as much as $4,000--if promises were ever kept.)
The depopulated wasteland that remains to this day alternately angers my father and breaks his heart. So much for White 'indifference'. What I can add from my own observations is this: Those desperately poor people who more or less successfully raised five children had certain habits that were never adopted by those who replaced them. They hosed down their sidewalk and alleyway at least weekly, weather allowing. They cultivated climbing rose vines to make their meager backyard a fit place of habitation. They respected their neighbor's right not to have their peace routinely disturbed. They required their children to do likewise. They made d*** sure that their children attended both school and mass 'religiously'. All of these things are what Marcus Aurelius called 'Civic Virtues'. (Such are required to maintain any civilization. Their practice doesn't make their practitioners any more virtuous in their PERSONAL ethical conduct, but their lack makes sustaining any civilization increasingly difficult. Eventually, impossible. Cities, especially, require a high degree of voluntary cooperation; much of this boils down to following the rules.)
Contrast their behavior with that of the young Detroit welfare mother of three who was featured at some length in a local 'human interest' TV spot in the late 1980's. In the three years in which she'd lived in her home on Section 8, courtesy of others, the landlord hadn't cleaned up all of the junk which littered her fenced-in backyard. At that time of year, the grass was seemingly waist-high, at least. The reporter played it straight, letting the woman air her grievances, the latter alternately forlorn and angry.
No mention was made of the fact that she had had THREE YEARS to carry the junk out to the curb and HAD FAILED TO LIFT A FINGER.
Precisely HOW such apathy and indifference to ONE'S OWN PLIGHT is to be cured by OTHER PEOPLE is beyond my own imagination. Perhaps by MAGIC?!?!
P.S. I here include a tangential anecdote: In the early 1980's, Chrysler valiantly tried to maintain the presence of its World HQ in Detroit. Alas, a nearly DAILY practice among the local youth was to throw bricks and rocks over the 20-foot fence that surrounded the parking lots, as well as through the facility's many windows. This continued for years, eventually wearing down management's willingness to ignore their employees' wishes that the Company 'get the H*** outta Dodge', so to speak. Bye-bye tax base, both the buildings and the wages. (I came by this as things wound to their inevitable conclusion. My friend's father was a senior manager at the time.)
Hardly. It mostly seems so because many identifiable non-White groups have so recently moved to areas freed up by snowbirds, down-sizers, and the dead. Chaldeans, Lebanese Christians and Muslims, Indians, and Pakistanis, Thais, and others have had communities here (not only in the City, but in both the southern and eastern suburbs) for decades, some for more than a century. Others only established themselves recently, true, but what of it? When Blacks and Arabs could afford the perfectly lovely housing in Oak Park and Southfield and Ferndale, AND THEY WENT UP FOR SALE by their longtime inhabitants, they moved there. As Arabs and Iranians and Chinese and Indians, in particular, achieved success in small business or the professions, they moved into upscale places like West Bloomfield.
I suspect that the many negative aspects of Detroit living are tolerated by a fair number of well-to-do Blacks who are both more comfortable among the familiar and prideful in 'our' City. As I've been to other large cities, I can assure you that Detroit's attractions for most White folks (even those who arrive from other, more 'diverse' cities) are overwhelmed by its negatives.
Although most of those negatives have to do with the overwhelmed physical and institutional infrastructure (or with OUR desire to cluster where the things WE do and value are at hand), not all of them are, to be frank. WE don't have a traditition of celebrating holidays with randomly aimed gunfire. (I was astounded some 20 years ago by a 60-ish Black supervisor of mine who proudly defended his lifelong participation in this tradition.) WE haven't hosed our neighbors with gunfire from moving cars 'in payback' since Capone's days. WE prefer to treat HARSHLY those who regard burglary as an appropriate response to addicting one's self to drugs. (Except, perhaps, for the fruit of our own loins. Our neighbors seldom sympathize in any way other than pro forma.) WE report crimes against others almost routinely, even offering to be witnesses. WE don't promote the "Don't be a snitch" mentality. And WE prefer to be as far away as possible from neighborhoods where such things are commonplace. And most of us will move Heaven and Earth to keep our children away from them.
I believe that Washington DC is the least culturally diverse in the country and it has more than 500,000 people. I know it's not really a city but it should be counted as one compared to Detroit. As far as agreeing that Detroit is the least racially diverse I do not. I grew up in Southwest and there was just about ever culture over there possible. Now we have all these developments downtown. The Riverfront, Harbortown, high scale apartments and lofts, and all those river front condos that are over a million dollars up there. Who resides in those? Whites do and there are tons that continuing to be built. As a matter of fact the only areas that I really see a high population of blacks in is the urban areas that surround downtown like Fenkell, Davidson and 7 mile. Many people are leaving the city while a few others are coming in. You have to grow up in the area to really know because the data that is reported is not 100% accurate
That last is especially true. The Census claimed more than 900,000 people in 1990. I suspect that the accurate number may be as low as 700-750,000 now. (I doubt that the Feds will go lower than 850,000.) The difference? Wishful thinking and the tying of Federal and State moneys to the reported numbers; widespread social security fraud using dead 'recipients'; widesread welfare (and perhaps tax) fraud using non-existent dependents. Use Google Maps as a basis for your own representative series of 'drive-by' fact-finding explorations. It'll astound you just how vacant much of the city truly is, if you would only keep open eyes and an open mind.
If I knew the El Paso Area??? I was on the redistricting committee, Chaired the federal funding committee (Community Development), wrote for the newspaper and was pres of my neighborhood association.
The point I'm making and you're missing is that there are concrete numbers vs your opinion of a city with 700,000. The census knocks on doors - they don't count mailboxes.
If you're going to JUST go by your opinion - fine don't present it as fact - YOU made up a number in this post - maybe it just "felt good" . You could also say Hispanics and whites are really the same thing in your opinion or that blacks and whites are - and that is your opinion,however you quoted a number as a fact and it was just your guess.
I like these posts to be as accurate and honest as possible, as I sometimes travel to places I read about.
"The census knocks on doors..." Thereby hangs a tale you are obdurately refusing to acknowledge. To you and me, that knock may signal either an imposition or an opportunity. To an illegal, it ALWAYS threatens La Immagracion. To imagine not only that every knock was answered, but that the responses were TRUTHFUL is sheer pigheadedness or simplemindedness.
I've lived among illegals in smaller cities in the midwest and larger ones in the west. The neighbors who fluctuated between 8 and more than 15 people in a 2-bedroom apartment with 650 sq. ft. certainly didn't report their true numbers to the landlord. They were in flagrant violation of the local fire codes and their lease. (I wasn't even certain that whoever had signed the lease still lived there.)
Malamute - why not actually learn something about demographics- you know take a college course.
The Hispanic population is both younger than the anglo population and they have more fertility to use a demographic term, meaning they have more kids per family. In 1970 el Paso was probably 55% Hispanic ( now that is a guess not a fact) and as more hispanics have had more kids, their percentage grows. Even in Aransas County - where I live the pattern is the same. Hispanics make up 20% of our overall population but they are 26% of the school population.
I'm glad you're interested in Demographics, I love it.
By the way in the 1980s I did live election analysis for KVIA. In the election where Jaime Perez challenged millionaire incumbent Johnathan Rogers, the first precincts to report where from south El Paso. Jaime won those precincts (the first two) by 57%-43 and the two other networks were saying "Could this be one of El Paso's biggest upsets?" I know those two precincts were 88% hispanic and for Jaime to win, he needed 80% out of there. I saw that and immediatly announced Mayor Rogers would be re-elected even though he was getting killed. The Herald -Post wrote an editorial about those predictions.
I only did one more live telecast for election results. That next time live I was speaking and a misplaced wire tripped me and as I fell I yelled "S--t" Live - oh well.
Demographics have helped me enormously in my investment and real estate work, being able to predict how neighborhoods are going is of great help.
I took a class at Cal Berkeley which had the best department in the US and would have majored in it but Reagan cut the budget and killed it.
GOVERNOR Reagan, obviously. Glad you're still with us, Oldpa.
Then, Coleman Young was elected the first Black mayor of Detroit and uttered his now infamous, but then SHATTERING line: " I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don’t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road. "[SIZE=1][16][/SIZE]
I wasn't around when this was said, but how could you take this statement any other way than how it's stated? This was taken as a "polarizing statement?" How does all criminals leave equate to "all white people leave?"
To the topic... the Detroit metro area is more diverse than most metro areas. If you're black, white, asian, mexican, arab etc. there's somewhere where you can be around your people. I'm living in Ohio, and that definitely can't be said about here. At least not what I've seen of Columbus and Cincy.
Location: Detroit's eastside, downtown Detroit in near future!
2,053 posts, read 4,396,747 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by D-Love
I believe that Washington DC is the least culturally diverse in the country and it has more than 500,000 people. I know it's not really a city but it should be counted as one compared to Detroit. As far as agreeing that Detroit is the least racially diverse I do not. I grew up in Southwest and there was just about ever culture over there possible. Now we have all these developments downtown. The Riverfront, Harbortown, high scale apartments and lofts, and all those river front condos that are over a million dollars up there. Who resides in those? Whites do and there are tons that continuing to be built. As a matter of fact the only areas that I really see a high population of blacks in is the urban areas that surround downtown like Fenkell, Davidson and 7 mile. Many people are leaving the city while a few others are coming in. You have to grow up in the area to really know because the data that is reported is not 100% accurate
People say this about downtown but downtown is still majority black. The majority of the small white population in Detroit residents in southwest
Location: Detroit's eastside, downtown Detroit in near future!
2,053 posts, read 4,396,747 times
Reputation: 699
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Wanderer2
Hardly. It mostly seems so because many identifiable non-White groups have so recently moved to areas freed up by snowbirds, down-sizers, and the dead. Chaldeans, Lebanese Christians and Muslims, Indians, and Pakistanis, Thais, and others have had communities here (not only in the City, but in both the southern and eastern suburbs) for decades, some for more than a century. Others only established themselves recently, true, but what of it? When Blacks and Arabs could afford the perfectly lovely housing in Oak Park and Southfield and Ferndale, AND THEY WENT UP FOR SALE by their longtime inhabitants, they moved there. As Arabs and Iranians and Chinese and Indians, in particular, achieved success in small business or the professions, they moved into upscale places like West Bloomfield.
I suspect that the many negative aspects of Detroit living are tolerated by a fair number of well-to-do Blacks who are both more comfortable among the familiar and prideful in 'our' City. As I've been to other large cities, I can assure you that Detroit's attractions for most White folks (even those who arrive from other, more 'diverse' cities) are overwhelmed by its negatives.
Although most of those negatives have to do with the overwhelmed physical and institutional infrastructure (or with OUR desire to cluster where the things WE do and value are at hand), not all of them are, to be frank. WE don't have a traditition of celebrating holidays with randomly aimed gunfire. (I was astounded some 20 years ago by a 60-ish Black supervisor of mine who proudly defended his lifelong participation in this tradition.) WE haven't hosed our neighbors with gunfire from moving cars 'in payback' since Capone's days. WE prefer to treat HARSHLY those who regard burglary as an appropriate response to addicting one's self to drugs. (Except, perhaps, for the fruit of our own loins. Our neighbors seldom sympathize in any way other than pro forma.) WE report crimes against others almost routinely, even offering to be witnesses. WE don't promote the "Don't be a snitch" mentality. And WE prefer to be as far away as possible from neighborhoods where such things are commonplace. And most of us will move Heaven and Earth to keep our children away from them.
lmao drive-bys haven't been big in Detroit for a while, matter of fact has it really ever been drive-bys are more apart of the "gang culture" and Detroit doesn't have a big "gang culture".
Btw why are people so obsessed with "diversity" when in most cities that are so called diverse people just move in areas where the majority are the same race/ethnicity? Blacks with blacks, whites with whites, hispanics with hispanics, asians with asians and atleast one area that has a little of everyone (usually the more affluent and usually majority white and if not majority one race in particular). So really what's the big deal? If all people were truely equal I see no problem at all. I'm black and perfer to live around mostly black people. Not that I'm racist because I'm not. I just simply perfer to live with my own people who share the same culture. Could I live in a majority white, hispanic, asian area? of course. As long as I could get along with them but I have no shame saying my first choice is to stay around majority AA.
On responses to Mayor Young; PLUS the desirability of TRUE diversity
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schoolcraft
I wasn't around when this was said, but how could you take this statement any other way than how it's stated? This was taken as a "polarizing statement?" How does all criminals leave equate to "all white people leave?"
To the topic... the Detroit metro area is more diverse than most metro areas. If you're black, white, asian, mexican, arab etc. there's somewhere where you can be around your people. I'm living in Ohio, and that definitely can't be said about here. At least not what I've seen of Columbus and Cincy.
Alas my first response to the above apparently vanished into the ether. I'll try again.
As to your questions: In similar ways to how many Blacks feel perfectly justified in maintaining that we can't possibly determine whether or not we or our loved ones are racist. Coleman never made any great secret that he didn't like white people. As I went on to add earlier, nor did he fail to provide us with constant reminders of the practical impact of his disdain for us. Or, sadly for the City, its practical impact on both it and its remaining inhabitants. It was 'our' City now, not Whitey's, and he was there to prevent us from reclaiming it.
As to the point to which you wish to hew, it's a pity that the Leftist social engineers still wish to enforce an homogenization of our separate selves. Surely you haven't escaped the notion that groups of separate (White) people are a BAD THING?
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Further back than that...
drive-bys are more apart of the "gang culture" and Detroit doesn't have a big "gang culture". 
