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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Charles wrote:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>"By and large,
Detroit is falsely portrayed in the monopoly media as a<BR>pariah. Detroit is
actually great because it has such a large portion of<BR>Black
people."</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Yes! I
agree with Charles, and I'm Anglo. Detroit is now over 90 percent
Black. Black people run the city government and shape most institutional
life, except ownership of assets. Black people are at the bottom
nationwide on quality of life indicators, but here in Detroit they also occupy a
deteriorating, near-bankrupt urban space that was abandoned by white capital and
white residents. Now, does that package help make a city
great? Yes it does, absolutely. I'm not talking directly about Black
personality or Black art forms which, of course, are intimately linked to
the material conditions of life. I'm talking about the brute issue of
survival today, in Detroit, of fellow citizens who have withstood centuries of
exploitation and oppression, and still create great art and human warmth, and
still commune together on solutions to the difficult life they
experience. Just last evening Charles and I attended a Town Hall held by
the Detroit City Council campaign of Maureen Taylor, a long-time Black 'radical'
in Detroit. There was a certain 'greatness' to the mostly-Black audience,
expressed in its collective sadness and frustration about how bad
things are, but resolved to do something about it, even if it meant civil
disobiedence and arrest. This is the 2005 version of the civil rights
movement, that moved this country forward so much, but now is based on survival
in the so-called 'post-industrial' era. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Threads like
"Rap and Detroit" are frustrating. Alright, race and class are mixed into
cultural forms, and we all know that. But rap is not Detroit (or St. Louis
or Chicago or Atlanta) anymore than jazz or blues is Detroit. Detroit is
poverty, pain, and debilitations, mixed in with adaptation to material
conditions, mixed in with struggles to make change. I would hope that
folks try to clarify their subject lines better. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR>Bob<BR><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>