When I talk to the oppressed minority kids coming out of Detroit I have no problem convincing the majority of them that what's up with Detroit, or Flint, or Cleveland or... - esp. given the growth of the African-American middle class since 1964 - is more about class inequality and structural racism than personal racism. Furthermore, William Julius Wilson's arguments were obviously the core of all of the presentations made to us - as new MSU faculty - in the late late 90s during an extended tour of the, then fairly new, urban Cooperative Extension offices in Detroit.
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DETROIT IS HAITI: UNFORGIVEABLY BLACK
In response to the TIME magazine article, the Detroit rebellion of 1967 had the impact of chrystalizing an economic blockade that had then been developing for 15 years on the city , a blockade by the bourgeoisie, something like that on Cuba.
There was the bullet and then the ballot, a la Malcolm X in reverse: The rebellion and then the election of Coleman Young as Black mayor extraordinaire. For this , and really for being 85% Black population, Detroit is still under economic blockade punishment by the powers-that-be. These were the culmination of a socioeconomic historical shift which was marked by segregating of residence based on race through white flight to the suburbs especially beginning in the 50's, escaping the move toward integration represented in open housing law ( see Sugrue, _The Origins of the Urban Crisis_: Coleman Young _Hardstuff_). It was also part of a relative scattering of some main points of industrial production from a concentration in the city of Detroit ( and Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the Arsenal of Democracy, which had many leftwingers ,naturally. In a way, it seems to have been a shift of the location of basic production from the midwest to the South, from the US to other countries, in what gets termed postindustrialism, post-Fordism, restructuring. The concentrated proletarian powerhouse was busted up; and racially resegregated, on the typical American model, Black vs. white.
The bourgeoisie cannot really undo what they have done. They are hoisted on their own petard. Detroit is a pariah society in the national media still, as the latest TIME article shows. White masses are shy to move back in to Detroit, desegregate. The bourgeoisie will not invest in an African town, like this, with so few white people to benefit. They must blockade us like Cuba, or Haiti. Like the great Heavy Weight Boxing Champion of the World, Jack Johnson, Detroit is unforgiveably Black and Proud.
I take that back. They will find ways to invest "in" Detroit, but so that most of the local population will not benefit. They will skate and exploit, their forte.
So, the TIME has to have a cover story that poverty in Detroit today is in part due to the rebellion of 1967, cause and effect, politicallyeconomically, QED. Actually, it is. The bourgeoisie are still punishing the rebellion, among other things. Perhaps, TIME is making a confession.
Shields Green
D'Isle de Detroit
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