In my book, The Pathology of the US Economy, I wrote about how I was witnessing the United States following when I called "The Haitian Road to Development." What I meant was an economic strategy based on pushing wages down to make the economy productive.
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DETROIT IS HAITI: UNFORGIVABLY BLACK
By Shields Green
The Detroit rebellion of 1967 had the impact of crystalizing an economic embargo that had then been developing for 15 years on the city. The relationship of business to Detroit since then is something like the relationship of world capitalism to Haiti since the revolution there a couple of centuries ago.
In Detroit, 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. 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 unforgivably 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 exploit and skate, their forte.
So, TIME magazine several months ago had a cover story that poverty in Detroit today is in part due to the rebellion of 1967, cause and effect, politicallyeconomically, case closed.. Actually, it is. The bourgeoisie are still punishing the rebellion, among other things. Perhaps, TIME was making a confession.