Lecture 2a : Cities and Urban Life :Detroit in the Era of an Overwhelmingly majority Black population

Detroit in the Era of an Overwhelmingly majority Black population

I have focused this class on Detroit, Wayne County and Michigan urban activity and traditions of the last 100 years, and especially the last 70 years or so corresponding to my lifetime of 72 years mostly in Detroit, but some other cities .

I focus on Coleman Young because he has been a main leader of Black Detroiters, mover and shaker in the historical period in which the Black population became the overwhelming majority, 85%, a larger Black majority than any other “Inner City’, Urban center ( Urban had become synonymous with Ghetto, Majority Black.

Also, my Economic Determinist, Dialectical theory of Urban Life’s conventions and traditions , and its evolutions and even revolutions I get from Mayor Coleman A. Young, graduate of Maben’s Barbershop Black Bottom Dialectical school and student of W.E.B. Dubois _Souls of Black Folk_. (Elaboration of Maben's later)




____*******_____ DETROIT IS HAITI: UNFORGIVEABLY BLACK

Blast from the past applied to 2014

by: Charles Brown

October 21 2009

tags: Analysis, Detroit, racism, auto industry, capitalism, Malcolm X

The Detroit protest rebellion of 1967 had the impact of crystallizing or aggravating a capital boycott on the citizens, the 99%ers of Detroit, that had then been developing for 15 or 20 years, a divestment by the bourgeoisie - big capital - something like that economic blockade or embargo on Cuba. However, not by law rather by private agreement to disassemble Detroit, as Labor Giant. The relationship of business to Detroit as a result is something like the relationship of world capitalism to Haiti since the revolution there a couple of centuries ago.

With the corporate flight from Detroit , a capital boycott was inflicted on a former concentration point of capital investment, by suburbanization of factories, plant closings , runaway shops to the South, globalization of production .

There was the bullet and then the ballot, a la Malcolm X in reverse: the rebellion, a mass protest or demonstration, guerilla theatre against white supremacist unemployment, poverty and police brutality. Then the 1973 election of Coleman Young as Black mayor extraordinaire, an excellent urban technician. For these exercises of Black power, in leaderless protest demonstration as Free Speech in the form that was developed in dozens of Inner City Ghettos at that time; election of a proud Black Mayor, ;and really for now being 85 percent majority Black population, Detroit is still under economic blockade punishment by the powers that be.

"The newsmagazines called Detroit a model city. They marveled at its strong chin and gushed over the heroic benevolence of Mayor Cavanagh,who had become the gallant knight of the War on Poverty by spearingforty-two million federal dollars for the city's poor people. Cavanagh was widely portrayed as a sort of Great White Sympathizer, and the

fact is, he worked hard at maintaining a symbiotic rapport with Black leaders. In that spirit, he had established an amicable relationship that let observers to think of Detroit as being immunized against the _outbreak of inner-city rioting that had torn apart Watts in 1965, bloodied Chicago and Philadelphia, and in 1967 was sweeping the country at a rate that would produce 164 incidents, among them major

revolts in Cleveland and Newark _ (emphasis added -CB)" - page 170 of_Hardstuff_: the autobiography of Coleman a. Young; "The Big Bang"

Chapter 7

The federal government's Kerner Commission report essentially agreed tha the "riot" protests in the dozens of majority Negro ghettoes around the country had legitimate gripes. “Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal”: Excerpts from the Kerner Report

"Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White--Separate and Unequal":...

Charles Brown :Detroit's 1967 mass, spontaneous guerrilla theater, protest 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 1950s, escaping the move toward integration represented in open housing law. (See Thomas Sugrue, "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Politics in Postwar Detroit," and Coleman Young's autobiography, "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 neighboring Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the World War II era Arsenal of Democracy, which had many left-wingers, naturally.

In a way, it seems to have been a shifting of the location of basic production from the Midwest to the South, from the U.S. to other countries, in what gets termed post-industrialism, 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 into Detroit, desegregate; although in 2014, there has been some white popular migration into Detroit.

The bourgeoisie will not invest in an African town like this, with so few white people to benefit. The are trying to move more white people in so that they can feel better about investing.

They , the bourgeoisie had to economically blockade us like Cuba, or Haiti have been for decades and scores of decades.

Like the great heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Jack Johnson, Detroit is unforgiveably Black and Proud as the PBS television documentary has it.

Wait, I take that back. They are trying to find ways to invest "in" Detroit, but so that most of the local population will not benefit. They will exploit and "skate" - in other words, con and run, get away without being held responsible for their wrongdoing...unless we hold them responsible, somehow. We, the 99%.

So, Time Magazine had a cover story back in 2009 saying that poverty in Detroit today is in part due to the rebellion of 1967, cause and effect, politically and economically - case closed.

Actually, it's true. The bourgeoisie are still punishing the rebellion, among other things. Perhaps, Time is making a confession.

http://www.pbs.org/unforgivableblackness/about/

Unforgivable Blackness . About the Film | PBS

Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century —...

pbs.org

https://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@lists.csuc…/msg12528.html

https://www.facebook.com/wethepeopleofdet…/…/465954460093259

https://www.facebook.com/wethepeopleofdetroit/posts/465954460093259

http://coreysviews.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/detroit-is-haiti-unforgivably-black/

Charles Brown‎We the People of Detroit

October 2, 2012 ·

Detroit Belle Isle is the Isle of Haiti, Unforgiveably Black. The State of Michigan doesn't want to help Detroiters with Belle Isle. It wants fewer Detroiters and more non-Detroiters on Belle Isle.

LikeLike · · Share Glenn I agree with you about most things, Charles, but not on this one. Belle Isle is a jewel. The city has allowed it to languish and decay, be overrun with overgrowth, broken glass. And this is not just a recent development. While Idon't trust many of the outstate politicians, its long past time that this world class attraction be cared for andmanaged and be used to help bring people and their money back to Detroit, even if its just for a day.

October 2, 2012 at 6:34pm · Like Charles Brown Those problems are readily remedial by the City. It is not necessary to turn control of the whole island over to the State to get it done. And the State is not taking it to do that but to get Detroiters off and non-Detroiters on. It's primary purpose shouldn't be to make money. And it can't be made to make much money without turning it into Disney Land or something. The whole deal is a big fraud. Just clean it up , Mayor.

Even if it's just for a day. What does that mean ?

October 2, 2012 at 6:38pm · Like Glenn they're not readily remediated. They haven't been remediated in DECADES. If people visit the island as a managed park, people pay have a yearly pass. Not a high price to pay. Anyone who comes to the city to go to Belle Isle may spend money on food, gas, and whatnot. For a city whose infrastructure is crumbling and cannot be supported by its meager and shrinking tax base, generating traffic and revenue is necessary to ward off having the entire CITY taken over by the state.

October 2, 2012 at 6:43pm · Like Charles Brown the entire city has already been taken over by the state with the Consent Agreement. That's not enough revenue. Not that many more people will be coming to the city. And you can be sure they won't be stopping in gas stations in Detroit. Are you kidding. Most Detroiters I know are not that dissatisfied with the Island. The cleaning problem is eminently doable by a competent Mayor. Giving the island to the State to do it is like using a sledge hammer to do the job of a scalpel. Not only too big but the wrong tool.

October 2, 2012 at 6:48pm · Like Glenn I've lived in and out of the city for 30 years. I have been a champion of the city for the entire time. I won't believe that the city can do the job until I see it. So far, I haven't seen squat. Detroit doesnt' want to give it up, then they'd best get on it

October 2, 2012 at 6:51pm · Like