A lot is being written about my beloved Detroit. It is sad, harsh
and undeniably true. But what worries me is not what they are saying. It is
what they are not saying.
They allude to it, using phrases like “racial issues,” “social
conflict,” “underlying resentment” and the like. What they are really talking
about is the fact that blacks and whites in Detroit have hated, resented and
fought with each other for decades over the fact that God made us with
different skin.
The wounds that have healed in other cities (or at least
have scabbed over) remained fresh in the D for years. There’s a lot of blame to
go around for this and naming names is just useless now. We all know the
players and many of them are dead. What started as hot blooded odium turned
into cold, impenetrable and muted antipathy over the years. And after a while,
no one even talked about the history of it; it became axiomatic, a basic truth:
the white people were racist and the black people were unworthy of respect.
Let me be clear: Detroit
has fallen because black people and white people could not find their way to
humanity over their history of violence, racism and oppression.
Don’t get me wrong; all the other factors are relevant, too.
The economy, mismanagement, globalization and NAFTA all played a part but in
the end, the choices that sacked the city were not made by political parties,
laws or economic theories; they were made by men and women.
And what governs the hearts of people? Love, compassion or
the lack thereof.
When blacks took the city by political process, electing its
first black mayor, there was a sense in the community that we had won, defeated
white people at their own game. We had suffered two riots and countless acts of
bigotry, violence and legal discrimination. It was a victory won by courage,
faith and built on the dead bodies of slaves, revolutionaries and sainted men.
And out of this grew pride and more than a little gloating. “And the white people will fight us, we
thought. They will stand in our way, hope for our failure and do everything fair
and unfair to see us fail.”
In white communities, there was panic, fear and anger. “How dare those inferior people take the city
that we built, these workers who cleaned our toilets and shined our shoes just
a generation ago.” The blacks would fuck it up they thought, they don’t
know anything about running a city. In the end, their true nature would win out
and Detroit would come to ruin.
They were both right.
Blacks could not find it in our Christian hearts to forgive
the past and build for the future and Whites could not accept a shift in power to dark faces and turn away from a history in which
they were superior to others.
Many of us tried. Some blacks and whites tried to work
together but it wasn’t enough. Mostly, the brothers in Detroit waited for the
whites to come back to the city. And
while we waited, we kept a man in the mayor’s office for 30 years who made sure
that would never happen, a man who lacked the vision and the temperament to
take us into the new millennium.
But we had no idea that whites would rather build citadels
out of farmland and forests than live and work with us. Oakland County grew to
the nation’s fourth richest, while Detroit turned into a municipal husk.
And for my people, the black people, we have far worse
things to worry about than who lives in Manoogian Mansion. We are at the lowest
point in our culture since the Civil Rights Movement. Our families are
destroyed and our children turned asunder. Much like a black President, our
symbolic ownership of Detroit did nothing to stop our slide into our current
social abyss.
So go on and think the black “city manager” means that race
is not a factor in Detroit’s takeover. Go on and think Governor Snyder and his
team did not set out to end black power. Keep denying what is before your eyes
and we will be doing this again in 2113 when the black and whites lose the city
to the Latin-Asian majority.
And for me who watched the tanks roll in ’67, watched the
Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings become multiple champions, who loved Faygo and
Better Made chips, Buddy’s Pizza and Bill Kennedy, I say goodbye to the town I
grew up in. You were loved but love doesn’t keep a city alive.
Love for your fellow man does.
© 2013
