Posted on 01/12/2014 11:07:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
My first job out of college was working for a construction company in Detroit.
“We’re an all-black company and I need a clean-cut white boy,” my boss told me over drinks in a downtown bar when he hired me. “Customers in the suburbs don’t want to hire a black man.”
When a service call would come in, we would ask, “Does he sound white or black?” If it was the former, I would bid the job. If the latter, my boss would. Detroit is one of the most segregated metro areas in the nation, and for the first time I was getting what it felt like to be on the other side of that line. In contrast to the abstract verbal yoga students at the University of Michigan would perform when speaking about race, this was refreshing.
And terrifying. I couldn’t hide behind fancy words any longer.
I grew up in rural Michigan, 45 minutes away from any freeway. I’m the first male member of my family in three generations never to have worked in front of a lathe, and aside from one uncle, I’m the oldest with all of my fingers intact. The university had given me some grandiose ideas like “true solidarity with the oppressed,” and I figured “the oppressed” lived in Detroit, never mind the patrimony. I thought I was making a sacrifice. I thought moving here was staying home when everyone else was leaving the state. I thought I was going to change the world and had some vague notions of starting a school. I cringe at how naive I was. I first rented an apartment in the city, sight unseen, that didn’t have a kitchen sink, so I did my dishes in the bathtub.
Aside from bidding jobs, I spent my days like everyone else: sanding floors in cheap rentals for $8.50 an hour, which got me thinking: I could buy a house and fix it up myself. Not that I was sure how to go about buying, let alone renovating a house. It was just an inexplicit dream, some trick that would keep me from leaving like everyone else, make me a true Detroiter.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST ( AND WATCH THE PHOTOS OF THE HOUSE AND HIS NEIGHBORHOOD )
First guess: because he's a liberal afflicted with white guilt?
If he plans to live in that $500 house, his lilly-white a** is going to be a target for burglars, "polar bear hunters", carjackers, and just plain ol' hateful murderers. God forbid should that stupid white boy have a white wife or girlfriend...she'll be the real prize
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
“First guess: because he’s a liberal afflicted with white guilt?”
Yup. He’ll move out once the homeys ransack his place when he’s out to work. That’s why he got the dog in the first place as insurance WHEN his idiotic feel-good experiment fails.
If you read the story, it looks like he walks the walk, liberal or not. So quit yer whinin’.
ping
About 25 years ago, me and a buddy bought a 2 unit rental house in Detroit for $2000. Tenants were vendor paid by the state so the rent always got paid. But they were total crack whores. As landlords, we tried to do right. They stole stuff, lit a room on fire and one was turning tricks in my house. We got out and slid the place when they destroyed a new kitchen floor the day after we installed it.
When were you at WKU? Any affiliations on College Street?
Because you like Chinese people? China is buying up abandoned homes in Detroit at a record rate. Thousands of them, comrade.
One thing that struck me, was that while he rightfully acknowledges the corruption that brought down the city, he then laments the fact that the voters who elected those corrupt politians because of their race and political party, now don’t have as much say in who gets elected.
He seemed to like the protestors, and their cause, but then gets miffed because he didn’t do his homework on just who and what those protestors really are.
Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in-detroit-for-500
Ooops! Try that again.
Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw
That is true, but only Chinese who can't get Visas to come and see the property are buying, probably expecting some return on investment. Those who managed to get Visas and actually toured the city refused to buy anything. If the Chinese owners actually came to occupy the houses, it would be an improvement.
Conservatives are really missing what is happening in Detroit. Rather than seizing control and creating a success, many would rather sit back and point fingers.
If I had the money I would be snatching up property in the Delray neighborhood. Its one of the worst neighborhoods but is going to be one of the most valuable when the new bridge goes in. The property will be taken through eminent domain but Michigan has decent ED laws and a good attorney could maximize your gain.
How sad is it that this guy, probably a flaming lib, has more of the classic American pioneering spirit than others here who can’t recognize it in the first place?
Agreed. People like that kid are probably going to inherit that city, so my hat’s off to him and his willingness to take a risk with his own life.
True. Of course it would help if they actually read the whole article before dismissing it as the product of a “lib” therefore not worth their time.
I bet the taxes are a killer.
Why is that allowed? Are we allowed to buy land in China? I highly doubt it.
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