The article talks about abandoned buildings, the Feds had money they were trying to get the city to use to demolish buildings, the city refused to use it because they did not want to use white contractors.
That's the common mentality in Detroit.
Here's an excerpt from Nolan Finley's column in the Detroit News:
"With the Detroit Public Schools near disintegration, it ought to be noted that it's been five years since Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson was told to take his $200 million and get back to the suburbs.
Thompson, a retired road builder obsessed with spending his fortune to get urban children a high-quality education, ran into a political buzz saw when he offered to open 15 charter high schools in the city that would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college.
Community activists denounced Thompson as a white meddler out to steal their children. They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union.
The rejection of Thompson's millions became a national story of a city so seized by racial divisions it couldn't set them aside even to save its children."
I was disappointed to see the Standard article didn't highlight the terrible miseducation in Detroit more, but it would've been hard to stop there's so much wrong with it.
Here's the URL of Finley's piece: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081228/OPINION03/812280304/1271/OPINION01