Posted on 05/22/2014 5:05:02 AM PDT by SJackson
Just off of the James C. Lodge Freeway in Detroit is Eight Mile Road. The stretch near the freeway is just east of the famed area that provided the basis for the Eminem film of the same name. To its north lie predominantly white suburbs — over 77 percent of those who live in Oakland County are white — with median family income in excess of $65,000. Married couples comprise approximately half of households, with fewer than 15 percent of households led by a single female. Since 1990, the population of Oakland County has jumped from 1.083 million to 1.202 million.
South of Eight Mile Road lies the city of Detroit, with a nearly 83 percent black population and a median household income of under $27,000. Almost 74 percent of households in Detroit are led by single parents, nearly all women. The population of the city has dropped from 1.027 million in that same period to approximately 713,000.
Eight Mile Road itself paints a bleak picture. In the middle of a weekday, the streets are sparsely populated; old, solid-structure brick houses with rotten roofs dot the side streets; beaten-up Pontiacs from the early 1990s sitting forlornly in driveways. Hair salons, liquors stores and rim stores are open for business, but they’re located between defunct hair stores, liquor stores and rim stores.
What happened in Detroit? Horrific governance destroyed the industrial infrastructure that created the growing mixed-population base of the city; it centralized employment in the government while devastating the business and tax base. Businesses fled to the suburbs, as did whites. The bulk of the black population, trapped in a cycle of poverty and government dependence, sold a bill of goods by Detroit’s politicians, stayed behind.
Those politicians covered their mismanagement with racially charged rhetoric, from former Mayor Coleman Young to jailed former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. When Detroit went bankrupt in 2013, it was the final result of decades of failed policy decisions based on central planning.
When financial analysts look at Eight Mile Road, they see the tragedy of a once-proud city separated. On one side of the road, Detroit; on the other side, Detroit without the mismanagement. To fix the situation would require good governance — slashing regulations, lowering taxes, attracting business, creating jobs.
Instead, politicians offer more of the same. This week, Attorney General Eric Holder stated that America’s racial disparities are a result of continued racism and suggested that neutral laws had reinforced an enduring “subtle racism” throughout the country. Holder cited particular disciplinary practices in schools and sentencing guidelines as repositories of racism.
None of this will heal Detroit or places like it. Economic health requires a dedicated workforce, a free entrepreneurial climate, protection against crime. Those, in turn, require solid two-parent families, a competitive educational environment and a dedication to equal application of the law rather than equal results under it.
Eight Mile Road is a blot on a once-beautiful city. It will remain a dividing line so long as America’s politicians continue to use it as one.
Detroit would do a whole lot better, if it paid attention to bringing back American businesses right here.
Just saying.
Bring back businesses from overseas.
That would be a whole lot more helpful use of Detroit’s time, than reaching backwards to dredge up memories of the racism which once was.
Good governance is RACIST!!!
Immigrate Gurkas and give them abandoned houses-every 3rd house.
He's right. If black people weren't so overtly racist, our communities wouldn't be so polarized.
Nothing will save Detoilet until the people that live there leave.
Nobody there works for a living, and it isn’t safe for working Americans to move back. They whine about the crime and poverty, but they are the cause of it.
More than half the population can’t read or write, they couldn’t get a job even if they wanted to, and they don’t.
I know Detroit has big problems, but the state balances it out.
Detroit has been shrinking for a very long time.
It is time for businesses to build it back. Michigan has a lot of very good things. Just saying.
It sure beats looking for the real problem.
Would you live there? Would you feel safe working there?
Businesses feel the same way. There are no supermarkets in Detoilet, the residents rob them blind and bankrupt them.
Nope, no saving it.
There is no racism. There is however CULTURISM.
The vast vast majority of Americans don’t care what anyone looks like as long as they behave properly. And people raised in the ‘black’ culture do not behave properly.
Unfortunately those blacks who were raised in a civilized culture still end up being damaged by the black culture as it’s just not safe for the rest of us to trust anyone who is black until that person has proven they are not infested with black culture. If that is racism then so be it, call me racist. I call myself wise and safe.
(And yes, I have long term black friends, people who even though they were raised in the ‘hood’ were not raised in the culture. They are fine upstanding normal people. So the culture can be overcome. Of course their mom (who raised them alone) would have killed them if they got involved with any of that black culture stuff :) )
Nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
Amen
:: It sure beats looking for the real problem. ::
As well as faciltates the shufting of accountability to the nebulous “someone else’s fault”.
They don’t need no stinking governance. They don’t need low taxes to attract business.
You heard Holder. What they need is for all the successful white people that choose to work hard and make a living to stop this racism and....
Screw it, I’m trying to be sarcastic and I can’t even make this stuff up.
All I know is; all the cities that are now bankrupt ghetto slums... the ‘leaders’ have one thing and one thing only on their minds: Race.
Race, race, race.
Thats about as far as their train of thought goes.
“It is time for businesses to build it back. Michigan has a lot of very good things. Just saying.”
Actually, it’s time to start razing all those abandoned and run-down houses and buildings and return the land to farming. The displaced people can either work on these farms or if they want to stay on welfare relocate to New York or maybe LA?
A quick infusion of unaudited free government money should go a long way towards bringing the healing that needs to take place, wouldn’t you say?
LA’s got enough problems already.
Thanks all the same.
It is about time for Detroit, to stand back up though. And that will not come, while part of the city is still looking for the boogieman.
Get over race. Focus on real problems for a change.
The sad part is, their are white kids that embrace black culture. The suburban white kids with the backwards hats and pants-on-the-floor... throwing up gang signs. They were just dropped off to school in mom’s minivan.
I have a black neighbor... good hardworking family man. He says he hates it and says if he sees his kids with their pants down to their knees, he will make them walk around in their underwear the rest of the day.
This administration is a bunch of racist.
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