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Detroit: Coleman Young's Triumph Of Self-Destruction
Toogood Reports ^ | 4/8/02 | Patrick Mallon

Posted on 04/08/2002 6:30:18 PM PDT by gohabsgo

Having watched Detroit self-destruct, I reflected this weekend about how it happened, making sure to retain positive memories, while being concise in my summary. In the spring of 1966, I was eight years old, attending Anthony Wayne Elementary, a public school with a 90% white and 10% black population. Detroit couldn´t have been a better place to be for a kid. The Motor City and the Big 3 (GM, Ford and Chrysler) were still on a roll, but there were warning signs on the horizon.

AM radio station CKLW belted out the Supremes, the Monkees, and the Beatles. We could walk two miles to school safely, piles of leaves were burned curbside in autumn, and everyone knew everyone else in the neighborhood. Devil´s Night (the night before Halloween), involved knocking over alley garbage cans and tossing toilet paper over neighbors trees. Now granted an eight year old kid is largely ignorant, but we were starting to overhear an increasingly prevalent parental observation that "things were going to hell."

Before my reluctant slide into class warfare, I had the privilege of trusted, color-blind companionship with two black classmates, Karen Brown and Melvin Traylor. Karen was the first girl I ever had a crush on. Straight A´s, a meticulous dresser, a unique personality with her horn-rimmed glasses, enthusiasm, and love for baseball. I could care less that Karen was black, she was a neat person, and that´s all that mattered. Melvin was one of the guys we´d tumble around with at lunch break. Lunch consisted of eating as quickly as possible, then rolling up a milk carton to be tossed in the middle of the field, where 20 boys would then battle over who could pick up the milk carton and stay on their feet long enough to be gang tackled by everyone else.

Melvin was bigger than the rest of us white boys, but we looked up to him because he laughed so hard when we tried to tackle him. I can sincerely say that never once did race affect my relationship with Karen and Melvin. All of us competed with each other to learn multiplication tables, to excel in spelling, reading, and penmanship. We helped each other, there were no socially invented obstacles. Brotherhood, not civil rights, was how teachers described our ethnic differences. And our grades in Citizenship were of utmost importance to our parents.

Our gym teacher was Mr. Grant, a tough, no-nonsense black man who when he caught us with forbidden gum balls would make us empty our pockets, crush each gum ball with our heels, then throw them in the wastebasket. He was fair, respected, and required that we play by the rules; no exceptions, no favorites. I liked Mr. Grant a lot and wanted to be like him, cut and athletic. He may or may not have known that when the gym was empty, we´d come back and take the prized gum balls out of the wastebasket.

In 1966, Look Magazine named Detroit an "All American City." The positive national attribution was short-lived. On July 23, 1967, police raided a blind pig at 12th St. and Clairmount, for dispensing liquor after 2:00 a.m. 82 were arrested. Then someone threw a brick through the back window of a squad car, and crowds gathered. The episode set off riots that eventually would claim 43 lives. Social commentators called the chaos and mayhem "race riots." But according to the Detroit Almanac (Detroit Free Press, 2001): "A deep polarization between races grew out of that riot, even though it was not a race riot. In fact, the first person killed was a white looter, Walter Grzanka, 45."

For us kids it was pretty cool to see National Guard jeeps cruising main roads headed downtown. But on the day we saw an Army tank, things weren´t funny anymore. There were curfews, distrust, and there was black, and there was white. Apartheid had arrived in Detroit. The near monopoly Detroit held in the automobile industry was changing too. Unions, foreign competition, and racial divisions on the assembly line, all impacted the decline in product quality.

The media wove a controlled and sanitized translation of reality, and any discussion that departed from this version was suicidal. We didn´t need to look further than the backyard for the consequences of opinions that deviated from orthodoxy. In September 67´, Michigan Governor George W. Romney, a leading contender for the 68´ Republican presidential nomination, ended his political career by saying he´d been "brainwashed" by American generals in Vietnam.

Unhappiness and gloom enveloped the city, almost overnight. Having a white perspective about the eroding social dynamic became heresy. My parents had had enough. It was time to get out, and in retrospect, the move five miles to Grosse Pointe would forever change our lives. Now, some 32 years later, I wonder: what happened to this once great city? And why, while the economic and social catastrophe unfolded in the 70´s, was nobody permitted to talk about it. It´s as if everyone knew about a loved one being diagnosed with cancer, but nobody was authorized to reflect on the patient´s diagnosis for fear of the truth.

Unlike Chicago, Boston, and New York, all certainly with their own unique racial challenges, no city has been so completely obliterated and divided along racial lines as Detroit. So the question is, did this have to happen the way it did? And did exploitation and exacerbation of mild racial divisions into a full scale separation serve anyone other than the politicians who have turned victimhood into an industry? The question is valid. And the one political figure who gained the most from this metropolitan nightmare was Coleman Young, who served as Detroit Mayor from 1974-1993.

What Young taught me, my parents, and my friends is that we were all in the class of people christened "racists in the suburbs." It is still disheartening to comprehend the magnitude and reckless divisiveness that statement caused the majority of whites who lived and worked in Detroit. The riots, according to Young were not riots, but "rebellion."

Author Tamar Jacoby said in the book Someone Else´s House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration (1998), "Detroit was governed by a black demagogue from the moment Coleman Young was elected Mayor. The damage to integration was biracial in nature, for Young, in his campaign to destroy Detroit in the name of saving it for black people, had plenty of help from myopic whites." Automobile executives were, Jacoby writes, willing to fork over millions "in thinly disguised riot insurance." The contemporary parallel to Jesse Jackson´s shake-down tactics is numbing.

According to Jacoby, the "most irresponsible white leader in Detroit — and perhaps in the whole country — was a relatively obscure district court judge named Stephen Roth. Roth was responsible for the decision to order busing between inner-city Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. His ambitious plan would touch on the lives of 780,000 children living in 53 suburbs. Many would be bused for as much as an hour and a half each day. "The most intimate personal routines seemed to be hanging on one man's whimsy," Jacoby writes. With Coleman Young doing everything in his power to encourage whites to leave Detroit, and with Roth's decision forcing them to move to the outermost suburbs, it was not long before Detroit became one of the blackest cities in the United States — and its suburbs among the whitest.

And, what does this once great city have to show for it´s failed experiment in forced integration? It appears that disintegration is the clear winner. Today if a white man speaks his mind about meriting one´s rewards, it constitutes "hate," and when a black man does the same thing, he´s an "Uncle Tom." Young himself argued that only white people can be racist. It was a confusing time for everyone in the city, and places previously safe became what police called "no-man´s land." And it all happened so fast.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Karen Brown, Melvin Traylor and Mr. Grant, my friends; people dislodged from my life when the first jeeps and tanks patrolled Detroit on that hot summer night in 1967. Perhaps we´re just browsing though time, so it´s important we choose the things we´re proud of. But it is frustrating to know that these relationships based on character, honesty and mutual respect are somehow now diminished by the diabolical work of self-professed civil rights "activists" who see only skin color. If I were to ever meet Karen, Melvin or Mr. Grant again, I´d treat them the same way they treated me in 1966. And that´s the truth.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Anthony Wayne Elementary School on the web. 2000: Grade 4, percentage of students at grade level: Reading 35%, Math 36%, Science 35%. The majority of kids are failing! In 1967, it was rare that anyone failed to be scholastically prepared to advance. It wasn´t perfect, but teachers were focused on academic excellence, unlike today where the educational environment centers on self esteem and a simplified curricula of lowered expectations. I´m convinced the division isn't between black and white, or even rich and poor. The division is between the prepared and unprepared, the educated and uneducated, those who possess a positive attitude and those who do not. The next generation of kids will be angry if they are unprepared to compete.

It´s funny how much closer kids come to defining equality, not of being uniform and conformist, but of treating each other righteously, as trusted friends. At the same time, isn´t it ironic how much closer an honored "civil rights activist" like Coleman Young came to creating the "separate but equal" atmosphere he purported to abhor. Perhaps it was his own perverse form of revenge, having unfairly been denied scholarships because of his race, and having been fired from Ford Motor for union organizing, that caused his intense bitterness.

As kids, we elementary lads were inseparable, then we were separated. We were individuals, then became unwitting members of groups. Young´s legacy is that he redefined integrity and called it integration, while seizing vast political power, all in the name of "progress." Maybe that was his real objective all along, we were just were too naive and innocent to see it coming.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: California; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: colemanyoung; detroit; riots
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To: det dweller too
I can't think of anything positive to say about Coleman other than he's dead.
21 posted on 04/08/2002 9:47:05 PM PDT by Hillary's Lovely Legs
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs
Zimbabwe, Detroit, South Africa, Nigeria, Cleveland, D.C. ...
22 posted on 04/08/2002 10:54:49 PM PDT by Jack Black
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs
Yes. My family lived in Warren during the riots. Things were certainly "tense" to say the least. We lived not too far from the Warren Tank Plant, and I understand that tanks were spotted on the streets. My aunt and uncle in St. Clair Shores have only been to Detroit once since the riots -- and only because they were escorted in and out to a meeting at Cobo! I loved CKLW and WDRQ during the Glory Days of Motown, and even the now-defunct WQRS, the classical station that became heavy metal overnight a few years ago! (talk about a shocker!)
23 posted on 04/09/2002 5:15:13 AM PDT by The Energizer
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs
Somewhere in my office, I have a booklet of outrageous statements made by Coleman Young over the years!
24 posted on 04/09/2002 5:15:56 AM PDT by The Energizer
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To: The Energizer
I was raising a puppy when WQRS went heavy metal. I had a radio next to his cage for comfort and I was with him when the format changed. I totally freaked out!!! What the heck was that crap coming out of my radio!

My dog has never been the same.

25 posted on 04/09/2002 5:25:23 AM PDT by Hillary's Lovely Legs
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To: The Energizer
Detroit isn't THAT bad...at least Downtown...
26 posted on 04/09/2002 6:12:54 AM PDT by dakine
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To: dakine
Well, I can tell you that there are MANY people in the suburbs who have not ventured south of Eight Mile Road since the riots. The are now in their 70s and 80s. The riots made quite an impression on them, one they will never forget.
27 posted on 04/09/2002 6:17:56 AM PDT by The Energizer
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To: dakine
Yes, it is that bad. And then some.
28 posted on 04/09/2002 6:17:58 AM PDT by riley1992
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To: riley1992
No it isn't....
29 posted on 04/09/2002 6:28:50 AM PDT by dakine
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To: dakine
Yes, it is. You are basing it on nothing more than going down the one clean section of Woodward for a Tiger's game.
30 posted on 04/09/2002 6:32:18 AM PDT by riley1992
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To: riley1992
I like the way the cops treated me...
31 posted on 04/09/2002 6:38:07 AM PDT by dakine
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To: dakine
They always keep the cuffs a little looser for servicemen.
32 posted on 04/09/2002 6:39:47 AM PDT by riley1992
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To: 300winmag
Detroit is run like the PLO territories, complete with its own version of intifada.

Well said.

I lived in the northern suburbs for 12 years, years afterwards, and the demolition was well advanced and nearly complete. We seldom went down into that sticken war zone. Detroit just seemed to get worse and worse. I can't think of anything nice to say about it. I had several bad and dangerous experiences there. Sure, a few things like the Symphony and Greektown were attractions, but who wants to put up with the rest of a city on a par with Lagos, Nigeria, or any other third world hellhole?

The racial politics and corruption of criminals like Coleman Young - combined with drugs - have done more to destroy the American Dream in places like this than almost anything else. But, just like the Palestinians, most of the remaining population is afraid to speak out against it for fear of reprisals.

Tragic!

33 posted on 04/09/2002 7:34:49 AM PDT by Gritty
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs; cardinal4
I grew up in Detroit, listening to and later watching CKLW from Windsor. In fact, it had a great affect on my life. In 1960, they were playing "12 O'Clock High" every day for a week just as I was getting home from my zero job. That movie affected me so much, I went up to the USAF recruiting station at Grand River and Southfield, and got forms for my dad to "sign for me" as I was only 17 at the time.
34 posted on 04/09/2002 8:07:45 AM PDT by Ax
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To: gohabsgo
I well remember my first visit to Detriot in the fall of 1968 for a cousin's wedding. My uncle took us on a tour of the riot devastated areas, many of which still looked like they did the day the riot ended. He was a member of the police auxilliary and rode shotgun on the fire trucks. His job was to shoot back at snipers who were targeting the firemen.

My relatives lived on the north side of Detriot City Airport in nice, middle class neighborhoods. I drove through the area a few years ago and was aghast at the deterioration of the community. My uncle's house, so well taken care of, was almost unrecognizable. He and the rest of the family had fled to Michigan's rural Thumb years before.

I was living in Wayne County by the time Coleman Young assumed the office of mayor. I well remember his first speech when he commanded Detriot's criminals to "hit Eight Mile Road". We understood the message to mean "go where the monied victims are" rather than to "get out of town". That one phrase in a speech built more walls between the city and suburbs than anything else Young ever did.

35 posted on 04/09/2002 8:42:22 AM PDT by DoctorHydrocal
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To: 300winmag
And Young had the quiet aquiesence of the media. The papers always seem to circle around the real issues of Detroit.

That city is a disaster.

36 posted on 04/09/2002 10:23:07 AM PDT by Benrand
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To: gohabsgo
Detroit is Democratic heaven. If I remember correctly Gore beat Bush by a million votes in the Detroit area. This is an argument for the electoral college, because if I also remember correctly that is pretty much the margin by which the Democrat hyenas howl and claim Gore the winner of the national popular vote.
37 posted on 04/09/2002 10:32:11 AM PDT by Biblebelter
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs
I thought you said you grew up in California?!

Formerly of Saratoga, California, currently of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. America's wealthiest zip code and poorest Congressional District.

109 Posted on 02/15/2000 14:44:52 PST by Hillary's Lovely Legs

38 posted on 04/09/2002 7:58:30 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: Hillary's Lovely Legs
We used to sit on the beach with our toes dangling in Lake St Claire and listen to Motown. Then, when I was about 12 I started listening to WDRQ. That was FM, I was now a grown up.

Gads! I didn't know you were from Detroit. I sat with my toes dangling too, only they were on our front porch in Livonia. How I love Motown music! Didn't you listen to 'Keener 13!' Was that WDRQ? I can't remember anymore.

39 posted on 04/09/2002 9:48:01 PM PDT by Boxsford
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To: gonzo
It was a looting spree

Boy, it sure was. I saw that, too, on television. I remember now that I wondered (in my 10 year old mind) why they were looting if they were so mad at white people. I remember trying to make sense of it all and couldn't.

40 posted on 04/09/2002 9:52:50 PM PDT by Boxsford
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