The failure of Detroit: Liberalism's Ground Zero Part 2
Progressives need to blame other entities for the failure of Detroit, because it is in the DNA of progressives to never take responsibility when their intentions never work or make a problem much worse then it was originally. Most of the time, these people live in denial. Since they are mainly on a different frequency, when it comes to reality, their failures never seems to register with them. It doesn't take Albert Einstein to comprehend that the overwhelming majority of people aim to
1. live in areas which are safe
2. live in areas that have good schools
3. live in areas that have low taxation
People who have financial options available to them will always exercise their options to move to areas that have the three criteria that I've mentioned. Progressives might want to reread that last statement. People who live in the inner cities where crime is rampant, the public schools are not educating kids and are also dangerous plus the citizens are taxed to death live in those areas by "necessity not by desire". This is common sense. The left can live in their dream world and blame Detroit's bankruptcy on the auto industry, but that excuse simply doesn't cut reality.Many major cities across the nation are suffering population decline. Nobody who can afford it wants to live in a drug infested war zone. A family looking for a house isn't going to ask a realtor to find them an area that has high taxes with a bad school system and that has high crime. The reason why it's being said that liberalism destroyed Detroit is, because it did. This paragraph from the Detroit News back in February states the obvious.
1. live in areas which are safe
2. live in areas that have good schools
3. live in areas that have low taxation
People who have financial options available to them will always exercise their options to move to areas that have the three criteria that I've mentioned. Progressives might want to reread that last statement. People who live in the inner cities where crime is rampant, the public schools are not educating kids and are also dangerous plus the citizens are taxed to death live in those areas by "necessity not by desire". This is common sense. The left can live in their dream world and blame Detroit's bankruptcy on the auto industry, but that excuse simply doesn't cut reality.Many major cities across the nation are suffering population decline. Nobody who can afford it wants to live in a drug infested war zone. A family looking for a house isn't going to ask a realtor to find them an area that has high taxes with a bad school system and that has high crime. The reason why it's being said that liberalism destroyed Detroit is, because it did. This paragraph from the Detroit News back in February states the obvious.
posted by Alpha Conservative Male at 1:11 AM
7 Comments:
An example of your post is my old high school from decades ago. When I was there it was in a well kept middle class neighborhood, and in the district where upper income white children attended, and 10% blacks from accross town (drive, or bussed). Recently, in the past decade or more, it has a reputation as unsafe, due to gangbangers, a few from that neighborhood (which is now more run down), but most from my same black neighborhod across town, but now even much more more from fatherless, single and split homes, rife with cellphone picture taking criminal gangbangers. The kids white and black and their parents fear for their safety. So years ago upper income white parents started a push to move the school several miles farther out into new suburban growing area, where they can start over. A few gangbangers when still be bussed there, but much further from their gang warfare turfs. And the new lower taxes on the outskirts will free up money to fund new security measures. With all this brewing, I figured they would close my old high school. So recently while in that area I decided to take one last walk down memory lane and visit my old school. The side I parked and walked up to had that "no guns" sign on the locked door, and everyone had to go thru main entance and register, and I just skipped the whole thing... Sure enough the Board voted to close my old school and spend many millions to build a new one in an area that is growing, but as of now is still suburbia.
Although the state as a whole is mostly republican and conservative, you cannot tell it by looking inside the families in the poorest black neighborhoods in the city. During the past 40 years the fatherlessness, drugging, gangbanging, and acceptance of immorality has gotten much worse. After I heard about my visiting neice walking to the store with baby in tow, I told her "Don't do that!" A week before that 2 blocks from where I grew up, and middle age pedestrian was asked "for cigarette" by two black teens, who then threw rocks at him. Fortunately a passerby was there to take the man to the hospital. All this stuff above was not an issue when I was a kid walking and riding a bike in that neighborhood. The deterioration is not directly from City Councils or Boards of Education (which have been one half or more republican). It is from bad culture and bad lifestyles that have incubated from Federal Liberal Policies, passed down to the State and Local levels. Liberal national political and civil rights leaders are leeches and parasites on this process. The schools (with their "D.A.R.E." programs and such), the police, courts, and social work departments cannot counter the damning reality of fornications, absent jailed or dead fathers, drugs, gangs, physical and mental illness, poverty, and political brainwashing in that black neighborhood. Now, well off blacks are doing just fine all over the outskirts of the growing city (and in high positions). But I grew up in the 60's and 70's in the middle of a 99% black in all directions neighborhood where on summer nights I could walk down many streets and speak to many who were sitting out on their porches. No more. In early part of grade school three blocks away I and many classmates often walked home from school. No more. Like you said in your post, Tyrone, people move to find safety, good schools. If they do have to pay higher taxes then they don't want it for raggedy, incompetent, danger zones. No black conservatives in their right mind want to conserve backwardsness of the past, but want to conserve some of the good traditons that came from God, family, hometraining children in right and wrong, cleanness, manners, and honest day's pay for honest day's work.
Hey Tyrone, I don't know if what I'll says has any context towards your blog, but check out Lee Daniels' The Butler...give an honest and objective review, for style and/or its historical accuracy. Just saw it today and thought it would be reflective of your stance on how liberalism has affected the black community. I will say that the movie is kind of scatter brained...well that is all, and I'm so off tangent.
Indigo, you write about the past and how black families were intact, neighborhoods were safer and how you, "grew up in 60's and 70's in the middle of a 99% black in all directions neighborhood."
As Tyrone spins the right-wing propaganda about the demise of Detroit, being that I was born, raised and still live here, allow me to give you a "truthful" first hand account. I also was pre-teen during the mid 60's, late teens in the 70's. I also remember relatively safe neighborhoods (except fear from the police) and friendly caring watchful neighbors. Being that Detroit has always been mostly racially segregated, my neighborhood was also 99% Black!
However, here's the rub. My father worked in at Detroit Receiving Hospital as a Deaner/Pathologist Assistant. Next door to us lived Mr. Britol, who was an auto worker. Mr. Ware, who lived next door to him, owned a lumber business. Across the street lived Rev. Simpson. Next door to him lived Mr. and Mrs. Balford who were both teachers. I also knew Mrs. Meyers (a single mother) who had two sons and lived down the street. We were told that her husband had been killed in the Korean War. Throughout the neighborhood there were family households headed by black men of various professions and trades.
Unfortunately, I noticed this trend begin to change in the early 1970's. First there was the 1970 crippling United Auto Workers strike, followed by, and combined with high interest rates and inflation. Even worse, in 1973 the U.S. and middle-east oil producing countries (OPEC) began their war of words over re-supplying the Israeli military, which in turn became an oil embargo. Needless to say, Detroit was hit hard. Moreover, in those days "layoffs" was mainly a blue collar phenomenon.
Detroit was just a few years past the 1967 riot when the auto industry turmoil began. We all know that the riot caused tens of thousands of whites to flee the city. But adding insult to injury, due to the oil embargo and rising inflation, the auto industry suffered mass layoffs. The unemployment rate in the auto industry was about 16 percent.
With the story being told, that was the beginning of the decline of auto industry. In 1974 Chrysler, who at one time was the No.2 auto maker in the world, closed 5 production plants. For many blacks in Detroit, this era was the first time since leaving the South, or for those getting their first slice of the American pie, that they were being faced with losing what they had gained.
Even though most blacks in Detroit worked for, or in business that were connected with the auto factories, there was a small to fair percentage that did not. As I stated, my father worked in a hospital in a "semi-professional" position. Therefore our family was not affected as much as many of our neighbors.
Also bear in mind that in the early 70's, "White-Flight" was in full swing in Detroit. What began to occur in our once "diverse working-class" neighborhood was blacks, that were economically able and stable, began to take advantage of the cheap run away home prices in the once "lilly white" neighborhoods of the city. The few blacks who lived in my old neighborhood who's income began exceed that of the auto workers (teachers who became administrators, small business owners who's businesses grew, etc...) moved even further into some of the lilly-white suburbs. IT IS THESE OCCURRENCE'S THAT I CITE AS BEING THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE BREAKDOWN OF BLACK COMMUNITIES.
I saw my best friend's family move away after his father got promoted to a school principal. I remember his father would check our home work, and give us a good "tongue lashing" (at the advice of my father) if we didn't get good grades. My family moved out the neighborhood in 1975. By then I was in college. From time to time I would visit the old neighborhood. The many who were effected by the economic conditions couldn't leave. In a mere 10-15 year period the entire area was blighted and in shambles.
I contend that if the vast majority of blacks had remained together, worked together, built together, educated together, prayed together and continued as a community, Detroit would have been that "shining city of African American prosperity" I think we all hope for.
p allen "... moved even further into some of the lilly-white suburbs. IT IS THESE OCCURRENCE'S THAT I CITE AS BEING THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE BREAKDOWN OF BLACK COMMUNITIES... I contend that if the vast majority of blacks had remained together, worked together, built together, educated together, prayed together and continued as a community, Detroit would have been that "shining city of African American prosperity" I think we all hope for"
First, your old neighborhood and era sounds similar as mine was, with teachers, business owners, semi/professionals.
Second, in recent years I have thanked my parents for building and staying in the black community (sadly that neighborhood has been in a gradual but steady deterioration, and fences and burglar alarms and overgrown weeds multiplied). My parents were well known there and as a youth that helped me survive and enjoy. A few of the higher end blacks stayed within - but most moved to what I used to jokingly call the "second ghetto" (formerly all white) and the "third ghetto" (suburbs / townhships). But of course they were not ghettos at all, but sterile sparse lands with big houses and little or no trees.
Third, the love, warmth, culture and humor growing up in that black neighborhood - aw man, it was wonderful. All the variety of year round experiences. I wouldn't take nothing for that journey. I wish any kid, black or white, could experience that 50's, 60's and 70's experience of mine where parents trained their children and looked out for each others' children (basic agreement on right and wrong, that is gone now). Shade tree streets with fathers in most homes. Of course there was some bad boy or bully or threat to stay away from, but that was nothing compared to now. About 3/4 of those homes had a legal father and mother in it, whereas today in that locale it's probably close to 1/4. (more to come)
(continued)
Now to cut to the chase. Blacks were destined to not be homogenous or monolithic, so the spreading out was inevitable for many reasons (jobs, opportunity, safety, jealous envy, family, economics, politics). The problem with the belligerant, ignorant, criminal and gangbanging, is not from the higher end blacks, but the lower end blacks. When I was a young teenager, out came the movies like "Shaft" but especially "Superfly." I knew right away then, even though we heard and hummed the songs, that these were bad influences on vulnerable blacks. Glorify being a "player" and pimp, instead of being a graduate and engineer. Some with high potential fell out behind thugs and drugs (but by an active young mother who enlightened, the fatherless Ben Carson and his brother became brain surgeon and rocket scientist). Another shoe to drop, from the same libertine mindsets that profited from 70's blaxploitation, was the false idea that "a welfare check can replace a father" (Walter Williams, recently at townhall.com). The humanistic /socialistic / leftist / 'liberal" / progressive world view called marriage "bondage" and "unnecessary," and fornicating to your lust's desire "liberating," even if not just one mistake happens, but 2, 3, 4 or more children out of wedlock (this is a bulk of the prison population), qualiying for more government subsidy, whereas it use to be shamed and shunned. With no father at home to train and discipline the boy to be a man (cause the baby daddy is gone making babies somewhere else), the boy on mom's dole dollars goes to drugs. If the grandparents try to raise the boy, he just takes advantage of them. If his mom tries to work at jobs, that just gives the son more space to find his unrequited need for structure - in the Crips, or the Bloods, the gang.
So, it is not just about blacks moving out of the hood that caused the problem. It is falling for liberalism's lie that one can live anyway they want, and the government (taxpayers) will pick up the tab. That has demoralized poorer blacks in many inner city neighborhoods, and contributed to bankrupted governments. One of the things shown clearly in the bible, both old and new testament, is people held accountable for their actions. Personal responsibility. And this includes parents for their own children. As Psalm 9:15 says, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God."
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