National Review's Kudlow calls Bloomberg's assessment of riot potential in American cities "irresponsible and incendiary" and by that same standard then, heavy condemnation of Hank Payne's set piece (8/13/11) showing London riots and featuring Robert Laurie's essay prominently on the Michigan View Home Page (which infers the potential for similar incidents exist in Detroit) deserve condemnation; this editorial license and treatment of a very explosive subject is likewise both "irresponsible and incendiary" especially given Detroit's historic low threshold for racial mayhem and riot. Such page composition by Payne must be called "beyond the pale." Such recklessness rarely meets with a good end.
This SCREEN SHOT is the IMAGE and CAPTION that appeared on the Michigan View (Detroit News) on August 13-14, 2011:
Lacking sufficient human sensitivity, Hank Payne has shown the temerity to discount and diminish the testimony of US Rep. Hansen Clark as to the 1968 Detroit Riots - Detroit Rep. Clarke was quoted in The Washington Post:
"When I was a kid, I saw the [1968] riots firsthand, saw stores in my neighborhood burned to the ground, saw a man murdered when I was 9 years old," writes Clarke. "My mother sent me away to prep school to get me out of the neighborhood. Right after I went, my friend that used to help me academically was robbed in our neighborhood. Thrown in the trunk of a car overnight. When he got out, he was fine, physically; mentally, he was never the same. So, I'm able to go on to Cornell and Georgetown Law School, and he's never worked a day in his life. I'm one of the few guys still alive from my neighborhood -- literally."
Robert Laurie, August 13. 2011 in "London a prelude for Detroit" on the Michigan View August 13, 2011, in the article, Laurie penned these words linking London's riots to potential riots in Detroit, at the time of the rioting in London, England:
"An impotent, underequipped, police force has been overwhelmed by gangs of angry miscreants and now seems almost content to sit back while thugs torch the city.
"Hundreds of thieves, some as young as nine years old, have taken to the streets, smashing windows and grabbing anything they can get their hands on. Buses, buildings, even entire blocks have been engulfed in flames. While some have tried to pin the source of the outrage on the police themselves, the true cause lies exactly at the point where left wing doctrine and class warfare collide. Fortunately, it's all taking place 3,700 miles away."
Sadly, London is a scene that could easily play itself out on the streets of Detroit. And to his credit Mayor Mike Bloomberg warns of the ever present danger - Beware he shouts!
"Monday night, during a BBC interview with Leana Hosea, one woman succinctly summed up the rioter's motivation: 'It's the rich people," she said, "the people that got businesses, and that's why all of this is happening, because of rich people. So we're just showing the rich people we can do what we want.'
"It was pointed out that this woman was destroying her own neighborhood; that the people who owned these businesses were her neighbors. That didn't matter. All that resonated was the fact that someone, anyone, possessed more than she did. Be it money or property, there was someone with more. In her vacant, vacuum sealed, mind, that simple fact gave her the right to take - or burn - whatever she and others pleased."
And so Laurie expressed his grave concern over the potential of incendiary irrational and hostile mayhem coming to Detroit. He knows there are cuts in city services, reductions of police and firefighters, schools being taken over and closed, an EFM with dictatorial powers that cancel out local voters franchise (reversing voters rights), and huge budget shortfalls. This writer knew that there are thousands of hungry children, 80,000 vacant homes, and human misery and despair on an epic scale. To riot, he thinks, seems almost unavoidable, a foregone conclusion.
Laurie uses this grave warning to segue into a diatribe against liberals and Democrats and thus gets MIView Editor Payne's home page center pictorial coverage for his rant:
"London Daily Mail columnist Max Hasting put it, 'Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalized youngsters.'"
Laurie continues:
"Tragically, here in the States, we're doing exactly the same thing." -'The rich aren't paying their fair share...'"(See the analysis of current Black Family income at the end of this post)
Laurie postulates further:
"In Detroit, where politicians and union leaders love to fan the flames of classism, we've seen this kind of violence before. It first reared its head in the 1967 riots and resurfaced later, repeatedly, during the tenure of Coleman Young: a man who specialized in exploiting racial and financial divides."
There is another side to the potential inflammatory conditions; it's a story Laurie didn't use to further his specfic points; It is related by Mario Loyola, "HOUSTON, WE HAVE A SOLUTION:, The National Review, Sept. 19, 2011.
On a Saturday night in June of 1943, amid the crowds on Belle Isle, riot broke out. Writes NR's Loyola:
"(W)e'll never know for sure. There seems to have been a confrontation between a white sailor's girlfriend and a black man, which led to a brawl. As contradictory rumors raced through the city, the conflagration spread. By the time federal forces interviened to impose law and order, three days later, dozens of people had been killed, mostly blacks, and millions of dollars of property destroyed, mostly in the poor, black, inner city neighborhood of Paradise Valley."
According to Loyola, "Detroit's fall can be traced to the race riots of 1943."
Recounting the back story Loyola continues:
"As early as the middle of the 19th Century, Detroit had emerged as a leader in the Great Lakes maritime trade. It was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the Industrial Revolution, and soon was home to major industries producing machines producing machine tools, maritime steam engines, and horse carriages-the business in which William Durant, founder of General Motors, made his first fortune. Standardization of parts meant that many were interchangeable and could be used for a variety of things. When the gasoline engine was developed, Henry Ford put together his first automobiles largely from readily available components."
"The rise of machines led to the explosion of industry and a huge demand for unskilled labor. Between 1900 and 1930, Detroit was the fastest growing city in the world. But soon especially in the years after World War II, machines began to replace a lot of that unskilled labor. The ranks of unemployed swelled-especially among blacks. In the 1950's and 1960's, large populations of idle young black men became the mainstay of neighborhoods such as Paradise Valley. Crime quickly became epidemic."
We are all acutely aware that this is not the end Detroit's racial tension that continued to build in its inner core, culminating in the explosive riots of 1967; A police raid on an unlicensed bar led to melees and rioting, killing and burning which spread for blocks. "Most of those arrested were black and the mostly black crowd became enraged and began looting. With all the velocity of sudden combustion, the violence turned into one of the worst riots in American history" writes Loyola. The riots greatly accelerated "white flight" to the suburbs. He concludes:
"Detroit's transition to a majority-black city (the population is now more than 80% black) occurred just as welfare programs of the Great Society started to destroy the black family."While Mario Loyola is entitled to his opinion, there is obviously more than enough detail and movement behind what he has revealed in this National Review article about the radical outsourcing of manufacturing, social and wartime stresses to make other more nuanced conclusions than those of the author-which suit the ideological stance of the National Review.
Just mouthing the assumed 'truth" that the government programs destroyed the black family structure is the common dime store wisdom and the source of endless whiskey talk. The broader picture is much more complex and perplexing, too vexing for the average man on the street. Anyone with a workable solution is not featured; the city has failed, governments-federal, state and local-have failed, businesses have lapsed, the churches, leadership, and social charities have failed.
Little or nothing, but the welfare of government sustains these souls of God's creation... we detest that reality. Take away all of that government welfare, or even the portion that as Gov. Snyder and the TeaPublicans have recently removed and see things get worse, much worse.
The "unacceptable" is the only acceptable until our society's enlightenment and compassion returns. There are at least 500,000 people unemployed in Michigan, and we know for sure they are not all black and residents of Detroit! So get real.
Yet, these same race-tinged conclusions recur over and over on the pages of the Detroit News and associated blogs. Such diatribes feed the stereotypical conclusions made by Loyola, as he continues:
"The Great Society was not merely an enormous disincentive to completion and self-reliance; (pet themes of the Libertarian / Ayn Rand crowd) it also disincentive marriage by supplying income that mothers used to depend on their husbands to provide."Pray tell where were the "unskilled jobs" that could provide for a black man making up a family of three during the historic decline of jobs and industry in Detroit to be found?
(parentheses added)
Mario Loyola picks up on the standard view from the Detroit News pages:
"Detroit has entered the 21st century with perhaps the most deeply uneducated city labor force in the developed world. The results are predicable: Michigan's statewide unemployment rate of 10.9 is among the highest in the country, and Detroit's is even higher: It approached 30 percent during the depths of the recession. According to Bill Johnson, a reporter for the Detroit News, the city has become 'an assembly line for criminals.'"
Facts are Stubborn Things
An April 2011 study conducted by the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute entitled 'The State of Working America's Wealth," found that roughly 25% of all American households had zero or negative net worth in 2009. For black households, the figures are, as expected, more bleak:
"THE EPI FOUNDS THAT IN 2009 NEARLY 40% OF BLACK HOUSEHOLDS HAD ZERO OR NEGATIVE NET WORTH. AND FINALLY - AND WORST OF ALL, IN MY VIEW - THE STUDY CONCLUDES WITH THE FINDING THAT IN 2009 THE MEDIAN NET WORTH OF BLACK HOUSEHOLDS REACHED A DEVASTATINGLY SCANT $2,200 (DROPPING FROM $10,000 IN 2006), WHILE THE NET WORTH AMONG WHITE HOUSEHOLDS WAS $97,900, OR 45X THAT OF BLACK HOUSEHOLDS. STOP AND THINK ABOUT THIS FIGURE FOR A SECOND...$2,200???"
THE QUESTION ARISES ABOUT POSSIBLE RIOTS & THE PLIGHT OF BLACK DETRIOT - WHO ACTUALLY CARES?
Eugene Robertson knows:
"Government can reach them. But according to today's Republican dogma, it must not."The response of Michigan's TeaPublicans under Rick Snyder: Cut the poor's lifelines even shorter, rip holes in their safety nets!
Warnings about human tragedy and loss have gone out across the state; the Michigan Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops has made a pointed appeal. MICHIGAN'S 7 CATHOLIC BISHOPS URGE STATE LEADERS TO REMEMBER NEEDY. The Bishop's letter stated:
"It is a well-known fact that a very clear indicator of the moral strength of any society is in the way its neediest citizens are treated. As such, budget priorities are significant moral choices.****
"The bishops said they have "serious concern" about the budget proposed by Snyder.
"In particular, the bishops said they're concerned about the proposed elimination of the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit, the creation of a 48-month hard deadline for public assistance, and the elimination of assistance programs for those with past drug-related offenses."
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost
FOOTNOTE: Things are never just as critics would picture. On Page 42, The National Review, 9.19.11, placed a picture captioned: Detroit, June 21, 1943, purporting to be an actual photograph of the '43 riot in the story. Look closely, among scores of individuals pictured. One will have a very, very hard time finding a black person in the melee.
How's that for starters.
Original.
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