Hank Payne is on one of his fringe stretches, trying hard to make a case for confiscatory EM takeover of one of the nation's past great super cities.
The impetus for this Draconian move has long lingered in the dark side of the Jim Crow mentality allowed to metastasize in the psyche of many confused and desperate Michissippians. As their fortunes continue to diminish and their income and security are sucked away by the Great Bush Recession new life is given to latent civic poisons of prejudice, racism and bigotry.
"Detroit is pathologically abnormal..." Payne opines pseudo-philosophically, recommending "Nix the Detroit bailout. Send in the emergency manager - just like other Detroit cities have done." In this harsh demand, Hank Payne perfectly mirrors the Mackinac Center's many calls for Detroit's bankruptcy among them is the Mackinac Center's Paul Kersey, Oct. 15, 2009.:
"As long as the unions refuse to make concessions, there appears to be no certain remedy for the city short of bankruptcy court."
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| "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue (Princeton, 2005) |
From a review of the book "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue:
"The Detroit metropolitan area today is arguably the most racially segregated region in the United States, with a primarily African-American, largely abandoned and dilapidated urban center surrounded by layers of primarily white, affluent suburbs."
"Thomas Sugrue (author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Princeton Studies in American Politics) provides a thoughtful, well-researched, and fascinating analysis of systematic racial inequality in Detroit during the post World War II automotive industry boom of the 1940s through deindustrialization and "white flight", and ending with the catastrophic race riots of 1967."
"Sugrue avoids the current, common oversimplifications of blaming Detroit's urban crisis on the '67 riots or Mayor Colman Young by weaving together a complex story of human behaviors, fears, and incentive structures backed by data, references, and personal accounts: 'By the time Young was inaugurated, the forces of economic decay and racial animosity were far too powerful for a single elected official to stem.'"
A Look Back on the Rude History of Jim Crow Racism in Detroit.
As Michalek summarizes - "(Thomas) Sugrue's analysis provides insight to understand major groups of stakeholders and their interactions" with the following observations:
- "Workers flocked from the southern states to Detroit seeking relatively high-paying automotive jobs.
- In the free market, resulting housing shortages allowed landlords to divide properties into tiny apartments and charge premium prices, protecting their investments by being selective in their choice of "low risk" white tenants.
- Bankers also preferred "low risk" clients, resulting in unequal access to funds.
- White home owners, wanting to protect their families and financial investment, resisted neighborhood integration to avoid declining property values and perceived dangers.
- Real estate agents capitalized on fears of mixed neighborhoods by buying property from fleeing whites at junk prices and selling immediately to blacks at premium prices.
- Labor unions protected seniority, which unequally benefited whites, and tended to compromise on racial issues in order to gain bargaining ground.
- Store owners avoided hiring black workers, wishing to avoid offending or frightening mostly white, mostly female, customers.
- Suburban tax incentives and new technology made large, flat assembly plants more efficient than the old multi-story plants. This drove automakers away from Detroit, where the rail and riverside real estate was largely developed, and contributed to unemployment and race and class polarization.
- Racial inequality in Detroit stems from complex social systems of incentives and categorical isolation caused by systematic inequality in access to employment, housing, networking and other resources.
- Recognizing the complexity of this social system helps the reader understand how individuals who fail to actively oppose racism actually support it, and why official 'race-blind' policies fail to stop the polarization caused by chain-reactions of systematic, historic, self-reinforcing racial inequalities and the ruthless self-interest of capitalist culture."
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The race hatred and the animosity that resides just behind the editorial facade of Gannett's Detroit News daily rants continues to roil up potential social and civic disaster for Detroit and fuels the same kind of fear and hatred that Rush Limbaugh has engendered for far too long. Limbaugh, his fawning 'dittoheads' chime, is but an "entertainer." What kind of "entertainer" is it who panders and incites the lowest of the low emotions/prejudices and repressed hatreds residing regretfully in a political party? Republicans were once the great GOP of Jerry Ford and Ike, now relegated to a bifurcated party which is now brought down, ham-fistedly hectored by mealy mouth gutter snipe-style rants and corrupting greedy corporate (Koch Bros.) influences?
Hank, walk away from racial prejudice and your own lack of positive vision. Throw off your dark despair. Use the Gannett Mission Statement as your new beginning: To enrich lives by informing and inspiring consumers, by providing the ease and accessibility to connect them with their communities of interest, and by being a catalyst for the conversations that are making a difference every day. Also include the Gannett Vision Statement:
"OUR VISION: To be the trusted, leading media and marketing solutions company at the forefront of a new era in human engagement."
To achieve these goals Hank, you will need to discover what is "a new era in human engagement" not the kind of snarky disengagement you've displayed in calling for the literal liquidation of Detroit, as a government and a city via bankruptcy and imposition of a EM dictator.
Hank, you will need to be tutored in how to make your contributions via the News more in the service of the greater civic good. Gannett ownership calls for journalism that is "trusted" and "at the forefront of a new era of human engagement" yielding a dialogue that is pro-positive "enriching lives" by "informing and inspiring" readers to become "catalysts for conversations that make a (proactive, positive) difference every day.
Gannett employees should be ever mindful of their journalistic responsibilities as outlined (highly accurate news and responsible/fair-minded balanced opines) in Gannett's corporate Vision and Mission Statements.
Now more History than Real News, the official Michigan Historical Marker at the Detroit News reads:
"On August 23, 1873 James E. Scripps began publishing The Evening News, one of the first popular, low-priced evening newspapers in Michigan. The News specialized in short, local, human interest stories. Resolutely independent, it continuously championed political and business reform. In 1917 the enterprise moved to this building designed by Albert Kahn. By its centenary, The Detroit News had attained the largest evening circulation in America."The Detroit News now, with it's current staff spewing all this 'stuff' into Detroit's toxic drainage ditch, the Michigan View, is just a shadow of its better self.
On the Reader:
"The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue (Princeton, 2005)
Related Slates:
More on Jim Crow at the Detroit News in "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" and on Emergency Manager policy in "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan Emergency Managerment)".
More responses to Henry Payne and the Michigan View on the Gazette.
Original.
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