Jan's Stinkin Blog: DETROIT: Burn it down?

Friday, March 30, 2012

DETROIT: Burn it down?

As the financial panel appointed by Governor Snyder started presenting their findings in a public forum, about 100 “Detroiters” disrupted the meeting, screaming and yelling various insults at the panel for trying to take their city away from them.

I have already discussed the fiscal mess Detroit finds itself in and the work of the state governor and his aides in trying to save the city from bankruptcy.

I have also talked about the culture of corruption and incompetency that has brought the city and its residents to this dire predicament.

But the screaming, out of control crowd was protesting only one thing and that was the white takeover of their black city. The Reverend Malik Shabazz was so adamant and besides himself that he yelled “before we let you take our city, we will burn it down”.

Now we have to stop and remind ourselves that this small crowd of protesters did not necessarily represent many of the city residents although some may have the same thoughts and emotions as the protesters.

Since most of the panel members were black, the crowd called them “Toms” as in Uncle Toms; some panel members tried to explain that they were there only to help the city get back its financial health but the crowd was not there to listen and discuss, only to disrupt and prevent the panel from doing its assigned task and of course, to get on TV.

The next day, I was happy to see the newspapers filled with letters and commentary against the screaming twits at the public meeting. Many claimed that those at the meeting did NOT represent the residents of Detroit and were doing more harm than good for the city and its residents.

Governor Snyder held a town hall meeting taking questions from city residents where he again reiterated that he does not want to run the city but to save the city so it can grow and prosper and he rejected the injection of racism into this issue which he maintains is strictly financial.

One of the ways the city can grow and is actually growing is by the influx of new, younger people as in Midtown which is an area around Wayne State University and a number of medical centers. The people coming into the city at Midtown are educated and many are professionals and they form a diverse ethnic group and as far as I am concerned, these are the people that will occupy and build the NEW DETROIT.

As for the people that maintain that Detroit is and always will be a black city; they need to sober up and face the music…without the influx of young, educated, progressive and ethnically diverse peoples, Detroit may as well just burn down to the ground because it will not have a future…