Category — detroit

Maybe it’s the philosopher in me, but I don’t see how any argument against racism that depends on color to make its point is valuable in the long run.  If the goal is to end racism, which I hope it is, then shouldn’t we be engaged in activities and rhetoric that de-emphasize skin color (etc.) as a valid reason to make political (and by extension certain types of personal) decisions?

[Edit: If you're reading this on PD.com, you may want to head over to the mirror-post on my LJ to read the huge glut of awesome and thoughtful commentary it provoked there.  I got a lot out of it, and thank you to everyone who participated/is participating!]

I’d like to give one example, with the understanding that there is a whole can of worms here that has to do with re-balancing and re-distributing privilege, which I’m deliberately not getting into (for now).  My current thoughts, and this example, stem from this interesting “definition of racism”, from this post “Racism 101 for Clueless White People“.  The emphasis is all theirs; I’ve added nothing.

3. Make sure you understand the definitions of the terms that are going to be used. The first thing you really need to understand is that the definition of racism that you probably have (which is the colloquial definition: “racism is prejudice against someone based on their skin color or ethnicity”) is NOT the definition that’s commonly used in anti-racist circles.The definition used in anti-racist circles is the accepted sociological definition (which is commonly used in academic research, and has been used for more than a decade now): “racism is prejudice plus power”. What this means, in easy language:

A. Anyone can hold “racial prejudice” — that is, they can carry positive or negative stereotypes of others based on racial characteristics. For example, a white person thinking all Asians are smart, or all black people are criminals; or a Chinese person thinking Japanese people are untrustworthy; or what-have-you. ANYONE, of any race, can have racial prejudices.

B. People of any race can commit acts of violence, mistreatment, ostracizing, etc., based on their racial prejudices. A black kid can beat up a white kid because he doesn’t like white kids. An Indian person can refuse to associate with Asians. Whatever, you get the idea.

C. However, to be racist (rather than simply prejudiced) requires having institutional power. In North America, white people have the institutional power. In large part we head the corporations; we make up the largest proportion of lawmakers and judges; we have the money; we make the decisions. In short, we control the systems that matter. “White” is presented as normal, the default. Because we have institutional power, when we think differently about people based on their race or act on our racial prejudices, we are being racist. Only white people can be racist, because only white people have institutional power.

D. People of color can be prejudiced, but they cannot be racist, because they don’t have the institutional power. (However, some people refer to intra-PoC prejudice as “lateral racism”. You may also hear the term “colorism”, which refers to lighter-skinned PoC being prejudiced toward darker-skinned PoC.) However, that situation can be different in other countries; for example, a Japanese person in Japan can be racist against others, because the Japanese have the institutional power there. But in North America, Japanese people can’t be racist because they don’t hold the institutional power.

E. If you’re in an area of your city/state/province that is predominantly populated by PoC and, as a white person, you get harassed because of your skin color, it’s still not racism, even though you’re in a PoC-dominated area. The fact is, even though they’re the majority population in that area, they still lack the institutional power. They don’t have their own special PoC-dominated police force for that area. They don’t have their own special PoC-dominated courts in that area. The state/province and national media are still not dominated by PoC. Even though they have a large population in that particular area, they still lack the institutional power overall.

F. So that’s the definition of racism that you’re likely to encounter. If you start talking about “reverse racism” you’re going to either get insulted or laughed at, because it isn’t possible under that definition; PoC don’t have the power in North America, so by definition, they can’t be racist. Crying “reverse racism!” is like waving a Clueless White Person Badge around.

G. If you go into an anti-racist discussion and start trying to claim the colloquial definition that “racism is simply viewing or treating others differently based on race”, you’re going to get a negative reaction. Stick to “racism = prejudice + power”. Anti-racists aren’t going to take it well if you wander in halfway through the debate and start trying to make them abide by your definition rather than the commonly accepted “prejudice + power”. Imagine if everyone in a classroom was chatting about a particular subject and then someone walked in and said, “No! You’re all doing it wrong! The REAL definition is ABC and I don’t care that all the rest of you think it’s XYZ!” — do you think that would go over well? Of course it wouldn’t; the newcomer would be considered rude. (Also, making an appeal to Dictionary.com is not going to work. Pointing out that the colloquial definition is how Webster’s Dictionary defines racism is not going to make anti-racists suddenly say, “Wow, you know what? You’re right! I never realized it, but now that Webster’s has backed you up, I see that you’re totally right and racism really is just judging people based on their skin color!” Actually, they may say that, but they’d be saying it sarcastically.)

H. I’m under the impression there are a number of different reasons why anti-racists use the sociological definition as versus the colloquial one, but the major reason I’m aware of is that anti-racists aren’t just focusing on individual acts of racism; they’re looking at racism as an entrenched system that pervades every layer of our society. The colloquial definition reduces racism to an individual level; the sociological definition focuses on the systemic level. The systemic level is actually more important, because even as individual/obvious acts of racism become less socially acceptable, the systemic effects of institutionalized racism continue to work quietly, efficiently, and powerfully. Think of it like a body; it’s easy to find a cancerous lesion on the skin and remove it, and then you’d look like you were cancer-free. But even as you looked fine on the surface, the real cancer would be inside your body, spreading from lymph node to lymph node, and invading your bones and organs. Individual and overt acts of racism are the lesions on the surface; the invisible cancer is the systemic racism. Unless you’re addressing the underlying disease, eradicating surface symptoms isn’t going to accomplish much. But that’s enough about the definition of racism for now; let’s continue.  (Full post here.)

I’m completely in agreement that CWP need a guide like this (it’s awesome, and the rest is worth a read); it’s absolutely true that there’s a tendency of (mostly)-well-meaning whites to wander into race-relevant situations and start a conversation that either a) completely misses the point or b) demands that everyone please educate them right now ok I’m waaaaaaitiiiinnnng…  So hell yes, more things written to educate whites about racism and how to talk about it, absolutely. Awesome.  I’m also quite okay with the idea that “this is the definition we use, so don’t barge in demanding a new one or trying to change ours” — but there’s a fine line between that, and demanding that no-one (especially no pesky outsiders) challenge your ideas, and across that line I will not follow.

*REVERSE COWGIRL*

But this excerpt in particular addresses something that, to most (educated) anti-racists is an occasional case or a non-issue, but which to me is not:  I’m referring to the white person stuck in a (yes I’m calling it a) “reverse racism” scenario who wants some acknowledgment from PoC that their (people of color’s) behavior (individually and as the heads of institutions) in that case isn’t okay either.

And it’s not, of course.  I think the idea of “anti-racism” is that racism isn’t okay in principle, right?  No matter who’s doing it?  But there are genuinely people who use definitions like this, that categorically deny the possibility of racism against white people, to excuse behavior that does qualify as racist under this definition. You literally get an argument that goes “racism is prejudice plus power, unless it’s prejudice against and power over white people, in which case it’s not.”

Of course, the answer to that statement is often given as “but that never happens”.  And maybe it’s easier for me to spot how making color a part of the formulation of racism is problematic, because I’ve seen the prejudice-plus-power of a non-white population in effect.  I personally know more than a few people who, growing up as whites in Detroit, experienced continuous exposure to a kind of ostracization and mistreatment that can only be called “Jim-Crow-like”.  I’m not talking about being called “honky” or feeling uncomfortable walking around at night. I’m talking about a whole childhood (sometimes longer) of not being served in restaurants, not being permitted to apply for public assistance and scholarships because you’re the wrong color, being harassed in school by kids and adults alike; of being openly taught that your race is inferior and bad and you’re inferior and bad because of it, and forced to “act dangerous” and constantly live in fear for your safety because you “don’t belong” and you might be blamed or punished for anything perceived as being the fault of your race.  Any time a person of color experiences that kind of oppression, we encourage each other to call it out, to call it racism.  And while it’s certainly FAR less common, and not in keeping with the habits of our country as a whole, to have it happen to white people, I fail to see what good comes from denying the harm it causes when it does.

The point of being anti-racism isn’t to be anti-white (I hope); it’s to be anti-institutionally-supported-prejudice.  At least, that’s why I’m in.

According to this article, which certainly boasts more authority on the topic than I do, living the way some white kids in Detroit have is not being a victim of racism.  Those kids, who grew up a minority in a situation where the majority feels justified in (and is capable of) openly and systemically mistreating people of the “wrong race”, may forever be shut out of any discussion of what it’s like to be a victim of racism…because they’re the wrong color. Yeah, the irony on that one stings a little.  But according to this article and others (many of which are taught in Detroit schools), “reverse racism” is impossible, because “racism” as a technical term here refers only to cases involving prejudice AND institutional power, and moreover (here’s where I think the problem lies), “institutional power” is defined as NATIONAL power.

*INSTITUTIONS AND THE REAL WORLD*

It’s true, by that definition, that whites have the institutional power in the U.S.  It’s also true that the majority of politicians and cops in Michigan are white.  But it’s not true that white privilege operates in a place like Detroit the same way it does in New York or Dallas or Boston.  And while there are probably other places — small towns maybe, or other cities or parts of them, where non-white power-structures have built up and become racist, Detroit makes a good and powerful example of how it can happen, and happen here, right in the middle of the good-ol’ nonthreatening midwest.

Detroit isn’t a “diverse” city — it’s a heavily-segregated, almost-entirely-black city.   (That’s not to say it isn’t affected by the institutional power of white-dominated things nearby; obviously such arrangements are complicated.  But it IS possible to grow up there and be mostly, or entirely, under the control of institutions dominated by blacks, which is all the sociological definition of “racism” requires, I think.)  My white friends who grew up there were often one of less than ten white kids in all-black schools, taught by black teachers and run by black administrators, under a school board that was almost entirely black, overseen by a majority-black city council and a black mayor, enforced by a largely black police force in a place mostly ignored by white media and even the white politicians of our own state.  (If that seems outrageous to you, it should:  Segregation in the 21st century is not pretty, and Detroit has somehow gone from being the cradle of Civil Rights to the drainage-ditch of post-modern segregation.  Yuck.)  But somehow, the fact that it’s a poor white kid being tromped on by an entire cityful of angry and prejudiced people is supposed to save them, or ameliorate their pain and fear and the other negative effects of the treatment they received. Why?  Is their whiteness supposed to comfort them, or shield them?

Tell me, when you were ten or twelve or fifteen, how much good did the adults and institutions fifty miles away do you?  In a poor, neglected neighborhood that everybody’s either afraid of or disgusted by, how does the “national media” help you?  How much does it do for you in real life, that most of the people on TV are white like you?  (Other than to make you feel like a totally crappy specimen, of course.)  And to what degree should we, those of us interested in standing up against racism, ignore or push away the victims who were, or are, caught up in such a situation?

I’m not saying that Detroit is some kind of racial otherword, but I do think it serves as a powerful example to raise good questions about where “institutional power” is really located. When you’re a kid in a city, does the fact that the state governor is white protect you from the effects of prejudice-plus-power racism?  Is it those effects on you, and people like you, or the overall balance of state power that matters? When you’re afraid in school and none of the teachers will stand up for you and everyone wants to beat you up if you try to date anyone who’s not one of the two girls of your race in the whole school and you know the cops wouldn’t do anything about it….when your school hires speakers to come talk about how bad white people are and you’re squirming in the audience, is it not racism because you’re white and whites have the institutional power at the state and federal level?

Racism is about what happens to people, in their neighborhoods and schools and workplaces and lives, and not just “entire groups of people, nation-wide”.  That’s one of those generalities that ends up hurting everyone, I think.  The real world, at ground-level, is where a systemic problem like racism starts…and stops.  Racism is about power, and not just prejudice.  But one city, and one neighborhood, is certainly not the same as all others when it comes to the balance of power.   Maybe there IS a welfare program, and a federal law that says that you’re allowed to apply for it — but we understand the harm when the white people working the counter “lose” your application because you’re black; why can’t we understand that in places like Detroit, the reverse happens, and that it’s just as harmful and wrong when it does?

On top of that, children, who are arguably worse affected by all of this (considering the educational and psychological damage, which I should add is quite definitely present in the “white kids from Detroit” I still know), usually don’t have the option to leave even their neighborhoods, so if the north-east side, for example, is black-controlled and using that institutional power to back up its prejudice against whites, then I think it’s inarguable that what those kids experience is racism.  Any definition of racism that categorically denies someone’s experiences, and the effects those experiences have, simply because “they’re white” is just not okay with me. If racism is wrong, it’s because it’s wrong for any human beings to treat any human beings that way.

…

…Somebody’s going to ask if I feel this way, or if it’s easier for me to feel this way, because I’m white.  Obviously my “white guilt” gets a little soothing when I think about things like “reverse racism”; that’s a fact of psychology.  I’m aware of this, and I’m just as incapable of taking off my skin as everyone else, so it’ll have to remain an open question.  But I can say that I’m also a woman, and that I genuinely feel the same way about male victims of rape as I do about white victims of racism:  They exist, and they are genuine victims, and they don’t function as evidence against the overwhelming reality of the problem (of racism-against-PoCs, or rape-against-women).  They–the “backwards” or unusual cases–are good reminders, I think, for the crusaders, to help them remember that it’s the crime they’re up against and out to defeat; not the group that mostly comprises the perpetrators.  (If it were the perpetrators, then we would just be the “other side” in the same stupid war that’s been going on for millennia, and not really about solving anything at all.  I, and I think others, are interested in solving racism, not lobbing stones back at the “white side”.)  Victims of “reverse” rape or racism deserve support and protection because rape is wrong just like racism is wrong, and it’s crucial, if we’re going to make any headway in alleviating the actual problems, to stand by our principles no matter who the victim is. I really do feel that way.  So maybe that helps.

(A sidenote:  Isn’t it, I wonder, monumentally stupid for the anti-racist movement to ignore or de-legitimize these rare people who have an amazing and valuable point of view to offer?  They’re white, and they’ve experienced systemic racism firsthand!  That may make them seem scary to those of us who are either only white, or only victims of racism (much like feminists and men tend to get uncomfortable around men who’ve experienced rape, I’ve noticed), but let’s get over the fear that the existence of a few of these people somehow damages or lessens our point about the rest of the country — it doesn’t. And lest you wonder, all of the “reverse-victims” that I know are not only rabidly anti-racism, but far better than most white people–including me–at spotting where institutional racism comes into play.  Moreover, they know firsthand that racism is bad for everyone, that even those “with privilege” aren’t safe from its negative effects.  They could be amazingly helpful to the movement, I think, were they not being excluded from it.)

*WORKING TOGETHER*

I’m not, overall, in disagreement with the definition of racism given here, or how it’s presented. I see that it’s intended to address political racism, the kind that affects whole groups, and not just the prejudices and assholery of a given person or small group.  That’s valid.   I know that the “reverse racism doesn’t exist” argument is mostly intended to stop whites who would try to use reverse-cases as a reason to not work on solving the problem of racism-against-PoCs, and while I agree that those people need to be slapped answered, I don’t think shutting the door on all victims of racism who happen to be white is the way to do it.

I also don’t think we need to rewrite or make major changes to anti-racism so that we can focus on the tiny minority of whites in America that suffers from the “reverse” variety; it would be enough just to include them as real but non-standard victims, and to do a little walking-the-walk, by treating them the same as other victims in spite of how uncomfortable their color makes us feel.  Regarding that,  I have some suggestions I’d like to make, which perhaps others have already made, but here they are anyway:

1) Let’s re-think what “institutional power” is, and how it affects real people. One police station, one school and one court, working together, especially in an isolated or ignored area, can wield incredible power over the lives of families and individuals, and saying “they could leave” is short-sighted and victim-blaming.  Some racism happens on a federal level; some doesn’t.  And the feds can’t (and/or won’t) rescue citizens (even white citizens) who are trapped by localized racist institutions, so just because the feds are your color doesn’t guarantee you 100% protection from institutionalized racism.  Regardless of their color, individuals and families deserve protecting from prejudiced institutions and systematic oppression.  Representation in Washington is important, but it alone doesn’t solve the problem on the ground in a million different neighborhoods.

2)  Anti-racists need to be very, very careful about excluding any group by race from their definitions and discussions, even if that race is white. While it makes sense to be proactive and on-the-lookout for defensiveness and redirection from whites who either don’t understand privilege and real, institutional racism or have motives for derailing discussions about it, it doesn’t make sense to get so wrapped up in colors that you lose track of what racism is really about:  A powerful negative effect on groups of people, caused by irrational prejudiced ostracization and abuse from other, powered, groups of people.  In the pure sense, racism can happen wherever there are two races and one is in power, even if the colors involved are green and purple (or bellies-with-stars and bellies without!) — and it’s the racist behavior of people and groups of people that we’re fighting here, right?  Nor should it shock us that racism against white people in a majority-controlled non-white area is not only possible, it happens.  Why is that surprising?  People — human beings, regardless of color — tend to be ignorant racist assholes if not properly educated. We know this.  People who claim to be anti-racist but who can ignore the plight of some victims of racism because they’re white are, um, missing the point I think.

3)  If we’re going to define racism in such a way that excludes “individual and small-group prejudices and assholery”, that’s fine I guess, but then can’t we have another word, or a sub-term, that does include that concept? Often I&SGP&A (whether against whites or people of color) is the clearest direct experience of anything like racism that whites know they have, so to cut it out of the conversation entirely — to say “that doesn’t count, moving on” — does encourage whites to disengage from the discussion, not because they’re dickheads but because you’ve removed the aspect that they have the most direct and emotionally-compelling knowledge of.  That was their way in to understanding bigger, more subtle racism, so why slam that door?  I would very much like to see anti-racists taking more of an inclusive angle on individual prejudice & assholery, something along the lines of “Yes, it’s terrible when that happens.  And just imagine the damage a court system run by people who think that way can do!  For example…”

4)  Let’s not forget that whites are a very very important part of the discussion here, okay? It’s analogous to men and rape.  The party responsible, as a group, for the atrocity under discussion doesn’t like discussing it; and their victims don’t want to sit down and have heart-to-hearts with them either.  Everybody’s hurt and angry and understandably so.  But there is no healing a rift without cross-boundary cooperation.  The only way for women to prevent rape, or people of color to prevent racism, is to get down on the ground and talk openly and honestly with the other side.  (Well, the other way would be to segregate fully — whether by race or gender is a fun question — and then we can all stay enemies and stay out of each others’ way.  But we’re assuming that nobody reading this is pro-segregation; I’m certainly not.)

If we want to get along, we have to talk to each other, to the victims and the bad guys and the people who don’t understand and the people who don’t want to understand, and that means that yes, Virginia, it IS important how your anti-racism rhetoric makes white people feel.  Sorry.

(Thanks for reading!  -PD)

Welcome to a Massive Dump of The Interesting, wherein I finally close some of the browser-windows.  (Yes, this is what you get when I go out of town for a few days.  Just roll with it.)

“Were a lot of people reckless and stupid? Of course! But that cannot explain why the whole system crashed, since a lot of people are always reckless and stupid.”

– From appellate judge & law lecturer Richard Posner’s book “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression“, NYT review, via Angel Station.

(Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  I never have time for reading like this, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing we could invent Osmosis Rigs so I could just upload the stuff already.  ;)

Also, I really want Dave McKean’s “Mythical Creatures” stamps, even though they’re British stamps and I hardly ever send dead-tree-mail anyway.  They’re just…really pretty.

Not so pretty but darn potent and good for a long hard think is the “Technology Bill of Rights“.  Whatever you think of the details as they’ve got them there, you can’t argue that something like this is needed, I think.

John Scalzi’s “Interview with a Stick of Butter” made me laugh in the damn-you-I-spit-coffee-but-somehow-can’t-find-it-in-myself-to-be-angry-at-you kind of way.  This kind of small genius is why writers rule, not just as vehicles for blah-blah-blah, but as examples of humanity.  Yay, human weirdness!

Also, this find…this is A FIND, I think.  It’s an old book called “Picture Stories of the Sex Life of Man and Woman”, and you can read all about it (if you can stand the hilarity) here.  It contains many…er, wonderful…pictures such as this one:

…Yesssss, sure.  Okay.  *har!*

Also, just in case I haven’t posted it before, this site contains professional, beautiful, amazing pictures of the “ruins of Detroit”.  Totally worth a look if you like the aesthetic.

Lastly, a Shaolin Monk’s idea of a “stretching routine” will turn your whole body to softened butter and pain.  Still, it seems to be definitely working…more on the program when I’m a little further in.

Have a wonderful day all — and have a nice nap(s)!

SOMEONE NEEDS TO HELP ME PLEASE, says the answering machine this morning.

I’m fifty-nine and I’ve worked every day of my life, and I have a hi-lo license and a CDL and a perfect record and the plant I worked at closed in January and I’ve been looking for a job every day since then and no-one is calling.

When I lost my job I had to start paying my mortgage on credit cards. Now I’m running out and I’ve had this house for 20 years and I’ve never made a late payment and can someone PLEASE. HELP.

I’m fifty-nine and I don’t deserve to be homeless. PLEASE HELP ME. There has to be a program or something that will help with my mortgage or my credit cards or something, find me a job, something, anything. Please.

I can’t stay home to wait for your call; I need to go job-hunting today like I do every day. I can’t even get work in a fast-food restaurant.

PLEASE HELP ME.

(I can’t. And I don’t know how to call and tell you, to deliver what must be a crushing blow of bad news — that I do know what’s out there and what the programs are and none of them will help you — and you’ll be even madder if I don’t return your call, and the really stupid thing is I’m having to fight my fear in order to even talk to unemployed people anymore, because my lizard-brain has been watching it spread and has now decided it’s contagious.  And what about the other six people on the answering machine?  They may have sounded less panicked and scary up front than you did, but we both know that more and more often, it’s the same story when I get them on the phone.  And I want to help and it’s my job to help, but for so many of you there isn’t help and sometimes I really fight the urge to just go home rather than have to be the one to tell you.)

(But probably I should just be damn grateful that I have a job, and do it.)

EDIT: I couldn’t help you today, but I did help three other people who were really, really relieved to get the information I had to offer them.  This work IS worth doing, even when its hard: Thanks for the reminder.

Does your brain/body unit ever decide, “That’s it, this is break time”?

I think mine took the combination of my kid being on vacation, the Sifu being out of town, and most of the world tangential to us deciding to check out for the week, as a sign that Now Is A Good Time For All Brain-Body Units To Take A Break, Seriously.

The effect was nothing short of “350-lb construction worker having a nic-fit”.  I couldn’t argue at all, and lo, most of a week disappeared.  I worked, I played video games, I slept (often too much).  Other than writing (which I didn’t slack on, yay), very minor organizational things, and some minimal exercise (I’m way too proud of my 20 pushup/situp accomplishment to let it lapse now), just about nothing got done.

Thankfully, the older I get, the better I get at accepting that there are uptimes and downtimes, times of high energy and times of low energy. I may have a Type-A workaholic Psychology, but my brain/body just isn’t built that way; I function in cycles, and when it’s time for a slow cycle, boy, it’s time.

So I’m going to take this space to encourage my awesome readership, who tends to be geared rather high (like moi), to remember this:  When your brain/body says to slow down, listen, at least a little.  If you ignore this need too long, you get sick.  (The brain/body is not stupid:  If you refuse to slow down it will make you.)

So I’m okay with this “not having accomplished much this week” thing.  …Though I’m ready for it to be over, make no mistake.  There’s so much to do!!!  And now that it looks like the weather is finally breaking, I have spring fever like a maniac.

Anyway, so this isn’t just a stupid “update plus platitude” post, here are three interesting links I found recently:

An excellent writeup on why the whole GOP “teabagging” (HA!) movement is actually a case of corporate astroturfing…

NASA offers amazing 3-D images of the Sun (go Ra go!)…

And,

A really interesting investigation into the truth about Somali Pirates (warning: Makes the US & Europe look like ignorant douchebags)

.

ALSO:

.

…while I’m at it, I’ve also found some neat links related to Detroit, as well.  So here you go:

Proposal for high-speed magnetic trains in Detroit! (Will it really happen?)

Detroit’s Michigan Central Train Station to be Demolished (Contains great pictures of this landmark abandoned structure) —EDIT: MORE great pics from commenter atdt1991 — thanks!

Buying $40 homes in Detroit & “greening” them — is it really feasible?

…Enjoy the tail end of “Spring Break”, everyone!

Remember The I$land?

So, a lawyer for the City of Detroit decided it’d be funny to refer to the 36th District court — which is Downtown — as a “Ghetto Court“.

Obviously this was hideously unprofessional, and she was demoted as a result.

Which is fine.  I couldn’t get away with such a comment at my job, and I’m not raking in the bucks as permanent Counsel for a huge city judicial system.  Obviously she was way out of line, or at the very least stupid about who she mouthed off around.

BUT, the city decided to refer to her comment (and subsequently the reason they demoted her) as “racist” — since the lawyer is white and most of the 36th district, employees and customer-victims alike, are brown-skinned.  That was stupid, because of course the racist intent of the comment can be challenged, which is exactly what the uppity lawyer is now doing, claiming the city owes her damages because they’re being racist.  And of course she has a point — if she’d been African-American, she wouldn’t have been punished for racism.  (It’s a stupid, petty point, but a point is a point.)

So, if the city had had a brain and just demoted her for being unprofessional and insulting the court she worked for, they’d have saved themselves a lawsuit.  That’s one lesson.

But I think there’s another lesson here:  Namely, the perception that it’s okay for her to have insulted the District for being poor, which is really the only other thing (and really the main thing) that the word “ghetto” refers to.  (She says that she meant to insult the place for having “poor and inefficient service” — but even insofar as that can be true — insofar as, say, someone might refer to a store with bad (funny that she chose the word “poor” though) service as a “ghetto store”, which is a damn stretch anyway — it’s only in reference to being poor like a ghetto neighborhood that the insult carries any weight.)

What’s really inappropriate here?  That a white woman called a mostly-black court “ghetto”?  Or that a woman making over 100K a year in taxpayer money made fun of a poverty-stricken city for being poor?

Now, the racial issues of Detroit are not really separable from the economic issues — a lot of the poverty there is caused by deliberate and systemic segregation and racial injustice, much of which was perpetrated by the politicians and corporations whose responsibility it was (and is) to design and run the city.  (And many of them are black, for the record; their actions only make real sense when seen as rich-against-poor, rather than just white-against-black.)

But if a black woman making a phat salary called the poor mostly-white (or mixed-race) court she worked in “ghetto”, would that be okay?  If you remove the racist element, is it then okay to insult the poor for their poverty?

The scary truth is, to a lot of people it would seem more okay, if not outright “fine”.  Maybe if you look hard, you’ll see that you find it easier to be outraged about the racial insult than the economic one, too.

That’s just because it’s a societal norm that while racial injustice is at least “not-okay on paper”, economic injustice isn’t even not-okay on paper. That’s why the city felt the need to classify her comment as racism — because people will take the side of the city against someone who made a racist remark, but not necessarily against someone who mocked the poverty of the place.

Much like race and gender were in the pre-equality days, poverty is still seen by everyone–poor included–as something that’s mostly the fault of the poor; or, even if it’s not their fault, it’s just their “natural place” to be made to suffer for it.  (Look up some old documentaries, and you’ll see that many blacks used to feel the same way — like they themselves didn’t deserve better treatment.  And many women still feel that way.  Believe it or not, part of repression of a group is to make them feel they deserve it, and it works.)

Me, I’m sick to death of poverty being seen as a fault, as something that’s not the responsibility of the better-off to fix.  (Hear the echoes of “it’s the black’s job to better their station”?)  Especially when poverty itself is a punishment, and all the additional flak the poor take is nothing more than insult added to injury. The same people that claim this is a Christian nation spend an awful lot of time looking down their noses at people who are hungry, don’t they?  Sneering at the homeless for being dirty, or at immigrants for not getting enough education?  When–news flash!–the poor have often worked a hundred times harder for what they’ve got than anybody.  They’ve just gotten a lot less in exchange for their hard work, due to a system that favors the already-well-off at almost every turn.

But when you speak up about it, even the disadvantaged tend to look at you funny.  It’s ingrained into our society to the point where everyone believes it. Stories like this one hit the news and the citizens of Detroit aren’t outraged, because they think, “But we ARE poor.  The rich deserve to make fun of us now and again — look how much nicer they look, and imagine how much happier they must be” –due, of course, to nothing but their own luck and Inherent Betterness; surely there’s no systemic repression going on.

Surely we could get to The I$land too, if only we were trying hard enough, or if only we got lucky.

Eff.

The.

I$land.

*hmph*

You all should be grateful there’s so much amazing stuff I have to get down here, because it’s the only thing keeping me from writing a 10,000-word Epic Diatribe on how this is the crappiest morning ever.

But instead there’s tons of interesting stuff about Detroit, and I was going to let it all pile up until the next “big” Detroit post, but after this morning there’s a now a LOT of it and it’s too good to let slide, and too good to relegate to a P.S. on another topic…so much is happening here, and can I add that that’s a really strange feeling for someone who’s lived here forever and always viewed it as The Boring Section of the Armpit of the Midwest?  I’m actually looking for news about Detroit lately, instead of avoiding it as I have for years — because who wants to read about yet another convenience-store shootout or more depressing social statistics?

Da (or “Duh”) Mayor

This stuff, though…zow.  Some of it is negative, like the evidence being released in regards to our deposed-jailed-and-about-to-be-exported-to-Texas former mayor of Detroit, affectionately known by some as “Kwame Thugpatrick”.  Because come on, the guy’s a thug; always has been.  That he got caught doing something illegal surprised no-one, but that it was so grotesque and porn-o-riffic is a bit of a shock.  He was convicted, if you didn’t know, for lying about having a relationship with his (I think) Chief of Staff, while under oath, in a case where it was materially relevant (since the two of them colluded to fire someone else, who then sued the city).  This means that now that it’s over, the text-messages (on city-owned phones) that were the evidence that nailed him are now coming out…and waugh are they unbelievable.  Besides just being…icky, there’s a lot of class from both of them in the form of “ha ha you’re husband’s dumb for thinking that’s his baby you’re carrying” and “who the hell do these people think they are I can fire anybody I want I’m the MF’n mayor”-type stuff.   It’s racy, yes, but racy like watching slugs mate is racy.  …In fact, it’s very much like watching slugs mate. It’s worth it to know how truly screwed-up politics in Detroit are (for further example, nobody’s even surprised enough that Kwame bought Lincoln Navigators for his entire family — wife and girlfriend included — on city money to have even bothered reporting it in most places) … but I wouldn’t recommend actually reading that stuff.  There is FAR better porn out there.   ::shudder::

Ahem.  Now that I’ve bleached my eyes from that, on to the better stuff, of which there is also lots, believe it or not.

City of the Dead?

First, not long ago BoingBoing posts a bit titled “Detroit and the Future”, which is really just a pointer to this awesome Financial Times article, which I’ll get to in a minute.  But I loved the BB piece because it makes one of the points I like to doggy-shake and monkey-fling-at-people now and again:  Detroit IS science fictional. It IS the future, in the very near term, for any industrial city that doesn’t do something drastically different from the Western norm; it IS, as they so awesomely put it, “the canary in the coal mine”.

The Financial Times piece has an even dumber title — “The Travails of Detroit”…seriously, why can nobody write a headline lately??  It’s not that hard! (and ironically this very article mentions Detroit being a “city where the headlines pretty much write themselves”) — but WOW is it good, and if you really want a picture of both Detroit as it is today, and the way that the rest of the country is completely missing the point of it, you need to read this.  (Yah, it’s worth linking twice.)

The article says, “smug mock-horror is no longer the appropriate reaction to the frozen corpse. Instead, get ready for a shock of recognition.”

Uh-huh, THANK YOU!   Because this isn’t like Pompeii, where Victorians went to marvel at how lucky they were that there weren’t any volcanoes in their backyard.  All those cars, all those freeways, all those huge corporations underemploying tens of thousands of your citizens, in other cities…Volcanoes. All that sprawl, all that wasted space and blank concrete, all those strip-malls, all that thoughtless building and environmental “bandaids”, and everything every city in this country has ever done to ignore the poor and disadvantaged?  VOLCANOES.

Detroit isn’t some unfortunate disaster caused by an accidental arrangement of man and nature.  It’s a beautiful place with a lot going for it — a lot more than some cities that are, say, built in the desert or what have you.  It wasn’t destroyed by bad luck or evil plotting, but rather the same kind of thoughtlessness and sloppy dealing that now characterizes many cities, major and otherwise.

Other awesome points here:

• the government, and people generally, are really misinformed about the car industry, and most “simple” explanations are at least a decade out of date;
• the media has been unfairly and unnecessarily castigating the unions, to no-one’s benefit (except anti-union rich people, of course);
• high wages are NOT the reason the big three are going under;
• (minor point, but) dollar stores are a sign of failing neighborhoods;
• adding casinos was a bad idea;
• the governor is polishing the brass on the Titanic, while claiming she’s at the helm;
• …and it just generally gets the fortitude and situation of the people here amazingly right, and is very much worth a read if you’re interested in the area (or the ones that may soon follow it).

Also, had to quote this, for poignancy:

Wary of becoming a slum, [Dearborn] has bought up some of these [foreclosed] homes and demolished them, and now plans to develop houses on larger lots. The foresight of the mayor, John B. O’Reilly, is commendable, even if the net effect is that Dearborn is due to become less urban. The same thing is happening in the inner city, where houses are vanishing after being abandoned, then stripped of appliances and other fittings, then squatted, then burned to the ground by people making fires to keep warm.

In February, desperate for good-news stories, I called Patrick Crouch, who heads the Earthworks Urban Farm garden programme, an inner-city project attached to the Capuchin order’s soup kitchen. Crouch sighed loudly into the phone. “Are you going to write another of those stories?” he asked. The project he heads is a popular stop on the route of journalists keen to note the irony of a city with so much unused land that it can afford to grow vegetables downtown.

Now, onto the not just good-interesting, but good-good stuff.  Bet you didn’t see that coming, eh?

Well, it’s small, but if you ask me, significant, if only as a harbinger:

Calling All Angels (and Hippies)

This morning (did I mention it was a horrible morning?) I was heading in early to deliver some bad news to a very nice couple who didn’t deserve it, and I heard this story on NPR…about a Michigan artist who’s using the foreclosures to do something downright awesome-tastic.

He’s buying homes for the pennies you can (sometimes literally) get them in Detroit, fitting them with solar panels and wind turbines, and convincing other artists to move in.  They’re taking over a neighborhood, basically.

They’ve turned the lower story of one of them into a Community Art Center, and planted a community garden in the yard of another.

It’s now afternoon — I had to pause to deliver that bad news, and then some more, and generally run my sorry butt off — but that story has so far made my entire day.  (Treehugger has a little piece on it with some nice links, and there’s a meatier article in the Times that I somehow missed entirely.)

Anyway, one last bit, also on the upside, I found a pretty good collection of Detroit pictures, for those of you who’re interested.

EDIT: Also, the Flickr finds for the tag “Detroit” are pretty great.

This site has some excellent pictures of what it openly calls “The Ruins of Detroit”, if you’re interested.

The "Seven Sisters" Detonation

Also, when the city or its inept handlers are pissing me off, I sing this little song, which I’m sure you know the tune of.  I ought to record it, as I’ve gotten the dripping-alto-snark of it down to an art-form, I think.  ;)

“The Detroit Is Pissing Me Off Song”:

This land is your land
This land is my land
Except for Ford Field
And Garbage Island*
Except the Ren-Cen
Is owned by GM
But this land was made for you and me!

*There is an island in the Detroit River that’s just a giant garbage dump, (sometimes hilariously mistaken for Grosse Ile, which is an island full of rich people-HA!) but I’ll be darned if I can find a link to anything about it.  Maybe it’s not that special.  If such things interest you, though, check out Zug Island, which is also quite satisfyingly dirty and evil.  ;)

Missed my nap this morning…because I was busy rocking the tax-return.  If only all my naps could be traded for money.  (Well, I’d keep a few.  ;)

Also:  This is hilarious.

…

So, I think I’m going to do some posts about Detroit.  Partially because there aren’t enough good ones, and also because I have my own views, having lived in and around “D-town” for nearly my whole life.

And surely you wanted to know more about Detroit, right?

…Well, if you didn’t, maybe you should.  I’ve got a theory that the apocalypse of Detroit is one of the most important under-reported events in modern America, with huge implications for the rest of the industrialized world.  I really think that people had better be paying a lot more attention to this city than they are.

Think about it:  There’s a major U.S. urban center that is, in every sense of the word, a post-industrial wasteland.  Moreover, it was one of the first and biggest industrial boomtowns. Do you think the U.S. and other industrialized countries ought to maybe be studying what’s going on here, and how it can be reversed and/or prevented?  Yet if you read articles about Detroit (scarce as those are, especially if you don’t count “articles about the auto industry”), you’ll almost always see something like “gee, Detroit’s really spectacularly falling apart — too bad nobody knows how to fix it!”  (That’s not true, by the way — it’s just that nobody with enough money or political clout is trying to fix it.)

I have a few theories about this willful ignorance, but let’s face it, besides general “EEK! Headinsand!”-ness, the obvious one is racial segregation.  There’s a whole other basket of worm-eggs in the topic of Detroit’s decline from “cradle of the civil rights movement” to “most racially-segregated major U.S. city”, but ignoring the process for a moment, the fact that Detroit is now populated by a vast majority (80% is the latest number I could get) of blacks and other minorities probably makes it reeeeeaaalllly easy for mainstream news to ignore.  As further evidence of this theory, Detroit is really non-news even in cities right next-door to it, especially when those cities are racially mostly white.  (Fun fact:  Livonia, MI, not twenty minutes from Detroit, holds the distinction of being the “whitest city of population over 100,000″ in the country.  …No, not a coincidence.)

But Detroit won’t be ignored for long.  All the time it gets dirtier, poorer, more violent, and more desperate, and it isn’t going to simply go away.  The longer the parties who should be responsible for its rehabilitation continue to turn a blind eye, the worse the shit will be when it eventually hits the fan.  (I’m not predicting a terrible uprising or explosion or something, though something like that could certainly happen — I’m saying that even in the best-case scenario, where Detroit simply declines and dies off, the implications for the rest of the state, the country, and other industrialized areas get worse the longer we ignore the problem personified by Detroit.)

And, so that I don’t have to repeat them in every post about D-town, here are the basic facts:

Flag of the City of Detroit

Detroit is the 11th-largest city in the U.S.  Its population, which peaked near 1950 at about 1.8 million, is now under 900,000 and still declining.  (There are still about 4 million people in the “Detroit metro” area, which is the city and the cities directly surrounding it.)  Detroit recently was declared the second “most abandoned city” in the country, right behind Vegas — but Vegas has mostly emptied recently due to the real-estate crisis, and while its buildings are empty it still holds a good population; whereas Detroit’s abandonment and general ruination are far more systemic and profound.  Detroit has a high violence rate, typically in the top five for any U.S. urban area (a position it continues to hold even as its population declines), and its foreclosure rate is matched only by the rate of burned or abandoned houses, businesses and skyscrapers.  (You’d be surprised at how many of those huge skyscrapers you see in the Detroit skyline are empty.)

Detroit was founded in 1701 officially; it contains many astonishing old churches and other historic buildings, many of which, not surprisingly, have fallen into ruin or disrepair.  The city itself spans about 138 square miles; the metro area about 2,000.  (For reference, New York City is about 300 sq.m; LA is about 465.)  It’s all located in Southeast Michigan, on and near the shores of one of the Great Lakes, which are some of the largest bodies of inland fresh water in the entire world.  Many of the older buildings are still standing, displaying stunning architecture and examples of early American facades that can be amazingly beautiful.  Downtown is nicely laid out but over-paved; the plaza on the river is entirely concrete and parks are few and tiny.  Also, there’s a habit of painting ads on the sides of buildings — big painted billboards, some very old — that really gives the place color and a unique feel.  I hope they don’t decide to change that.

Detroit is built on astonishingly fertile land that will spawn a giant forest if you so much as say a bad word about your lawnmower.  All four seasons are distinct and the weather is often beautiful, plus the odd airflow caused by the lakes means a lot of “surprise” weather, so the cold or the heat doesn’t usually get too oppressive before it’s broken up by a sudden warm sunny day or cool breezy interlude.  You can’t go five miles anywhere without finding a natural water-source in the form of a spring or creek, and the large Detroit River has many tributaries that create beautiful wild spaces in many of the urban and suburban neighborhoods (including my backyard).

Detroit is about 30 minutes away from Ann Arbor, MI, which has been repeatedly voted “Best College Town” in the US, and which boasts a thriving downtown full of interesting local businesses, as well as the renowned University of Michigan’s main campus and widely-sought research hospital.  I’ve been to both San Francisco and Boston, and Ann Arbor is right up there with them in terms of art and culture.  (They’re considering building a light-rail line between Detroit and Ann Arbor.  Wow, huh?)

Detroit is also, like every Michigan city, less than an hour away from farmland and rural small towns and villages.  The interesting, if not accidental and poorly-utilized, juxtaposition of urban and rural areas makes Michigan residents some of the most well-rounded in the country — almost everyone knows city and rural mentalities from personal and family experience, and the people here are a wonderful mix of hard-working and compassionate, open-minded (well, for Americans) and down-to-earth.  Privacy and thrift are highly valued.

Welcome to paradise, then.  In the future I’ll do some more write-ups, which I think will include:

• Abandonment vs. Forest
• Race, Riots, and the Sleight-of-Hand of a Violent Reputation
• Cars I:  Major Corporations as Civic Custodians ~ A Case Study
• Cars II:  The Four Horsemen Don’t Carpool
• Poverty Without Charity
• Corruption Ain’t Even The Word For It Anymore

…Who knows, maybe I’ll get off my butt and get some pictures or something too.