Forty years ago this summer, Detroit burned, leaving 43 dead, 467 injured, and 2000 buildings burned to the ground. Although some argue that this ended up being the impetus for white flight, the fact of the matter is that even as whites had the opportunity to leave in droves (and many did), it took a hard fought electoral victory by Coleman Young to seal the deal. Whites, fearing what a black run city would look like, in effect took their marbles and fled.
What should we be focused on forty years later, when it appears as if the dreams of black power died where Jos Campau met the Chrysler Freeway? While the discussion rages as to whether we should follow Garvey, Washington, or Dubois, I think that Grace Boggs has the best handle on it. Thinking about the rebellion, she notes the following:
As we look at our communities, looking more and more each day like wastelands and fortresses, as we look at our younger brothers and sisters scrambling and nodding on the streets of our communities, as we think of the children whom we will be bringing into this world–we cannot just grab on to any ideas of liberation just because they are being pushed by old friends of ours or because they give us an emotional shot in the arm.
We can start by categorically rejecting astrology, drugs, religion, black capitalism, separatism and also all those messianic complexes that someone else or we ourselves are going to become “the leader” whom the black masses are waiting for, to lead them out of the wilderness of their oppression. In other words, we can start by turning our backs on all the various escape routes by which many people are still traveling, in the vain hope that somehow they can evade grappling with the real contradictions of this country, this society.
Read the entire essay here. While there is a lot we can gain from studying the ideas of those that came before us, invariably the context we are dealing with now is unique to us, and our task is to develop a response appropriate to it.
Dr. Spence, based on your reading list I recently picked up In a Shade of Blue by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Boggs seems to be advocating what Glaude calls a pragmatic stance. Glaude writes that monuments of the past “threaten(s) to constrain our ability reimagine black political action”. They both see blacks as inextricably linked with the fate of the nation and call for robust participation in the democratic process.
But I wonder how pragmatic it is on her part to abjure capitalism and religion? Although I’m an apostate Christian, for many like Cornel West or the late Howard Thurman religious belief underpins their commitment to social justice and provides the framework for rational deliberation.
And I’m no economist or political theorist but what practical alternative to capitalism exists to provide for our material needs?
you wrote: “Whites, fearing what a black run city would look like, in effect took their marbles and fled.”
plez sez: this happened in city after city around the US beginning in the late 1960’s… it happened in the North, it happened in the South, it happened out West. and has the “rebellion” wrought? we have some Black run cities, but do we have any Black owned cities?!?
if our emphasis had been on ownership (rather than mayoralships), i’m not convinced that white flight would have had a negative impact on our inner cities. now we see a trend reversal, where white folk are slowly (but surely) coming back to reclaim what they fled over the past 40 years. they still own the cities, now they’re coming back to run them again:
* Atlanta, which next year will probably have its first serious white mayoral candidate in 30 years,
* New Orleans, which during its next election cycle will probably elect its first white mayor in over 20 years, and
* NYC, which has had a string of Republican white mayors over the past 10 years
as Boggs stated, we must turn our backs on those traditional and failed escape routes, and begin looking inward for solutions to our societal issues.
plez i think you should read boggs again. i believe i know what your perspective is based on reading your own blog, but perhaps you are reading YOUR perspective into BOGGS perspective.
here for example let’s turn to what government actually does. even at a local level, government enforces contracts, generates contracts, provides services, withholds services, and possess a variety of institutional mechanisms that can either subjugate or empower.
if black detroiters would’ve focused on ownership rather than political control, i’m not sure how they overcome the institutional hurdles they would have faced by not running the government. the first things that coleman young did when he was elected was integrate the police department, and then aggressively institute set asides for blacks AND women.
he single handedly created over 100 black millionaires by this act alone. dave bing, don barden, della barden, among them.
i believe the economics vs. politics argument is a non-starter. and this is one of the things that boggs is urging us to turn away from.
which brings me to my man submariner. i don’t think that boggs is talking about turning her back on capitalism as much as she is about recapturing and reframing LOCAL space.
I’m a New Yorker with over 10 years as a resident of the Detroit area. My introduction to Michigan occurred during the Malice Green trial – 2 Detroit cops, a 6 pound flashlight, and one dead black crack dealer in the back of the black and white. As a New Yorker, I matured in an environment that, while ignorant of black culture, was comfortably free of Jim Crow stereotypes. How very different was my first introduction to the rough-edged blue collar mentality of many Michiganders. White or Black, sensitive travelers can probably name several episodes where the level of racism was so overt, so muscular, so far in excess of what we had ever experienced in our communities that it shattered our long-held belief in the ultimate triumph of social progress. Welcome to Michigan: We’re now partners in Devolution with the likes of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Michigan’s inability to deal with checkered racial history will continue to jeopardize its transition to a 21st Century community of like minds. Michiganders need to learn that blacks have always had a “life of the mind” but it required their self-imposed exile to decadent Europe to satisfy their hunger for intellectual stimulation. In his seminal book Partisanship, Race, and the Public Intellectual, Gerald Early reminds us that “[T]here was virtually nothing in American society to support a black person who wanted to live a life of the mind, a life of ideas, except perhaps the Communist Party where most black intellectuals and thinkers cut their teeth in this country before 1970.”
Reconstruction of Detroit’s proud reputation as a tolerant, progressive promoter of individual freedom (1st state to eliminate the death penality, and home of the 8 hour work day) and liberty is threatened by the continued deterioration in Michigan’s economic climate. Michigan needs to nurture that intellectual, bi-racial, life of the mind necessary to recapture its position as a leading defender of human values. Unfortunately, preparation for this difficult task requires that we work through those malformed and crippled embarrassments we once believed to be ideas. Dostoyevsky wrote that, “Every man has reminiscences that he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind that he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things that a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.” As decent citizens, let’s work together in developing a community where a “life of the mind” is available for all its citizens.
Bobby I think I forgot to respond to this but wanted to. We can’t possibly move beyond the quagmire we are in now if people don’t have the space and the freedom to think and to generate new ideas. And also the freedom and space to argue for and against the ones we already have.
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