As the demographics of the city are changing and more white people are moving back to the city we must reflect on the city's past in order to keep us from going back to our old ways of racial division and tension. The "8 Mile Wall" is a clear example of something we never want to go back to.
Read Moreby Eli Day
There's a revivalist lullaby being sung about Detroit--one that croons of a city lifting itself up and vanquishing the ghosts of its tortured history simply by looking past them. Yet even as it crescendos, longtime residents seem to have failed, or perhaps refused, to brim with the untrammeled hope the lullaby urges. We needn't labor in the dark as to why: there is no whistling past a history whose boot remains planted on your neck.
Read Moreby Eli Day
[It’s] been maddening to watch as the intellectuals, journalists, and upwardly mobile of Detroit participate in a bizarre specimen of hero worship: not only trumpeting the successes of Mayor Mike Duggan, but ritually veiling his shortcomings. To be clear, Duggan is not without credentials—his business and political acumen are obvious. The trouble with heroes is that when the time comes to be scrupulous about policy details there’s a collective reluctance to question their wisdom, perhaps for fear of revealing the limits of our own.
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