Don't Call It A Comeback

When a white person coming to the city is unilaterally and unquestioningly held as the best thing for Detroit then we have a problem. It’s a problem because it heralds the young millennial white professionals and hipsters as heroes on the urban frontier, and the only people that have ever mattered for Detroit’s success. This romanticization of Detroit’s past almost always focuses on the near two million population figure and the abundance of jobs and businesses in the city. What’s left out is the part of the past filled with the murder of black and brown bodies, razing of historic communities, and the intense racial segregation.

Black Bottom ArchivesSeptember 22, 2015Detroit, Eric Riley, Gentrification, Systemic Racism, Inequality, Displacement Comments

Mayor Duggan, Revitalization, and Things Unmentioned

by 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.

Black Bottom ArchivesFebruary 17, 2015Racism, Housing Discrimination, Detroit, History, Inequality, Gentrification, Public Policy, Foreclosure, Eli DayComment

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