Posted on February 21, 2013

T.K.O. — It’s Official: Blacks Knock out Detroit

Paul Kersey, SBPDL, February 20, 2013

Knowing the history of Detroit–a city that was nearly 100 percent white 100 years ago; 85 percent in the 1950s; and ultimately a city where high rates of black crime and a black uprising in 1967 completed the genocide of whites from the Detroit–I can’t help but smile reading this story from the Detroit News [Review team: Detroit faces financial crisis, has no plan to fix it:Fiscal emergency tied to cash crunch, deficits, long-term liabilities,The Detroit News, 2-20-13]:

For the second time in a year, a state review team has found Detroit is in a financial emergency that requires Gov. Rick Snyder to intervene in City Hall.

But this time, if Snyder agrees that a financial emergency exists, the governor’s choices are more limited.

He could appoint an emergency manager to keep Michigan’s largest city from plunging into bankruptcy, experts say, or he could continue state financial supervision through a new consent agreement, which seems a faint possibility.

State Treasurer Andy Dillon ruled out a bankruptcy filing at this time.

The six-member review team unanimously concluded in a report released Tuesday that the city failed to restructure its debt-laden bureaucracy under the financial consent agreement signed in April and that Detroit’s financial crisis requires Snyder’s intervention “because no satisfactory plan exists to resolve a serious financial problem.”

“We gave the city every chance to avoid the outcome we’re recommending to the governor today,” said Dillon, who led the review team.

He was more direct in an interview after the press conference. “The city doesn’t have more time,” Dillon said. “They have limited cash right now, limited ability to access capital markets. I kind of think they’ve got one more bite of the apple to get it right.”

In a sobering report to Snyder, the review team found Detroit has: A cash-flow deficit of more than $100 million without “significant spending cuts” by June 30, on top of an accumulated deficit of $327 million. $14.9 billion, including unfunded pension and employee retirement liabilities.

The city also needs $1.9 billion during the next five years to make payments for the liabilities, but city officials have no debt payment plan.

Accumulated deficits in the general fund of $155.4 million to $331.9 million annually since the 2005 fiscal year. Dillon said the city has been “masking over” annual deficits with long-term borrowing.

The report said that without the borrowing, the deficits would total $937 million in fiscal year 2012.

“We believe there’s a financial emergency in the city and that there’s no plan in place to correct the situation,” Dillon said.

Recall that in the 1950s, Detroit  was 85 percent white and perhaps the most important city in all of America–it boasted a standard of living never before seen in world history, which was only a reflection of the type of community its white citizens could create, sustain, and pass on to their children.

Today, Detroit is 82 percent black (almost 90 percent black in the core of the city)–it boasts a standard of living in 2013 that makes it perhaps the poorest big city in the nation–with some of the highest violent crime rates–which is only a reflection of the type of community its almost entirely black citizenry could create, sustain, and pass on to their children.

{snip}

For Detroit is a reminder of what black individuals can collectively accomplish when the state (the city of Detroit) sets a course of action emboldened by black power.

Allow me to present to you just a few pieces of evidence from Tamar Jacoby’s book Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Business for Integration that are a powerful reminder of why the 2013 collapse of Detroit signals the demise of America’s Black Metropolis:

In the black mythology of Detroit, 1967 became the point that blacks finally stood up for themselves – what Ebony magazine called “the birth pangs” of a new city. Former head of the Detroit NAACP Arthur Johnson used the same metaphor.

“What we had in 1967 was a surprise pregnancy,” he said. “The baby had to be delivered… We had to go through some kind of trauma.” It would be a few years before Detroit would technically become a black city – before the population tipped and political control fell into black hands. But plainly, for most residents, the riot was the turning point that mattered. People began to talk proudly about the emerging “Black Metropolis.” (p. 239)

[Detroit’s first black Mayor Coleman] Young bragged to reporters about the blacks in his administration and the black entrepreneurs landing city contracts. Residents talked about proudly about “doing for themselves,” about “self-determination” and local leadership. Magazines like Ebony celebrated Detroit as the nation’s black capital, the place where, as Mayor Young put it, “blacks exercised more power than blacks anywhere in the United States.”

Most of the time, the mood was one of pride and enthusiasm, though every now and then it edge toward something more defiant. Only “sentimentalists,” Ebony noted bullishly, missed the old integrated, mainstream Detroit. The city might be smaller now, it might be poorer, but at least blacks maintained, “It’s ours.”

“I’ve never been concerned,” Young boasted, “about upsetting white people. I’d rather not, but I’m not going to back away from something I know is right just to please whites.” “We refuse in Detroit,” he told another reporter, “to kiss their behinds.” (p. 343)

There are dark times ahead.

But today, smile.

For today, a victory of immense, immeasurable worth was won–for today, a city under complete domination by black America collapsed for all the world to see.

“Down goes black Detroit…”