by
A few days back, my old friend and former Detroit News colleague Bill Johnson took to the paper's editorial pages to sound the alarm over a "malevolent undercurrent" of racial wariness coursing through the city's mayoral campaign.
Johnson, a hard-right black conservative, accused some African-American political players of promoting candidate Benny Napoleon out of fear that the election of Mike Duggan, a white man, would essentially kill black political power in Detroit.
The most interesting (and perhaps frightening) aspect of Johnson's piece, isn't that he necessarily dismisses the premise as political paranoia or unrealistic fear. In fact, he doesn't really bother to argue against the suggestion that a Duggan election symbolizes lost political ground.
Bill Johnson doesn't seem to "really understand what 'black nationalism' is," columnist Darrell Dawyey writes.
Instead, Johnson seems to just want an entire community of black voters, leaders and activists to shut up and take it -- to simply "live with" the notion that they could indeed see a rollback of the political progress Detroiters have fought for since the turn of the 19th century.
News op-ed: This isn’t the first time that the red flag of race has been raised, the troops rallied and the closing of ranks featured in a city election. But is the prospect of black marginalization real, or imagined? Can Detroiters live with the downside posed by self-disenfranchisement?
The most important contribution of the first black Detroit mayor in the 1970s was that Coleman Young’s legitimacy was derived from the fact that he represented a large black population. Many were poor and suffering from a lack of employment, educational opportunities, inadequate housing and general hopelessness. Many viewed his election as the coming of the Messiah.
As Young took on the task of governing, most Detroiters had high expectations for their revered mayor. Expectations were raised that the afflictions of the ghetto would be addressed in an enlightened and humane manner. Political power and control of public institutions were advertised as a guarantor of black advancement. The doors to economic power would magically swing open.
Blacks exuded extraordinary pride in having one of their own elected. He was defended with such vigor that he became deified. Any attack on him was seen as an attack on all of us.
However, in too many instances the Young administration’s policies conflicted with direction the city needed to go — and the needs of his constituents. Voters remained loyal even after realizing that Young’s electoral prowess was mostly symbolic. It didn’t translate into beneficial policies and programs.
After more than four decades of black Detroit mayors, there’s nothing in the public record to show that the high hopes embodied in their election to office were matched by exemplary performance in the public interest.
As is usually the case with reductive screeds like this, they only really work if you're willing to accept a shoddy and half-assed presentation of the truth. And when it comes to Young and Detroit's black political history, conservatives always seem to have room for more delusion.
Way Beyond Symbolism
Despite Johnson's contentions, Young's election was far more than "symbolic." Detroiters (black and white) who voted for Young weren't just voting for a black face.
They were voting for greater access to city jobs and contracts for people of color. They were voting for reform of a racist and murderous police department. They were voting for a politician who could work with everyone, irrespective of skin color or even political affiliation, to make Detroit more inclusive.
Further, for Johnson to contend that blacks then sat back self-satisfied under the mistaken belief that the "doors of economic power would magically swing open" isn't just a raging falsehood. It's insulting, too.
Does Johnson really expect readers to believe that a black community that had been scarred by two riots barely two decades apart, entrenched and persistent housing and job discrimination, police brutality and the destruction of Black Bottom actually was naive enough to think that anything would "magically swing open?"
Does he really think that self-made figures like Berry Gordy, Bill Pickard, Don Barden, Mel Farr, Cornelius Pitts and other successful blacks just stood around twiddling their thumbs waiting for Young to hand them the keys to economic prosperity?
Young's election opened doors, no doubt. But the men and women who strode through those doors -- people who for years had been forced to stand in line outside those doors for no other reason than that they wed black -- fought and struggled and earned everything they got.
Don't Blame Young (The Freep Doesn't)
Meanwhile, although Johnson wants to claim that black mayors made Detroit untenable for business, the truth is, it wasn't Young or his policies that led businesses like Hudson's to abandon downtown Detroit. It was the the shift in demographics, the rise of mall culture and good-old fashioned racism. (Remember, the Freep last month did a great job of proving that Young was among the most fiscally responsible mayors the city's ever had; too bad that Johnson and other conservatives won't bother to let the truth get in the way of their anti-Young narratives.)
Johnson then goes on to suggest that blacks kept Young in office as some way of proving a point, all while passing over much more qualified candidates for the job. Truth is, none of Young's challengers were likely to have surpassed his job as mayor, even after Young had gotten old and the political forces building against Detroit had gotten too robust.
Does Johnson think that Tom Barrow would've been a better choice?
While Johnson spends much of the piece kvetching about a man who's been dead since 1997 -- it's truly amazing how Young still sticks in the craw of local right-wingers -- he's content to gloss over the next decade and half worth of elections as if they too were the referendums on race that he mistakenly casts Young's reign to be.
The truth is, whites haven't run for mayor until now so it's hard to claim that blacks voted for other blacks for mayor out of "racial solidarity" when only African-Americans were on the ballots. And as Johnson well knows, blacks have never had a hard time voting for non-blacks seen as beneficial to their interests, be it Maryann Mahaffey or Gary Peters or Rashida Talib.
Just Plain Wrong
Neither were the mayoral elections that followed Young's rule in any way about embracing radical black political identity. Johnson is just plain wrong when he suggests that Detroiters elected mayors out of some sense of "black nationalism." This is so laughable that it forces you to ask whether Bill Johnson even really understands what "black nationalism" is.
After all, you don't vote in a man like Dennis Archer, a business-friendly conservative Democrat who once sat on the state Supreme Court, if you're trying to mau-mau the white folks.
I'd argue that the same applies to Ken Cockrell Jr., Kwame Kilpatrick and Dave Bing -- pro-business moderates, all of them.
Just as bothersome about Johnson's piece is his none-too-subtle intimation that Detroit's mayors somehow failed precisely because they were black.
After more than four decades of black Detroit mayors, there's nothing in the public record to show that they high hopes embodies in their election to office are matched by exemplary performance in the public interest.
Detroit has had only five black mayors, all elected decades after the city began its precipitous decline, all elected in the face of stiff white resistance both locally, statewide and nationally. Johnson seems to think that's five too many and that nothing got done on their watch.
Of course, that ignores:
- Efforts to redevelop Detroit's riverfront.
- Kilpatrick's infrastructure investments in even the toughest neighborhoods.
- Archer's courtship of the casinos and other downtown businesses.
- The wooing of the Lions from Pontiac.
- Construction of Ford Field and Comerica Park.
- Tthe rise of Midtown and other successes.
Could they have done more? Absolutely. And to be fair, I don't think my man Bill is wrong at all when he suggests that at least some of these guys were "vision-deprived."
Did White Governors Hurt State?
But were their failures -- or the struggles of a city -- rooted in the fact that these mayors were simply "governing while black?" And if we can fix our faces to say such crazy shit, then is it also fair to say that Michigan has been failing as a state for so long precisely because Rick Snyder and all of his predecessors have been white?
And should we think that Mike Duggan, cut from the same bolt of political cloth as kleptocrats like Kilpatrick, will be more successful merely because he's a white man?
Bill's right when he talks about racially charged undercurrents in this mayor's race — but he fails to identify a second, equally insidious insinuation: The one that says that blacks have had their day as political leaders in Detroit, have failed and now need to return control to white people for the good of us all.
How else, after all, are you supposed to convince a people who've fought and died for the vote to accept foolishness like "self-disenfrachisement" unless you can con them into believing that their struggles never really amounted to much any way; unless you can convince them that giving up political power to folks who never truly lost it in the first place is the essence of "accountability;" unless you can make them believe they failed?
Duggan may indeed be fighting against the one undercurrent. But it's that second one that, to whatever degree, has surely helped move him forward — and that has some wondering whether black political leadership might one day be washed away.
