I was asked what the most pressing issues were for Detroit given the upcoming mayoral election. The sparks have already begun to fly in that race. I expect it to get a lot worse. Mayoral campaigns are traditionally viewed as contact sports in the city. If you're from D.C., NYC, Philly (not Chicago so much, Daley has it on lock), San Fran, or L.A., you know what I'm talking about.
Booker T. Washington ain't a friend of mine. People jock him for the Tuskegee model, but here's the skinny. Besides the fact that it wasn't his model, whites worked with him to make absolutely sure there was no way that black tradesmen trained by Tuskegee wouldn't compete with whites. And there really isn't any excuse for selling black political rights short.
But a city like Detroit is 80% black. With a large need for tradesmen to rebuild the city.
In some critical ways Booker T. was a day late and a dollar short. But now would be the perfect time to rebuild the Detroit education system to train a new generation of pipefitters, carpenters, and electricians.
And this brings us back to Cosby.
Bill made his smackdown stop at Detroit the other day. Rochelle Riley gives us the normal spiel. "Cosby came and gave us the word, now we have to pick up the ball." This evangelical model (speaker comes, gives the word, changes psyches, people go out, spread the word, change psyches, the world changes) has no politics of importance. No substantive organizing model. We've been here before.
For some reason I'm reminded of Dennis Archer's speech at the Million Man March. Archer, then mayor of Detroit, is far from a nationalist. But Detroit had one of the largest contingents there and he felt he had to represent. What did he have to say? About as much as any of the rest of the speakers...but I remember him talking about trash pickup in the city. "We've got to take more responsibility in cities like Detroit," he said "what does that mean? If the trash isn't picked up in your neighborhood....PICK IT UP YOURSELF!!!"
The crowd resounded.
And here I was thinking...damn. We pay TAXES. You're telling us that if our taxes aren't giving us services, rather than fight for more resources, fight for increased service delivery, we should....just do what we're paying someone else to do?
Maybe wearing a black and green bandana on our heads while we're doing it would make it more radical.
Posted by at January 17, 2005 02:58 PM | TrackBack