Detroit Is A Fitting Capital For Liberalism
By Richard Davis (08/25/05)
Just as the Associated Press was circulating a story on the incorporated malignancy that is Detroit -- the opening sentence: “Rats or lead poisoning.” -- a California research group proclaimed the beleaguered city the “most liberal” municipality of 100,000 or more people in America. As both a practical model of liberal policies and a symbol of the current state of liberalism, a more apropos example could not have been chosen.
Detroit won the liberal sweepstakes only because of the way its black residents vote, conformably Democratic, not because Detroiters are liberal ideologues, such as are whites in places like Berkeley, a town still mourning the death of Stalin and the only white city to make the top five. The other three included two city ghettos, Gary and Oakland, and Washington D.C., a city in which residents are liberal either because they want something for nothing or already have their hands in the till.
In the wire story, written with the typical MSM liberal slant, a Detroit-area academic is quoting as saying the biggest challenge to luring whites back to Detroit is “overcoming racial tensions.” If by overcoming racial tensions he means stopping blacks from robbing, killing, raping, burglarizing and assaulting law-abiding whites then he might be on to something. Nothing averts racial tensions as effectively as having all races observe standards of civilized behavior.
Of course that’s not what he meant. He went on to relate how each year 500 bodies are removed from Detroit cemeteries and reburied elsewhere by out-of-town relatives, which, he says, “shows you the depth of racism and fear.” Had the story’s reporter been unbiased and marginally competent he would have asked how exactly that demonstrates racism. Is it racist to want to avoid being carjacked, robbed and shot while you pay respects to your dearly departed? Or to want your family members removed from an urban wasteland and relocated closer to living relatives? Yes. Call it white flight, postmortal white flight. Call it what you like. It’s racism to liberals (who are, it should be noted, always safely ensconced many miles from the flight path).
White flight does not cause Detroits. Anti-social behaviors do. They also cause black flight, and though we don’t mention it, white flight from neighborhoods is the result of black flight from other neighborhoods. Both races are fleeing black neighbors for reasons real and imagined. Only blacks can do so openly and without recrimination. Black flight is just as destructive of neighborhoods and cities as is white flight. Why should massive migrations of nonresident races into any stable neighborhoods be looked upon favorably? Black flight particularly damages blacks, robbing increasingly desperate neighborhoods of role models and economic stability, in essence curtailing their future, while sending the same message of rejection to those left behind as does white flight.
The Detroit story reminds us -- we don’t talk about it because it’s too depressing and racially charged -- that there are hundreds of Detroits and Garys permanently scarring our inner cities, filled with the cursed from whom both whites and blacks have fled. These urban no-man’s lands exist like foreign enclaves in the body politic, little Africas, effectively off-limits to whites except for rescue personnel and crime reporters. They remain as impervious to economic or political salvation as any failed sub-Saharan state.
As for being liberal, Detroit certainly supports Democrats, but it’s hardly the Mecca of liberalism. It has no voice, contributing virtually nothing to the national liberal dialogue. Its poor are disenfranchised, its non-poor are trapped and silent, and its criminal class isn’t politically oriented, except of course for its many corrupt officials and politicians.
So why the No. 1 listing from the Bay Area Center for Voting Research? Just more racial mumbo-jumbo. On its website the directors tell us their research has uncovered the “root cause” of “the highly polarized nature” of the American electorate. “The great political divide in America today is not red vs. blue, north vs. south, coastal vs. interior, or even rich vs. poor – it is now clearly black vs. white.”
To liberals everything about America is black vs. white. They’re wrong again. Blacks make up just 12 percent of the population, and they vote exactly the same way every time, every election, en masse, regardless of the issues or candidates, and they have been doing so since they began voting. That hasn’t changed, which means it can’t explain changes in electoral polarization.
In truth, blacks are becoming increasingly marginalized in the electorate, as they are in their own party, because of their predictable voting pattern. You can’t be the root cause of growing polarization if you’re taken for granted and ignored.
While proving only that blacks vote Democratic, the study does present problems for liberals and Democrats in that it identifies both as essentially black and, at the same time, non-diverse. The directors explain: “Despite being the core of America’s liberal base, a major split exists between who the nation’s liberals are and who leads them politically. White politicians still control the levers of power within the Democratic Party, and black faces are rare around the decision taking tables of America’s liberal advocacy groups.” That’s gotta hurt.
But not as much as having Detroit enshrined as the poster child for liberalism. Here’s a poster idea. A portly rat watches intently from a pot hole as a casket is disinterred in the background. The heading: “Liberalism: Even the Dead Have Had Enough.” Detroit certainly has.
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