When emergency manager Kevyn Orr arrives in near-bankrupt Detroit, almost half of Michigan’s black population will live under the rule of state overseers with little say in the governments nearest them.
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In downtown Detroit on March 7, Charles Williams II, a reverend, and about 50 supporters protested the emergency- manager law. He used a bullhorn to promise a struggle in the spirit of civil-rights leaders such as Medgar Evers, assassinated in Mississippi in 1963.
I don’t see how it couldn’t be racially motivated," Williams, 30, said of the law.
My first guess is that Williams is lying, but it is possible that he really doesn't see other possibilities. For example, there's an extremely strong correlation between identification as "black" and the political party you vote for. But if the party must be defended at all costs, then the reflex against crimethink will keep you from contemplating that party members might have caused the trouble, and absolutely rule out even dreaming that the party's ideology itself might have some bearing.
Circle the wagons and unfurl every banner; define yourself in every aspect of life as different from the enemy. And if any part of it is holy, all is.
2 comments:
It's beyond belief that someone couldn't see that Detroit was in extremis, so I assume the attitude must be that only racial motivations could have prevented a bailout, "like all the rich white people get."
But with bailouts, you have to have a system that people can at least lie to themselves and become convinced that with some help it could get moving on its own. Maybe people like this fellow don't spend enough time outside Detroit to know how complete the collapse is there, and how hopeless it looks from the outside. He may have heard of economic theories that could explain and address it, but assumes they're pretexts for racist fat cats.
I have a thoughtcrime response I keep trying to word properly, but can't. It may coalesce into something coherent over time. For now, I will lead only with the idea that brighter African Americans may quietly suspect that many blacks - 20-30% - just aren't going to make it without rescue. They run into them more often than we do.
Hence, vote Democratic, because if the government does not protect that 20-30%, who will the burden fall on?
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