The mainstream finally recognizes the death of Detroit
In 1991 or ‘92, Jared Taylor initiated a remarkable occasional series of articles in his
American Renaissance newsletter on how once-leading American cities had fallen into ruin as a result of their being taken over by blacks. The title of each article began, “The Late Great City of…” If I remember correctly, the first piece in the series was, “The Late Great City of Detroit.” (Indeed,
here it is, from August 1991.) And now, twenty years later,
Time Magazine has a cover article, “The Tragedy of Detroit: how a great city fell—and how it can rise again”:
Now I get the “great city fell” part. But what could be
Time’s plan for making Detroit rise again? Turning it into a “Charter City”? How about making it into a “Magnet City”? Magnet schools are public schools in cities and school districts deprived of whites by white flight that develop special curricula and special facilities to attract white students from other schools districts and cities. The idea is to produce significant white enrollment in schools that otherwise have virtually no whites, so that the presence of whites will somehow raise the educational experience for the blacks.
So, if the idea is to make Detroit a “Magnet City,” what can be done to attract a large number of whites back to Detroit? A couple of hundred million dollar special projects—sports stadiums, concert halls and the like—will not do the trick. Detroit is too much of a mess, and too dangerous. It seems to me that the only way to make Detroit attractive to whites again would be to move a large part of its black population out. Impossible, you say? Ok. But unless a large part of its black population moves out, Detroit can never rise again.
Paul Kersey discusses the Time article at Stuff Black People Don’t Like.
(Correction: The Time cover article is from October 2009. While Paul Kersey reproduces the cover at the start of his article, his main subject is a current story in the Washington Post about a move to have a state-appointed manager take over control of Detroit’s budget, and complaints by blacks that it’s only black majority cities that get taken over like this.)
—end of initial entry—
A reader in England writes:
If poor Indians/Pakistanis from poverty stricken regions took over an empty Detroit do you think it would once again rise and become a civilised functioning city?
I think it probably would though it might take a while.
Tight family structure, a strong religious framework (which prevents violent crime) and a strong work ethic would give them a good chance to create a liveable civilised Detroit.
However they may not have the creativity to take it further so to speak. Taking it onto a level where they create a really special city à la New York or L.A. or Chicago or San Francisco. White cultural creativity, often associated with white middle class liberals (traditional white conservatives are not great at producing vibrant creative culture, therefore they rarely if ever produce great cities when they are a majority), is often the lynchpin upon which great cities thrive.
They (the poor Pakistanis and Indians) would have to begin to understand and to integrate with American culture, especially the surrounding white American culture. [LA replies: Again, even with the reader in England, who sees nonwhites as the solution, there is the idea that the Magical White (the Magic Whegro?) is needed to inject that je ne sais quoi high-civilizational spark into the nonwhite. But what happens when there are no whites left, because they’ve been pushed aside by all the nonwhites?]
I’m not sure if they will be able to do that, at least not initially. Perhaps their children would have a better chance.
I reiterate that one of the problems in the UK with so many Pakistanis, Indians, and other Asians coming here is their lack of humour, irony and wit. So while they may work hard and create prosperity, they also help create a humourless, rigid Britain. This is something rarely talked about. The poor but hardworking Jews came to Britain and the U.S. with humour and wit. The poor but hardworking Muslims and Asians and black Africans (as opposed to black Carribean immigrants) and even white Eastern European immigrants etc do not come here with that humour and wit.
But critics tend to emphasise the economic side of things, not the cultural side of things. So the lack of humour and wit are rarely talked about. I loved living in England because of its humour, wit and irony. I now see that disappearing daily due to immigration.
LA replies:
Obviously what is needed is to turn Britain into a “Magnet Nation.” This is to be done by bringing in lots of white (mostly Jewish) comedians into Britain. Their presence will in turn attract an influx of humor-loving white Western immigrants into Britain, counteracting the effect of the recent humor-challenged south Asian and eastern European influx.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
You wrote in a recent post that the English have place an excessive emphasis on the importance of “having a sense of humor” about everything, even serious and important things, and that it is this that has led them to their longstanding toleration of sexual deviancy. I thought of this immediately when I read your reader in England’s comment that the real problem with mass immigration from South Asia is that the people there lack a sense of humor. Your reader should realize that the English sense of irony is morbidly enflamed, and that practically nobody outside the British Isles appreciates their humor. “It’s like British comedy” is even sometimes said in America to describe something that is extremely absurd or nonsensical.
I would suggest that if someone from Pakistan (!) does not find the English people’s peculiar sort of humor funny, that is the very least of your worries. Perhaps somebody from a traditional society like India, built on the caste system and strong taboos concerning social relations, can’t “take a joke.” But then, neither can people from Eastern Europe, at least not in my experience (Ashkenazi types excepted, naturally). My guess is there are more serious problems with people from the Third World than their humorlessness. My guess is that they take a lot of things seriously that ought to be taken seriously—like family, religion, history, and morality—even if the English long ago decided to make a joke of them.
Also, I can’t imagine people from Pakistan or India taking over Detroit and turning it back into one of America’s “great cities.” If anything, the slums of those places are many times worse than in the Third World (Mother Theresa wouldn’t have become famous by tending to poverty-stricken Detroit), and the absence of productive cultural and human capital is even more severe.
LA replies:
Well, let’s see what Time Magazine proposes.
KO writes:
Your correspondent’s assertion that traditional white conservatives are not great at producing “vibrant creative culture” is quite provocative given my own experience of liberal London. Where is the vibrancy there? The most attractive sights remain the Palace of Westminster, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower and Tower Bridge, none of which I would instinctively associate with a liberal spirit. “Trendy” Camden, on the other hand—home of the late Amy Winehouse—has a messy high street that is beyond risible. I feel confident that it is Camden that is validated by its proximity to the City and Westminster, not vice versa.
Similarly, the most affecting sound I have heard in London was a Haydn Mass sung by the magnificent amateur choir of St. James’ Spanish Place, rather than the transiently interesting output of the Ministry of Sound in the also run-down looking Elephant and Castle area. As for musicals, who on earth would pay exorbitant rent to live in the city that produced “We Will Rock You”?
I would be interested in an exchange of opinions as to what constitutes “vibrant creative” culture. I would suggest that the absence of traditional conservatives in the contemporary arts has a lot to do with their avoiding occasions of sin, such as producing pornographic pop lyrics and videos. Sex appeal, however, is not a product of liberal creativity.
James P. writes:
Right now Detroit is a “magnet city” in the sense of being the kind of magnet that actively repels productive people, especially whites—namely lots of violent black criminals, few jobs, socialistic government, and decaying infrastructure.
I vehemently disagree with your reader in England’s contention that “traditional white conservatives” do not produce great cities or great culture when they are in the majority. The great cities of Europe and North America became great precisely when traditional white conservatives were in the majority, and the decline and decay of these cities resulted from the increased presence and influence of white liberals. White liberals are not the producers of “vibrant creative culture,” they are the enemies of culture because they are the enemies of truth, beauty, and goodness.
The chief problem of importing Indians and Pakistanis to England is not their lack of “humor, wit and irony.” The chief problem is that they are not English and can never become English even if they magically develop a sense of humor. Also one might note that much of the humorless rigidity in Britain today is not due to Indians and Pakistanis but due to the white liberals. Yes, the very folk who supposedly generate “vibrant creative culture” are in fact stifling humor, wit and irony with speech codes and rampant political correctness.
We cannot solve Detroit’s problems by turning it into Bombay or Karachi, because Indians and Pakistanis are not American any more than they are English. The idea that they should be required to “understand and integrate with American culture” is all very well in principle, but in fact we have not required immigrants to do that for quite a long time. To be sure, some people might prefer a “humorless, rigid” majority Indian Detroit, even if the Indians did not assimilate, to the majority black hellhole that it is today.
Lastly, I recommend E. Michael Jones The Slaughter of the Cities to anyone who wishes to understand the destruction of Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago
LA replies:
Here is a reader’s review, of E. Michael Jones’s book at Amazon:
5.0 out of 5 stars Now I Know Why Detroit is a Wasteland, February 8, 2004
By A Customer
The destruction of Detroit, Philadelphia, the south side of Chicago, and all the major cities of the Northeast was all planned. In the early part of the 20th century the WASP plutocrats saw that the Catholic urban ethnics would soon take over the major cities because they were having large families, so they used urban planning funded with government and foundation money to drive the Catholics out of the cities after World War II. E. Michael Jones has put the whole sorry tale together in his new book, and the words of the elite urban planners, themselves, are used to convict them. If you thought that the rapid suburbanization of this country after World War II was a natural occurrence, then read this book. You will also learn how the “car culture” and the interstate highway system fits into the scheme. My Great-Grandfather rode the streetcar to work in Detroit. He spent pennies a day on transportation. Now we are all spread out and dependent on cars costing thousands a year to get us to work on long commutes via the clogged freeways.
However, as I derive it from other reviews, the book seems extremely tendentious. Its victimist, leftist-style thesis is that the evil bigoted WASP establishment deliberately made cities unlivable in order to chase out the ethnic Catholics who were gaining too much power and threatening the WASP ascendancy. This sounds about like Bush invaded Iraq in order to enrich Halliburton. Look at America. Does it look like a country in which WASPs have been going all-out to preserve their ascendancy? So I question Jones’s judgment.
Buck O. writes:
Sounds like we need to dust off the old desegregation strategies of the ’50s. The feds could force-bus whites into Detroit, with national guard troops protecting them until the racists calm down. That would instigate black flight and the process of recovery would accelerate. We’d have to be prepared to respond to the Northern Manifesto in court, but the legal framework and the ACLU is already established. See White v. Bored of Education.
Sophia W. writes:
You wrote:
Obviously what is needed is to turn Britain into a “Magnet Nation.” This is to be done by bringing in lots of white (mostly Jewish) comedians into Britain. Their presence will in turn attract an influx of humor-loving white Western immigrants into Britain, counteracting the effect of the recent humor-challenged south Asian and eastern European influx.
You are showing your humor-loving Jewish roots there, Larry. Like black roots, they grow in after a couple of days.
But seriously, I don’t even bother to read mainstream articles that purport to show the truth about race. They will never even approach the truth. It is too incendiary. Larry Summers got fired from Harvard for musing about sex differences, true. But Obama gave him a job, and his musings didn’t threaten his place in the hierarchy of top economists.
If he had mused about race differences, he’d have gotten ‘Watsoned.” Banished entirely from polite society. [LA replies: That’s interesting.]
I think there are two subjects that will get you in deep, irrecoverable doo-doo: race and homosexuality. The methodology of destruction in either case bears scrutiny. If you speak truthfully about race, you’ll be politely excommunicated and unpersoned. Look at James Watson. He’s pretty much a dead man walking. Cross the homosexuals and you’ll get torn to shreds. It is like being torn up by howling maenads with cojones and male testosterone. Female maenads cannot do nearly as much damage as an organized bunch of queens.
Sophia A. writes:
Buck O. wrote,
“We’d have to be prepared to respond to the Northern Manifesto in court, but the legal framework and the ACLU is already established. See White v. Bored of Education.”
On second thought, is “Bored of Education” a typo? I’m “bored of education” too, at least, the bureaucratized kind. The whole public education system is rotten.
(“bored of” is the British way of saying, “bored with,” and given the British slant the conversation took, it’s appropriate.)
Alan A. writes:
“Obviously what is needed is to turn Britain into a ‘Magnet Nation….’ “
Now, now, don’t be sarcastic.
LA replies:
That wasn’t sarcasm, it was humor. Or was it wit? Or was it irony? Oh dear…
Anthony Damato writes:
Had to laugh at your reply. Even though your UK commenter has to be demonstrating dead pan English humor (I hope) with his solution to the wonders of failing multiculturalism on his imprisoned isle. Or he is just a foolish believer in the forces destroying his country?
In any event, can anyone really imagine the Asian equivalent to Henny Youngman on a UK stage saying “Take my wife … please!”?
Sophia A. writes:
I suppose the reason Minnesota is such a great place is because of all the Swedes and Norwegians who settled there, making the state a world capitol of humor. All that wit and irony really drove the criminal element out of town.
In fact, Scandinavians settled all over the Upper Midwest and are heavily represented in states such as Nebraska, whose territory juts into what we would call the West. These states have, due to lack of diversity, largely survived the Diversity Depression that has sucked the rest of the country into a whirlpool of debt.
Clearly this was due to the humor, wit, and sense of irony that Scandinavian farmers possess in abundance.
In fact, I’m sure they are laughing their Viking butts off at the rest of us. What kind of people lend money to spendthrifts who don’t comprehend the meaning of the word “interest”?
LA replies:
As to your last point, it’s not as if Midwesterners are not living in the same country, under the same government, as the rest of us.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 06, 2012 12:59 AM | Send