Why blacks resist the state takeover of Detroit’s finances

Here is the priceless beginning of the Washington Post story about black politicos’ response to Detroit’s financial disaster, quoted by Paul Kersey today:

As a Michigan panel considers whether a state-appointed emergency manager should take over Detroit’s debt-laden budget, some residents and leaders are arguing that the move would disenfranchise black voters.

“How come all of the jurisdictions put under emergency management are majority African American? Has anybody noticed that?” asked Rep. John Conyers (D), who has represented Detroit for 47 years. “There seems to be a racial aspect, a racial component of the application of this law.”

Under a newly strengthened law allowing the governor to appoint emergency managers over local governments, appointees are now running other financially bereft cities with large black populations—including Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Ecorse and Flint. If Detroit is added, a sizable proportion of the state’s black residents will be living under emergency managers.

The obvious solution to the concern voiced by Conyers and other black leaders is to require that for every black city whose financial affairs are taken over by the state, a white city’s financial affairs must also be taken over by the state. Further, the total white population of white cities taken over by the state must equal the total black population of black cities taken over by the state. Anything short of such racial equity would mean that blacks are being discriminated against. After all, didn’t Lyndon Johnson declare in 1965 that in America we must have, not just equality under the law, but “equality as a fact and equality as a result”?

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Paul K. writes:

Rep. John Conyers: “How come all of the jurisdictions put under emergency management are majority African American? Has anybody noticed that?”

Of course we have, but you can’t blame him for asking—no one ever gives him the answer. They just stand there mutely, looking abashed. As you have pointed out, until the time comes that people in power speak the truth bluntly to blacks, blacks will keep asking these sorts of rhetorical, accusatory questions, such as “Why are so many black men incarcerated?” and “Why can’t our schools solve the black-white achievement gap?”

LA replies:

You are absolutely right, and it’s a point that cannot be made often enough. If whites, particularly whites in prominent positions, would start publicly speaking the truth about race and race differences, half of America’s white-black problems would be solved. But the whites will never do this. It is as though they have a structure implanted within their cerebral cortex that makes it absolutely impossible for them to say that blacks differ substantively from whites in any way, no matter how grossly manifest such differences are. Whites would rather die, and let their country die, than state the simple truth that blacks are significantly less capable than whites, and that this is the reason why blacks are behind whites in every indicator of intellectual and economic achievement.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 06, 2012 04:53 PM | Send