“Motherfucker!”: The History of Black-Run Detroit in One Word

 

Mayor “King” Coleman Young, who destroyed Detroit, early in his reign, with an obscure white politician
 

By Nicholas Stix

When “King” Coleman Young won election in 1973 as Detroit’s first black mayor, ruled it for 20 years, and in short order, ran into the ground, Coleman became famous among blacks, and infamous among whites for his fondness for saying one expletive in public: “Motherfucker.”

This was the example set by the most powerful and beloved black politician in America—most beloved by blacks, at any rate.

My colleague Paul Kersey has a column up at VDARE, “'Detroit is a Microcosm of Black America'–Black Studies Professor’s 2010 Op-Ed Says What Conservatism Inc. Won’t.”

The professor writes,

Detroit is a microcosm of Black America. I believe if you cannot love Detroit, you cannot fully love Black people. The Detroit Metropolitan area represents the best and the worst that Black folks in this country have to offer. The Black middle class was solidified in and around Detroit with steady unionized blue collar labor in the auto industry.

The middle class expanded as more Black folks with college educations occupied managerial positions. Detroiters experienced and vigilantly fought the racisms of housing redlining, riots, as well as White and Black flight. Detroit has benefited and suffered at the hands of White and Black leadership. If there is a city that tells us about the promise and perils of Blackness, it’s Detroit. I’m so interested in what happens in Detroit because if we can turn it around, we can turn around the rest of our cities.

[Read the rest here.]