The publisher of the Michigan Chronicle addresses the decline of Detroit:
I can already hear the chorus of some Detroiters bemoaning the prospect of a major influx of White residents into the city who might again seize political control. It will be convenient for them to make a villain out of any attempt to gentrify the political process. Some critics, of course, fear a future in which their exclusive advocacy for the chronic poor is rendered irrelevant by what might become a rising tide of more educated, committed residents contributing to uplifting economic growth.
But think for a moment: Why would any intelligent outside force want to take over a city with a racially divided people, decaying infrastructure, dwindling services, a disappearing tax base, a shrinking population and a budget immersed in permanent red ink?
There is no debate that much of the self-sustaining, enterprising spirit that launched Detroit’s growth 50 years ago is gone. Most suburbanites think of Detroit as a financial and moral wasteland rife with accelerating crime, genocidal violence and disturbing family malfunction.
Yet the only way this city will survive is if there is a re-population with a new class of virtuous, ethical people. Only when we transition to a more politically appropriate realignment and expand our demographic bases of power can we dream of a new status quo. Without a major dose of gentrification, we simply do not have much of a future.
Detroit - and its suburbs - need to get past the issue of race. Until that happens, Detroit will continue to die.
There goes that historic, transcendent, life-changing, not since the Gettysburg Address, "I have a dream," must-be-taught-in-every-school race speech. It didn't hold up three months, let alone the time it would take to print up new textbooks.
Ace has a very good list of things that the MSM has "decided" for us about the Obama!/Jeremiah Wright mess:
Obama's 20 year political partnership with Wright may raise questions about his judgment, but it is wrongful for his political opponents to raise such questions in campaign ads. Some questions, it seems, are properly raised, but silently, in deep personal meditation, perhaps on an alpine hill while reading Rilke. Certainly we do not need to audibly ask questions about a presidential candidate. That's just hurtful and corrosive of our political process, which relies, at its core, of utter trust in our political leaders without question.
The whole Wright thing - or more specifically, the way that Obama has responded to the whole Wright thing - disgusts me. Barack Obama is lying when he says he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's extreme views. You don't sit under the pastorate of a man for 20 years without getting to know that person's beliefs pretty well. And Wright is no shrinking violet, obviously. In the end, all of this puts the lie to the stupid spin that Obama is a "post-racial" candidate. Just the opposite - he's the racial candidate.
As for Wright, his teachings are a disgusting perversion of Christianity. Christianity is not a political religion. Christianity should, however, influence politics. But not the other way around, which is what Wright and his fellow Black Liberation Theologians do by viewing their "Christianity" through a purely political lens.
I've been studying Matthew at bible study this year, and it seems to me that the Black Liberation Theologians make the same error that the Jews of Jesus' time did, in that they both want Jesus to be a political revolutionary. To be sure, Jesus' teachings have consequences for how his followers should view the political realm, and over time they did lead to revolutionary changes in how nations were governed. But Jesus isn't a political figure. He transcends politics. To reduce him to the level of a political revolutionary denies him the honor that he truly deserves, and ultimately denies us the true meaning of his life and teachings - which leaves us in peril of missing out on the gift of salvation that he offers. My hope is that Wright will realize the error of his ways before it's too late.
...without even trying, really! Here's Allahpundit on the latest collective downward lurch of Obama opponants (AKA Klan-lovin' haters of all things non-white):
A new breakthrough towards the left’s unified field theory of how all criticism of Obama is essentially racist. The last great advance came from Harvard prof Orlando Patterson, scanning Hillary’s pedestrian 3 a.m. ad on Obama’s inexperience and finding the lost sequel to “Birth of a Nation.” Now comes David Shipler, thesaurus in hand, following a trail of synonyms that leads straight to the darkest heart of racist AmeriKKKa...
And be sure to follow the last link in the post for a truly delicious nugget of race-propriety education.
Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discuss Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. Stanley Kurtz comments:
The Democratic left now believes that the United States is ready for a genuinely "progressive," paradigm-changing president. They are not abandoning Obama, and are not even fully capable of seeing how damaging Obama’s background and underlying worldview seem to many (although they are worried enough to try to cover for him). But the country is changing and we can no longer be certain of the impact all these revelations will have. What I do think is obvious at this point is that cultural issues will not be a sideshow in 2008, but very much at the center of things. And if Obama should win, the culture clash of the Clinton and Bush years is sure to go on at full blast.
Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter's pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I'd been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses -- often entire majors -- dedicated to race in America. I'd even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes and issues into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. And scratching faintly in the back of my mind, I felt some vague memory that these same universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind's eye seemed to reveal African American studies centers, banners for Black History Month and copies of books like "Race Matters" and "The Future of the Race" lined up on shelves at college bookstores.
To come full circle with the quote from his speech that I found so irritating on Tuesday, if Obama sincerely believes the great national conversation on race can’t wait a moment longer, why didn’t he use the bully pulpit of being a presidential candidate to start it last year? Why now, if it’s not just a cynical attempt to distract attention from his own scandal? The obvious answer: Because to force a discussion of race then would have it made too easy for Hillary to ghettoize him as a “black candidate” before the primaries. He held off to preserve his chances. That’s fine, but contrast his approach to race with McCain’s approach to Iraq. As far back as eleven months ago, before the surge results were in and doom awaited any candidate who dared take a hawkish line, Maverick was telling audiences that he’d rather lose the election than lose the war. The issue came first, his own political ambitions came second. There’s a little character comparison worth mulling. And since we’ve already had one exit question today that’ll be asked forever, here’s another: If the Wright thing had never blown up, would Obama have ever delivered this allegedly urgently important, historically significant meditation on race? You think?
Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP. Here's his response to Obama's speech:
I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.
Well, I am black, and I can't relate to a "black experience" that shields and explains old-style black ministers who rant and rave about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned.
"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."
Wow. And Imus didn't even claim that the AIDS virus had been unleashed by the government to commit genocide against the black population. Harsh, Barack. Very harsh.
